Winter Palace

Citrus-vanilla scents aren't my favorite, in my opinion citruses and vanilla don't go that well together, but Winter Palace does this scent profile really well, so I'd say this is easily my favorite citrus-vanilla fragrance I've tried so far, I'd take this over other fragrances like Ani and "Oud" For Happiness any day of the week. As I implied at the beginning, I got neither red tea nor mate out of this, to my nose Winter Palace is vanilla, lemon, benzoin and especially orange blossom. This is a light, airy and clean scent that I feel is better suited for the spring and fall, this is too light for a winter fragrance in my opinion.

I have both versions of Winter Palace — the older white bottle with the metal plaque and the newer white bottle with the sticker label — and to my nose, there is a clear difference between them. The old bottle smells noticeably soapier and feels much weaker overall, with performance topping out at around 3 hours on me. The newer bottle is more potent, more citrus-forward in the opening, more bubblegummy/tea-like and gently sweet in the middle, and slightly more floral in the deep drydown. The juice in the new bottle also looks more neutral, while the old one had a slightly amber tone.

Got the sample and it lasts SO LONG on paper. This is haute couture's offer on tea scents. On both paper and skin, it opens with this refreshing, zesty citrus and slowly dries down to soft spicy & aromatic woody notes. Literally feels like on a winter's day, you are called up by the Heavenly Emperor for an audience with him and his advisors. You're asked to wait in an intimidatingly beautiful ornate drawing room, while his servants serve you a special blend tea you've never tried before as it's blended with one-of-a-kind spices from India and Persia.

It's not really what I expected...I really was hoping for a true Early Grey scent but that's not what I'm getting. I can't figure out what is unbalancing this scent for me. Maybe too much of both lemon and vanilla? I do smell the tea, but this fragrance is a lot sweeter than I wanted it to be. I still like it, I think this is a case of the expectation being too high. Pretty, and it does have an intriguing drydown. I don't want it right now, but I could see this growing on me as a lovely citrus vanilla, instead of a tea fragrance.

Winter palace is a perfume with several very distinct and different stages. The first is lemon cookie floating in amber. It’s similar in some ways to other lemon cookie perfumes I’ve smelled, although the lemon in this is very green and aromatic and the cookie doesn’t have as much sugar as some do. So it’s kind of a savory lemon cookie. The amber adds a contextual counterpoint, signifying that this perfume can be worn in cool or even cold weather, when normally such an aromatic citrus might be reserved for hotter months.