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

This scratch 'n sniff wallpaper is B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Once seen as terribly unfashionable, wallpaper is on the up as a must-have way of bringing art into your home, with companies like the ultra hip Brooklyn-based Flavor Paper using cutting edge designs in combination with traditional screen-printing techniques for results that are not only eye-popping, but now even smell good, too…
Remember Willy Wonka’s lickable wallpaper in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Well Flavor Paper were inspired to create something similar, but thankfully without the saliva. In a design range that looks like Wonka met Warhol, their range of Scratch ‘n Sniff Wallpaper currently comprises three scented images – B-A-N-A-N-A-S!, Cherry Forever and Tutti Fruiti – with the cherry version having been memorialised forever by being inducted into the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt arm of the Smithsonian Institute museum.

Jon Sherman, owner of Flavor Paper, explains the concept was ‘Designed with Michael Angelo [no, not that one] of Wonderland Beauty Parlor fame. B-A-N-A-N-A-S! is a pop art homage to iconic screen printing, with the added twist of scratch and sniff scent. Yes! The bananas can smell like bananas. Some people opt for unscented, but how can you resist?’
How long can the scents last? Well there are a limited number of micro-capsules embedded within the wallpapers, so they will run out over time. But with several million of the micro-capsules in a large surface area, it would surely take quite a few years of scratching and sniffing before you’d exhausted the scent completely.

Flavor Paper have developed colourful and creative wallpaper concepts for a number of stylish locations, from the W Hotel near Wall Street to Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. With all their wallpapers completely customisable, presumably you could opt for pink bananas scented with cherry on a cyan background, should you so wish – and why not?
Okay, perhaps not for redcorating your nan’s living room for Christmas (though we think Hilda Ogden would have adored these) but we’re very excited about the idea of ‘smelly wallpaper’, and hope it can’t be too long before fragrance houses release scented scenes – imagine whole meadows you could gaze at on your walls and occasionally scratch ‘n sniff… It would certainly give the neighbours something to talk about. Don’t about you, but we’re climbing (and sniffing) the walls in anticipation!
Written by Suzy Nightingale