Frassaï Verano Porteño (Rodrigo Flores-Roux, 2017)
★ ★ ★ ★ — excellent
Frassaï, founded by Natalia Outeda, is an Argentina-based niche perfume house that also has a connection to New York.
I heard about Verano Porteño while perusing, as one does, Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez’s excellent Perfumes: The Guide.
I have never smelled Clinique Happy, but the first time I smelled Frassaï’s Verano Porteño, my reactions ranged from “delightful!”, “so beautiful!” to “this is such a happy scent.” It actually made me smile, and I longed for walking the streets of Buenos Aires in the summer, a city I have never visited.
On the other hand, the first time Emily smelled Verano Porteño, it immediately reminded her of Clinique Happy, first released in 1997 (which I have never smelled), and it’s interesting to note that both were created by the same perfumer, Rodrigo Flores-Roux (in collaboration with Jean Claude Delville), of Givaudan.
My moments of appreciating Verrano Porteño have felt like the olfactory equivalent of Eugenio Montale’s I Limoni. The English translations don’t preserve the rhythmic beauty of the Italian, but it’s still beautiful:
The Lemon Trees
Hear me a moment. Laureate poets
seem to wander among plants
no one knows: boxwood, acanthus,
where nothing is alive to touch.
I prefer small streets that falter
into grassy ditches where a boy,
searching in the sinking puddles,
might capture a struggling eel.
The little path that winds down
along the slope plunges through cane-tufts
and opens suddenly into the orchard
among the moss-green trunks
of the lemon trees.
Perhaps it is better
if the jubilee of small birds
dies down, swallowed in the sky,
yet more real to one who listens,
the murmur of tender leaves
in a breathless, unmoving air.
The senses are graced with an odor
filled with the earth.
It is like rain in a troubled breast,
sweet as an air that arrives
too suddenly and vanishes.
A miracle is hushed; all passions
are swept aside. Even the poor
know that richness,
the fragrance of the lemon trees.
You realize that in silences
things yield and almost betray
their ultimate secrets.
At times, one half expects
to discover an error in Nature,
the still point of reality,
the missing link that will not hold,
the thread we cannot untangle
in order to get at the truth.
You look around. Your mind seeks,
makes harmonies, falls apart
in the perfume, expands
when the day wearies away.
There are silences in which one watches
in every facing human shadow
something divine let go.
The illusion wanes, and in time we return
to our noisy cities where the blue
appears only in fragments
high up among the towering shapes.
Then rain leaching the earth.
Tedious, winter burdens the roofs,
and light is a miser, the soul bitter.
Yet, one day through an open gate,
among the green luxuriance of a yard,
the yellow lemons fire
and the heart melts,
and golden songs pour
into the breast
from the raised cornets of the sun.
— English translation by poet Lee Gerlach
Summer sun in Libon, Portugal
Notes
The official notes read:
Calabrian Bergamot, Cardamom, Clementine, Sicilian Cedrat, Southern Magnolia, Imperial Jasmine, Alhelí, Vetiver, Ambrette Seed, Argentine Maté
Frassaï story about Verano Porteño reads:
“In summer, jasmine infuses the streets of Buenos Aires with its sweet and intoxicating smell. Like the seductive rhythms of tango, it stirs the imagination evoking the boundless countryside where the sky drifts serenely over an undulating green campo. Trees sway in the distance as birds chorus from the shade of sun soaked leaves. Two lovers stroll side by side on a blossom-strewn path, a gentle breeze brushes against them while horses raise their sleek heads to watch. Verano Porteño is a fragrant ode to love.”
At top, the citruses feel prominent, especially the bergamot, although I can’t necessarily distinguish the other individual citrus notes, and at times I wonder if there is any neroli (there isn’t, from what I understand) because I think I smell it but there is nary a soapiness to the scent. The zesty, lemony brightness from the bergamot lasts several minutes, slowly receding into a more floral heart with notes of magnolia and jasmine, the former more prominent at this time.
Over a couple hours, the brightness has faded and you’re left with a slightly sweet floral, the jasmine now more prominent, but still brightened by citrus (or maybe it’s the magnolia?). I suspect the use of several kinds of citruses makes for this transition to feel unhurried. I think Rodrigo Flores-Roux has managed to evoke, through scent, the feeling of leisureliness.
The blending of citrus with jasmine is impeccably beautiful. The jasmine, here more floral in the floral-fruity-indolic spectrum, is central to the composition, and yet it’s the backdrop of a wider collage of a fragrant early summer afternoon.
At times I find there is a polarizing sour quality to the scent that I generally like, but find that some days I’m not in the mood for.
Ambrette seeds, also called musk mallow can have a range of scents that include slightly fruity, medicinal and fruity-boozy notes. Here I suspect the ingredient is used as a botanical musk to give the scent structure and lift, and perhaps to make the scent more dispersive. I have to admit, if there is any alhelí (wallflower), cardamom, or maté in here, these are not prominent notes and I can’t discern them.
Verano Porteño meanders through some shapeshifting qualities in its citrus and floral notes, but for the most part it remains pretty linear on my skin.
Consensus around a subject can tell us more or less not just about the subject but also the context surrounding it. In this case it’s rather sweet that so many people find Verano Porteño to be “happy”. It’s as if the context within which one may interpret this perfume and the perfume itself have garnered an innocent, uncontroversial adoration that feels rather universal, and this one time I’m happy to concede to no further analysis of the aesthetic pleasure I derive from my experience of it.
Even Turin’s review of Verano Porteño is an elegant summarization of the general consensus:
“[...] It turns out a smile can be smelled as well. I cannot find another way to describe the floral start of Verano Porteño (Buenos Aires Summer).”
Verano Porteño is beautifully composed, undemanding, and oh so easily likeable.
What I’d give to travel in Buenos Aires and bathe under the scent of jasmine and citrus! Until I visit, this currently transports me to warm, languid days I have spent over the past few years in Lisbon.
It’s true that if you’re living in the United States in the midst of a global pandemic, under the presidency of a sheer buffoon, it’s hard to imagine there could be any beauty in the world at all – but here we are, Verano Porteño is once again proof that the world is not just wretched, the world is tragic and also very very beautiful.
When to wear
This is firmly a summer scent for me, and I really enjoy it on warmer days.
Projection, Sillage and Longevity
On my skin, Verano Porteño is mostly a skin scent, projection and sillage are both soft, and the scent easily lasts upwards of six hours. I find that projection is better on particularly warm days, and it’s truly glorious to catch whiffs of it in the warmth.
A Note on the Bottle
Verano Porteño, and indeed all Frassaï fragrances, come in pretty heavy glass bottles. I like the form factor, solid feel, and the simple labeling.
Where to buy
A 50ml bottle costs $175. You can buy Frassaï fragrances directly from their website, or at Indigo Perfumery in the US.
