Hans Hendley of Hendley Perfumes:
When my father sent me a surprise jar of oil that he distilled from the heartwood of an eastern red cedar tree grown on our family land in East Texas, I knew I had to use it in a perfume.
Themes of smoke, wood, resin, and soil had been recurring in a lot of my work. For this edition I wanted to place the cedar note front and center in an attempt to capture a vivid, woody naturalness that I hadn’t smelled in a perfume before. I worked with several handcrafted materials that make the perfume truly unique and limited. Alongside my father’s cedarwood oil, I used a tincture I made with pieces of white pine fatwood, an artisan distilled pinyon pine needle oil, and a five-year-aged vanilla bean tincture.
Bloodline is a supremely rich, dark, cedar perfume that paints a certain rugged yet pastoral terroir, dappled sunlight beaming through the canopy, scattered with sawdust and imbued with woodsmoke. A life hewn from trees behind a pine curtain.
From father to son, bloodlines like branches outreaching, rings like years spiraling towards the heart.
Bloodline fragrance notes
- pinyon needles, pine fatwood tincture, eastern red cedar oil, oakwood, vanilla bean tincture, tobacco, oakmoss absolute, labdanum, dark patchouli
Where to buy
Latest Reviews of Bloodline
Bloodline, by the American Perfumer boutique, was created by Hans Hendley, a limited edition of 15 of which I was lucky to obtain a bottle before it quickly sold out. It's dark, dense, rich, and very satisfying to someone like me that's a huge fan of the winter pine resin type scents, slightly burnt but mostly a mix of various woody, earthy accords–most of all, pine---though there are cedar, patchouli, and oakmoss in the mix, too. Labdanum adds to the smoky resin vibe and vanilla provides a sweet base, a point of contrast to the deep, albeit slightly sharp woody dominance.
With dark juice and extrait concentration, Bloodline unsurprisingly performs outstandingly, with tremendous longevity and density, though slightly less projection at first than the most extreme fragrances (some Slumberhouse offerings like Norne, Jeke, Ore, and Sova, and perhaps a couple of Tom Ford Private Blends like Tobacco Vanille and Amber Absolute come to mind as being slightly louder at the onset). Still, Bloodline is very strong and one need not apply much to enjoy it thoroughly.
A fairly easy comparison in the Hendley catalogue is to Fume, another dark, smoky scent, but while Fume more sharply focuses on the burning campfire accord, Bloodline leans toward more pine resin dominances with vanillic undertones. Quite different, but related, and I'd always recommend Fume in any case, as it belongs to a similar family that includes Slumberhouse Norne, Dasein Winter Nights, La Curie Incendo, and Profumum Arso, all of which I love.
Overall, Bloodline is outstanding, and worthy of high praise above all else for its quality, belonging in the group of the aforementioned wintery delights.
8 out of 10