A grand dame in a fur coat.

Listed notes

Bulgarian Rose, sweet hazel wood, tonka bean, cashmere, musk and iris.

Top notes

Jonathan Ward makes exceptional candles. A while ago we reviewed the beautiful Kiss in Rio from the brand. Mink Opal represents one of his forays into personal perfume, rather than scents for the home, and it is a grand dame of a scent.

Spritz Mink Opal and you immediately understand that this is a vintage-inspired scent. Soft clouds of powdery rose rise but these are shot through with sharp, metallic aldehydes. In a moment we get a piercing metal feel, then a lovely sort of bubblebath scent and once everything has sorted itself out, a greenish rose which quickly becomes more powdery.

Heart notes

Despite the sharply metallic aldehydes in the start, the heart of Mink Opal has a lot of warmth to it and touches of sweetness which develop as the fragrance wears. A grounding woodiness enters the picture, but it is delicate and almost transparent against this ethereal, lingering aldehydic force. There’s something really clean and focused about the scent at this stage. It feels determined and forthright; a scent which is confident in its own power and poise. Qualities which it couldn’t help but confer upon the wearer.

Base notes

A warm, fur-like sophistication slinks into the base of the fragrance which recedes to a purr towards the end of a wear. The inspiration behind the scent was of a young boy dressing up in his mother’s fur stole, and this is definitely very much in evidence here. A touch of powderiness from the iris lingers, linking with the rose to give that ‘make up’ feel, but vintage make up that’s languishing in a box or at the bottom of a handbag – not the modern stuff that all smells of vanillin and sweeties. There’s even almost the faintest suede-like touch to suggest the handbag in there too.

The other stuff

The longevity of Mink Opal is great. Those aldehydes seem to power it for a long time on both skin and clothes, and the woodiness and musks pick up when those eventually drop off. It lasted all day on my skin.

The sillage or projection of the scent is moderate. It’s a strong and noticeable scent but not obnoxiously so. Mink Opal sits somewhere squarely in the middle of a scale from shy and retiring to nuclear. To me that’s the perfect level. You can smell it, others can smell it, but it isn’t imposing on them.

To me this is the sort of fragrance that you would wear to a night out, somewhere like the theatre or to a fancy meal. It’s a ‘done up’ scent, a scent for occasions and grand times. I also think it will come into its own most in temperate weather, so the back end of summer into the autumn, and even into the winter as well.

The brand

As noted at the start, Jonathan Ward makes excellent candles, with now a few forays into perfumes as well. The brand is luxurious and well conceived, and has grown in the last few years to include diffusers, candle refills, mists and hand and body products too. Based in Scotland, Jonathan Ward positions the brand as both high end and artisanal, paying attention to the small details such as the bottles for Mink Opal, which have wire wound around them and cinched into little rosebuds at the front.

Buy it

Mink Opal is available from the Jonathan Ward website, where it is priced at £78 for 100ml of EdP.

Images by The Sniff.

We were gifted a full size bottle of this perfume by the brand, with no pressure to provide a review. Opinions our own.