Hindu Grass
Nasomatto

Opening is sharp, acrid, grassy (not the lawn kind but the tall, spindly kind). It feels like a leap of faith waiting for it to develop. However, it settles and the sweeter, juicier patchouli starts emanating, oddly a bit like vetiver, a bit like tatami mat. Not showy, but unconventional and unapologetic about it. I can imagine a yoga teacher or someone into locally sourced foods would wear this.

A big, unappealing wodge of patch-hemp vaguely reminiscent of Zino or Coze, but sweetened to the point that it feels greasy. My sample may have gone off - there's a staleness that I feel was not intentional, akin to the smell of vegetable oil that's been sitting uncovered too long. I smell the rubbery scent of oiled galoshes and tarpaulin tents, and the cupboardy smell of clothes folded away last season. The bergamot is very sharp and manages to slice through the lump of sugary, grey-green lard that is the patchouli. Unfortunately, although it eventually mellows out into a beautifully rich rendition of the type of patchouli I normally love, its foghornish 'voice' persists and ruins it for me.

What starts as a sharp, grassy (yeah...I know), patchouli punch, eventually fades nicely into an amber woody tobacco shop breeze. I like it.

Stardate 20180822:

A nice boozy patchouli. Has some elements of Givenchy Gentleman. Very unlike typical Nasomatto.

Neutral cause for the price you can buy Vintage Givenchy Gentelmen or Giorgio for Men - both are better than this one.

Gauche, gaudy, victorian, utterly severe, and completely smothering. Something the child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang would wear.

The green grass opens this scent very beautifully in an ethereal fashion, but soon it retreats and remains close to my skin. After a couple of hours a slightly sweetish wood-tobacco note arises and is surprisingly nice.

The sillage is soft, the projection adequate and I get a longevity of six hours. Very good quality ingredients. 3/5.

I've come to enjoy this a lot. A light application allows it to live up to its name. The performance is outstanding. Starts with a big burst of medicinal patchouli with grassy nuances. 10 hours later the fragrance has lost its edges and it is a stunning, unique tobacco fragrance.

Grassy green patchouli in a good, old fashioned chypre. There's a lot of bergamot in here, as well as what smells like a ton of mossy green galbanum. It's unwaveringly green and manages to stay rather high pitched despite ingredients that often tend to lean towards dark. It doesn't have the rich intensity of niche favorite patchoulis like Villoresi or Bois 1920, choosing the bergamot focus instead. It doesn't have the high fashion luxe prettiness of Moss Breches either, staying more in the realm of earth and soil.

Personally speaking, I'm not sure why, but I just don't find this very enjoyable. Truth be told, I'm not a huge patchouli fan and I'm not enough of a chypre fanatic to swoon at anything with a big slug of bergamot and oakmoss, but beyond that, Hindu Grass has a musty, sickly quality to its bergamot and moss that I find vaguely unpleasant. I guess I was hoping for a stoned hippie dance circle and got an old hospital instead.

Green without being too earthy. Patchouli and vetiver play partners in this one with a light incense (very light). Grassy note is done pretty good in this one (perfect name). Projection and longevity is average. I wouldn't purchase a full bottle, but definetly worth a decant. 7/10

I love the calm, clean earthy vibe of this fragrance. Earth, grass, water, sharp cathedral spires.
I almost didn't recognize the patchouli here because it was high, bright and cleaned up, but the contrast in this fragrance between the high and grassy notes was scintillating. And finally powerful. The high camphorous accord seems to have oud in it because the slightly meditative, spiritual note a clean oud produces is present here (like the oud in Heeley's Agarwood). It goes beyond its naturalism for sure and connects with a soul. I'm fascinated with how some base or earthy notes, like patchouli or oud, when cleaned up and thinned a bit, produce a certain spirituality, as if in escaping their earthy context, they are able to expand and sing an amazingly high clear note. There is a fuzz of sweet floral that adds a hint of beauty, a touch of voluptuousness to a combination that could have been too green, too grassy or too earthy. So I find the balance satisfying.
The patchouli is outed a little more in the dry down, but on my skin it stays fairly high and clear to the end. What it does do is slowly mellow, as if you were sitting in a cedar lounger in a sunny field, with grassy dryness, fading flower plants and sunshine imbuing your aura, so you start feeling a certain peace and contentment.
The downside is that it's not long-lasting. And I don't really care for the impenetrableness this house tries to maintain. It strikes me as somewhat of a branding ploy. And the price - are any of the high-end fragrances really worth this much? I answered my question in asking - we all know this is mainly about positioning. It's hard to be devoted to a house which practices this, as it has never been my game.

Opens with an incredibly moist earthiness that suggests early spring time when last year's foliage is breaking down as the snow melts and new delicate green things are just sprouting. Indoors are the smells of gourmand spices, cinnamon, mace, coriander and sage. Very much an evocation of Easter in the United States. The middle notes are vanilla, tobacco and moist patchouli. HINDU GRASS is complex and interesting...for about an hour. After that, it breaks down to a sweetly putrid rotting vegetation odor then fades away by hour three. The spices remain somewhat, but take on a different character that is overwhelmed by that putrifying green smell. Starts out promising, but disappoints upon development on the skin.

Hindu Grass is in my opinion the most "natural in perception" Nasomatto's issue. The fragrance opens with a blast of aromatic spices-herbs (coriander-clary sage-anise-artemisia??), may be hints of bergamot too, all immediately joined by a sort of almost liturgical prickly "dust" (pepper-a touch of frankincense too?) and by a sheer earthy patchouli. The atmosphere is by soon raucous, untamed, darkly spicy (dry spices) and rooty-earthy (yet barely medicinal). I detect a vague Etro Vetiver's type of "realism" but in this case the standout element is an indie-resinous hippie cedary patchouli "of the forest". This opening is anyway compelling, I detect hints of barely medicinal resins (may be minimal aoud and birch tar-cypress resin) joined with a dry tobacco presence and probably untemed vetiver. The tobacco seems fragrant and plain for a while in the central stage. The patchouli is dominant, the aroma elicits a sort of exotic Etro's vibe (also the sharp Etro's Patchouly jumps more than vaguely on mind indeed) and it unfolds a sort of wild untamed (somehow realistic) earthiness finally soothed by hints of amber-cocoa and woody resins. I guess a secret rose insertion enriches the trail since I suppose sometimes to feel it on skin lingering as a ghost all around. I detect the cocoa yet in the central stage but it is along the dry down that the previous element starts merging with patchouli in order to develop an heavenly smooth chocolatey (dark chocolate-realistic "cacao"-like) patchouli vibe. Another fragrance jumping more than vaguely on mind is L'Artisan Al Oudh and I suppose several animalic patterns could finally be "operating" in the penetrating smooth (but still averagely dry) dark patchouli trail. Probably the best Nasomatto experiment. Great longevity and projection.