Dark Plum Wu Mei
Note Profile
About
Dark plum wu mei is smoked dried plum, not fresh fruit. It opens jammy and tart, like prune compote with a sour edge, and carries a faint dry smoke through the middle. The drydown loses the sourness and turns to caramel and dried wood. It is darker and drier than plum at every stage.
Scent Profile
Fruity leads. Premiere Peau's account is jammy first: 'almost like prune compote simmering on low heat'. It is held just below published plum at 0.80 because this note is dried fruit, and drying costs juice. Sour is the tart edge named in the same sentence, and the second source independently names 'dried salted plum'. It is capped at 0.42 rather than higher because the source says the sourness disappears in the drydown, so it is a top-and-heart facet, not the whole note. Smoky is what separates this from every other plum in the vocabulary: 'there is smoke in there, faint and dry, like the residue inside a wooden smoking box', and the second source builds its base on 'smoked fructus mume. birch tar.' The word 'faint' is why it sits and not higher. Sweet_vanillic is the drydown, 'less fruit, more caramel and dried wood'. Boozy is the 'hint of fermentation' plus the plum wine accord the second source names. Dry_woody is the other half of 'caramel and dried wood', honeyed is the concentrated sugar of dried fruit, mineral is the salt in 'dried salted plum', and amber_resinous and leather are held low because they come from the agarwood and birch tar around the note rather than from the note itself.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
A fantasy note. Premiere Peau states plainly that it is 'reconstructed from accords rather than extracted'. The name comes from wu mei, the Chinese medicinal fruit Mume Fructus, which is made by picking half-ripe Prunus mume, then drying it slowly and smoking it until the surface turns black. That preparation is where the smoke in the perfumery note comes from. The dried herb itself has 'a faint aroma and an intensely sour taste', so the note is an interpretation of the idea, not a transcription of the fruit.
Usage in Perfumery
A heart material for dark fruit compositions that want smoke rather than sweetness. Remains of a Gesture built a whole perfume around it, layering rock sugar and a plum wine accord over dried salted plum, damask rose and hawthorn, on a base of smoked fructus mume, birch tar and agarwood. It sits well under tar, incense and agarwood, and it gives a gourmand fruit note somewhere to go that is not candy.
Similar Notes
Perfumes featuring Dark Plum Wu Mei
A selection of reviewed perfumes where Dark Plum Wu Mei appears prominently.
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