Red Cardinal

A smoke & leather confidence that's felt.

The rose crosses early and does not stay long. What holds is leather and iris, grounded and self-assured, with cypriol underneath taking everything deep and smoky and patchouli damp and low beneath that.

The heat of the early years and the calm that came after, both in it at once rather than one after the other.

Melloculab is run by chemical engineers and it argues with the industry it sells into. Natural is not automatically better. Some of the most allergenic compounds in a bottle come from natural sources. So the synthetics get named rather than hidden, the ingredient list is published in full and the concentration with it, and the words clean, natural and vegan are refused for having stopped carrying information.

Blau is the house colour, a blue drawn from local traditions that once used it against mumps. Science says otherwise and Melloculab keeps it anyway, for what a colour can hold rather than what it can do. The oud is named by where it grew and so is the patchouli. The caps are finished by hand in Indonesia, so no two match and none matches the display piece.