I tend to like most musks, but this one is unlike anything I have ever smelled before. It feels pretty bioactive to me, and I imagine it could take a nasty turn if you had the wrong skin chemistry. But for me it's really wonderful. I have been slowly working away at restoring the remants of an ancient New England garden, and this scent seems all of a piece with that–interesting herbs like sweet cicely, lovage and angelica growing among ferns and mosses, spots of color in the shade from foxgloves and musk mallows and a few clumps of different artemesias growing where the sun hits. I suppose it might look drab speeding past in a car (or in these parts, more likely a pickup truck) but nose close to the ground it is quite transfixing. As with reading Virginia Woolf, I find that smelling this rewards close attention.

At any rate, it sounds like Musc Botanique is must-sniff for me.

This sounds like a must smell, perhaps while reading “Mrs. Dalloway” (or the grossly under-valued “The Years”).