Ayala Moriel Parfums- Roses et Chocolat

A couple of years ago I had a wonderful dessert at a downtown restaurant. It was a fragrant chai bread pudding with dark chocolate chips. It was so wonderful that the following weekend the husband and I tried to recreate it at home and fairly succeeded. The most memorable part of baking the pudding was the scent that filled the house- the mixture of spice, milk and chocolate. Smelling Ayala Moriel's Roses et Chocolat, a perfume originally created for Valentine's Day, reminds me of that aroma.

Roses et Chocolat is a spicy gourmand with a nice dose of a very dark rose. I'm usually not a rose person, but these are rich red roses that absorb the spice and never turn sour. Instead there's velvety smoothness that is sexy and tempting, like the perfect red lipstick and lacy lingerie. The chocolate doesn't hurt this image, either. There's a sensuality of opening a luxurious box of handmade truffles and picking them one by one- some are filled with rose cream, others with allspice and nutmeg.

Roses et Chocolat is a parfum extrait, so no wonder it feels so luxurious. Ayala Moriel Parfums is an all-natural line by Vancouver-based perfumer Ayala Sender. These perfumes are the real thing and have the kind of depth we often wish to find in fragrance and rarely do nowadays. It reminds us that perfume can be a true luxury and not just a lab product. What could be better for Valentine's Day?

Roses et Chocolat ($110, 9 ml, currently on a seasonal discount for $99. The scent also comes in travel size and assorted other products) can be purchased from ayalamoriel.com. I've been testing a nice sample set that my husband bought me a few months ago.