La Montaña Archives - The Perfume Society

Shining a light on La Montaña – perfect candles for Christmas!

With the perfect candles to guide you through the scented season, La Montaña are our perfumed pick to focus on for home fragrance gifting, but also for treating ourselves to a little something wonderful (and which fills our whole homes with gloriously evocative scents).

Formerly a PR dynamo in the beauty and fragrance world, founder of La Monaña, Cassandra Hall, quit England for a Spanish mountaintop and a ‘quieter life’, a few years ago. Oh we’re not envying her at all, no no… Okay. We are. Quite a lot right now. Though transporting ourselves to warmer climes isn’t an option for many, we can indulge our senses and make our homes smell fabulously festive with her exquisite scented candles we’re selected for the season…

Ah this is such a fabulous fragrance and perfumes your whole home with a cheeringly spiced citrus zing! A perfect melding on soul-lifting sunshine extracted and condensed with a comforting hug in candle form, there’s no surprise it’s a perennial perfumed fave and one of their all-time bestsellers. As La Montaña explains, it’s a festive mix of… ‘A warm, spicy, zesty blend of Valencia orange, cinnamon, red apple, and clove. This is our interpretation of the fragrance of the Valencian orange harvest that takes place throughout winter, with added hints of nostalgia from the English Christmases of our childhoods. This is one to come home to after a crisp, crunchy, winter walk – cheering, cosy and comforting.’

Winter Oranges £39

As the festive season unfurls, we adore lighting this one to really bring a sense of midnight mass, family gatherings and special moments shared. Says La Montaña: ‘Everyone in the village looks forward to the Three Kings holiday and its unique fragrances – a highlight of the winter months.’

‘We love to walk down into the village, through the woods, with their gorgeous fragrance of trampled pine needles (which smell to us like a field full of fresh Christmas trees). Then, we get to the heart of the village, where the church doors are wide open and the air is suffused with incense, as well as the warm scent of traditional, homemade turrón (almond nougat) being sold from stalls. It’s usually cold (even in Spain), so there’s much milling about with the promise of a brightening tot of brandy. What a winter treat!’

Three Kings £39

As party season is in full-swing, we relish family and friends gathering after the difficult years we’ve all experienced, and this scent really plunges us into the heart of a buzzing atmosphere with fragrant food and scented spirits being shared, laughter of loved ones echoing through the night and wood fires, plumes of cigar smoke curling through the frosty air. And did you know, it’s inspired by an actual Alfredo…?

‘Alfredo and his café are very real – and very wonderful – and the beating heart of village life. The only thing missing from this fragrance is the sound of chatter, and laughter, and old men slamming down their dominoes.
This was one of our very first four fragrances and the most complex we’ve ever had to formulate – taking over forty drafts to perfect. It’s also the one most people ask for as a cologne.’

Alfredo’s Café £39

Perhaps after all the over-indulgence of the season, or simply if you’re absolutely knackered and need a rest at this time of year (and oh, how we hear you!) it’s time to hit the Snooze button and enjoy the blissful calm that this scented candle can take you to? Ahhh, that’s better…

‘A lullaby for your senses: lavender, juniper, and thyme.

A summer swirl of calming herbs and flowers. It’s siesta time: close your eyes and imagine yourself drowsing on a hot afternoon, gently swinging in a hammock in the shade of a tree, with the crickets chirruping, and the sun-baked fragrances of the countryside lulling you to sleep. Dreamy!’

Siesta £39

To dream of the sunshine and escapism even more, you can read more about Cassandra’s story of founding La Montaña, and learn of her five favourite smells of all time…

P.S. If you really want to spoil someone – or you know you love the scent yourself – there’s also whopping 3-wick versions of each candles available! Shining those scented lights all season long…

La Montaña Discovery Set – home scents to try at home: genius!

The La Montaña Discovery Set is a cute wallet of home fragrance samples (to try at home) – a completely genius idea! Find out how to explore them all and use our discount code, below…

We’re all used to the idea of buying a Discovery Set of personal perfume samples – something we’ve been eulogising about for years as the best way to try new scents and be introduced to the style of a fragrance house before buying a full size bottle.

But home fragrances are far more difficult to try before we buy. And as the way our homes smell is such a personal choice, it’s completely genius to have the opportunity of trying the full range in the very home we’ll be scenting with a full size room mist, candle or reed diffuser.

Sustainability is another issue the fragrance industry is (and fragrance lovers) are making a priority right now, and all La Montañga products are sustainable, plant-derived, biodegradable, have a low carbon footprint, and are ‘non-toxic to humans or the environment.’

The La Montaña Discovery Set gives you the opportunity to try ALL NINE of their home fragrances in dinky little room mist form. The La Montaña fragrances are the same across their full range of candles and reed diffusers – so once you’ve tried the room mist samples and found your faves, you’ll know how how the other methods of scenting your space will smell. You can spray them onto the blotters provided, or La Montaña advise you ‘…spritz them into the air, wait a couple of seconds and step into the mist.’ But there’s a number of other ways you miught think of using them….

– Why not keep a set in your car? Much more chic than a garage-purchased novelty air freshener.

– Founder Cassandra says she even spritzes hers on to jumpers to snuggle up in the scent (only dark coloured fabrics, and do a patch-test, first!)

– If you’re lucky enough to be going away on holiday, these are the perfect size to slip into your suitcase to make a hired cottage or hotel room smell like home.

– We think this wallet of home fragrance samples would also be a great stocking filler gift – send to a friend and get them to pick a favourite, which you can offer to buy the full-size of, later.

Usually, the set costs £25, BUT for one week only, you can use our discount code to get it for only £10!

Enter the code perfumesociety at checkout to claim your discount.

Have a browse of the evocative home scent descriptions – and the incredible reviews – on the La Montaña website – personally, we are huge fans of Winter Oranges to fragrance our homes at this time of year, though First Light is our first choice for the day when working at home, followed by Sacred Roses for a sublime way to wind down. Which rooms will you choose to sample them in, do you think…?

By Suzy Nightingale

Scratch ‘n’ sniff! La Montaña’s clever new way to shop virtually for scented candles

We’ve always believed that smells can transport you across the miles – and through time, too. And La Montaña is proof. Since Cassandra Hall launched her beautiful candle brand a couple of years ago (India Knight’s a fan – and so of course are we), we have been whisked to Spain with every whiff.
The trouble with buying scented candles – not ‘sight-unseen’ but perhaps ‘smell-unsniffed’ – is that you just don’t know what you’re getting. So La Montaña offers a terribly clever way to experience the candles, in the form of beautifully-illustrated scratch ‘n’ sniff cards! ‘

Explains Cassandra: ‘As La Montaña is principally an online business – we like dealing with our customers directly – we have invested in some haute technologie to sample our candle fragrances via crystal technology. It’s hard for people who don’t live in London to sample our fragrances – so we have beautifully-printed sets of our seven fragrances with clear, resealable labels which give an utterly true rendition of each fragrance.’

Simply peel back the clear panel and there’s a perfect, evocative representation of the smell. (We’re using ours as scented bookmarks!) Excitingly, Cass has 100 sets of these scented cards to offer exclusively to Perfume Society readers. Simply click here to e-mail her – be sure to mention The Perfume Society – and prepare to enter the wonderful, aromatic world of this ‘rising star’ candle brand. What’s more, one lucky reader will receive a full-size La Montaña candle of their choice.’

Cass spends most of the year in Spain and the fragrances recreate the different smells she associates with that country. There are seven scents altogether, of which our three favourites are the following:

Alfredo’s Café – inspired by the scents of her village square: coffee, black tobacco and brandy, swirling with leather and incense from the nearby church. As Cass says, ‘Alfredo and his café are real – and wonderful. The only thing missing from this fragrance is the sound of old men slamming down their dominoes.

Three Kings – celebrating a winter festival (a highlight of the colder months), we’ll leave it to Cass to describe this: ‘The trees surrounding the village create a background of cedarwood notes mingled with trampled pine needles, while frankincense and myrrh from the church make an accord with traditional, homemade turrón (almond nougat) and a brightening tot of brandy.’ We’re almost there, thanks to a sniff of this seasonally-perfect fragrance…

Cloudburst – zingy, sense-awakening and just so refreshing, this evokes the mountainside after a summer storm, when notes from Cassandra’s herb garden blend with the fresh citrus from lemon and lime trees, alongside the scent of wild mountain fennel and rockrose (cistus).

The other fabulous fragrances are Sacred Roses, Gálan de Noche (night-scented jasmine, rose, ylang ylang and orange blossom), Winter Oranges and First Light.
As above, click here to e-mail. Once you’ve received your set, we think you’ll be tempted to try the candles for real – there are lots of options (ranging from £18 for an individual mini candle, which burns from an impressive 15+ hours, to £30 for a 40+ hour full-size candle). And on our Christmas wishlist for sure is this 7-candle set, below, with all the miniatures in one beautiful presentation box (at what we think is a jolly reasonable £75).
Time to say ‘hola!’ to La Montaña, we think – just in time for a feliz Navidad…
lamontana.co.uk