Centered on a green tea accord with a squeeze of zesty lemon, Champaca is as squeaky clean as a freshly-scrubbed face. It is especially good in hot weather, when the papery coolness of the neroli, bamboo, and green tea steps forward to soothe ruffled tempers and restore internal peace. Stirred into this frosty glass of ice tea is a scant teaspoon’s worth of basmati rice: subtle but present, it provides just enough cloudy milkiness to take the sting out of the green tea.
Champaca is unusual in that it’s a floral fragrance that doesn’t smell too much of flowers, let alone the titular one. There is a hint of peppery freesia, but it comes across more as clean linen than a flower. Likewise, there is a lot of waxy, yellow champaca blossom here, but only really perceptible as a burst of something lemony and creamy, like magnolia with an undertow of dusky honey. The flowers simply melt into the basmati rice accord to form a subtly peppery creaminess that relieves the sharp, tannic twang of the green tea and citruses. There is something ineffably charming about Champaca – it is rather hard to pin down, but its pearlized, milky freshness gives it all the delicacy of the inside of a conch shell. As sensual as clean skin, we highly recommend Champaca as a soft, slightly milky floral amber that will enchant in even the hottest of weather.
