SALUTE ! by Parfum d'Empire

Brand: Parfum d'Empire ^{pronounce in French}
Perfume: Salute !  ^{pronounce in Italian}
Concentration: edp
Notes:* lemon essential oil, grapefruit essential oil, mandarin essential oil, vine leaf accord, wine-dreg extract** (with rose and eau de vie facets), iris, powdery musks
♔Ingredients: Alcohol Denat., Parfum (Fragrance), Aqua (Water), Limonene, Hexyl Cinnamal, Benzyl Salicylate, Citral, Alpha-Isomethyl Ionone, Linalool, Amyl Cinnamal, Eugenol, Geraniol, Farnesol, Citronellol, Benzyl Benzoate, Benzyl Alcohol, Coumarin
♔Information on the packaging: 6, rue Barye, 75017, Paris, France
♔Brand owner (now): Viastella SAS, France - parfumdempire.com
♔Made in France.

 T he fragrance begins with an interesting spikiness. It is not that type that tingles the nostrils and disturbs some people. More present on the initial spray, it calms down after a minute. It behaves as a texture and accompanies the composition throughout its evolution.

Wearing Salute ! feels as if I am out on a hot summer's day. A dominant odour of dried vegetation floats in the air; I smell hay. This exact plant dryness I also encountered in Corsica furiosa by the same brand.

Besides this, I smell a tisane made out of walnut shells. And I like it.

There is a sweetness present as well. Looking at the list of notes, I can see the rose as one of the contributors to this sweetness. But I am also thinking of a concentrated mushy, red apple juice which reveals its watery side. The scent evokes to me a walk near a pond. These elements combined seem familiar and I remember smelling them in other perfumes: Aqua nymphae by Le couvent des minimes and Eau parfumée au thé noir by Bvlgari.

I sense a balsamic facet and perhaps Salute ! includes labdanum. Or it could be an effect of the rose-like component.

Salute ! becomes slightly sweeter and denser with time, however, not by much. And it smells dryer and develops more facets if I apply it on the skin and not on clothes.

A lovely fragrance. A big yes from me.

My verdict: 9 out of 10.
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* The notes were taken from parfumdempire.com 
** "Probably the highest dose of the precious material ever used in a fragrance", says the brand on the perfume page.