Eau Sanguine : Bello Rabelo
Les Liquides Imaginaires (2013)

Boozy black licorice and butter. Almost butterscotch in intensity. Not sickly sweet, but gourmand.

One of the more interesting and accomplished scents of the line (in that it's less of a blatant knock-off). This one's predominantly immortelle – slightly curried, but not overcooked – flanked with spices and buckets of resins (myrrh, mainly). It sits somewhere between powdery, spicy, and gourmand with a touch of soap foaming up later on. The spices seem to veer toward cinnamon and nutmeg, the wine effect doesn't exist in any capacity, and the overall effect is pleasant, non-threatening, but ultimately prosaic. Also, the Iso E is strong with this one – very strong. Great packaging and gimmick, reasonably well-priced given the volume, but clearly aimed at people who aren't aware that better scents like HdP's 1740 exist.

An interesting piece of boozy intellectual darkness Bello Rabelo surprises me immediately by a doping fist of bitter licorice (cistus/immortelle/dry patchouli), spicey dried fruits (probably figs among the others), liquorous porto, seasoned woods and aromatic roots. Luxurious, viney, decadent, visceral-licentious and extremely obscure. All is extremely smokey, tobacco veined, dry, vaguely nutty and spicy (cinnamon and nutmeg for sure) while you can catch in the air a raw "burnt sugar effect" with a liquorous-honeyed sweet spiciness couteracting the bitter roots-veined notable vibe. For a while it seems to be dealing with several of the darkest Slumberhouse's (Jeke in particular jumps on mind but also partially Baque and Sova for a bunch of their spicy-culinary, woody, dry and aromatic elements while further scents a la Idole de Lubin and partially Parfumerie Generale Coze' 02 jump on mind because of their booziness or warm spiciness). Along the dry down benzoin provides a touch of silkiness (taming hardly the spiciness) while a surprisingly warm, sophisticated and virile ambergris-sandalwood-labdanum accord seems to hook for a while the (initially lost) train of virile-classic chypre tradition. A supremely cozy-ardent (but mondane/superficial at once) fragrance, it seems to smell Lisboa (with all its cozy-melancholic "musical" vine restaurants) in a bottle. In my opinion Bello Rabelo is really an interesting and refined fragrance, probably my favorite in the Les Liquides Imaginaires Range. Highly recommended potion for all those cultured "viveur" ready for intellectual battles around for lofty-naif venues all over the world.

A dark, rich, round, gloomy, dense and bloody voluptuous blend of dried fruits and wine notes, on a base of edible, tasty and smokey accord of cistus, immortelle and vanilla - which basically gives you liquorice. Foggy drydown with echoes of liquorice and must. Highty evocative and perfectly made, still I am not sure if I would wear this. Perfect evolution and everlasting persistence.

7,5/10