The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Oliver Valverde created Resina in 2020 as part of a concentrated release year for his Madrid atelier. The brief was simple: build a fragrance around resin that didn't collapse into amber and vanilla convention. The name says everything. Resina, resin itself, unadorned, placed at the center of the composition rather than serving as a base note. Valverde had spent years working with raw ambroxan, green herbs, and mineral accords. For Resina, he reached further, pulling benzoin, labdanum, myrrh, and opoponax into a single accord that resists the usual heaviness of resin-forward compositions. The result is a fragrance that uses sweetness as a negotiating tool rather than a destination.
What makes Resina unusual is the rooibos tea, an ingredient that rarely appears in Western perfumery. It brings an herbal, almost hay-like dryness that prevents the resin accord from ever becoming cloying. The coffee absolute adds a roasted bitterness that cuts through the honeyed warmth of benzoin and tolu balsam. Together, these materials create a resin that is dense but not syrupy. Smoky but not ashy. The star anise in the opening is the real tell: it announces something slightly medicinal, slightly spiced, before the composition settles into its warmer, more intimate register.
The evolution
On skin, Resina opens with star anise and elemi resin, a flicker of heat against cool, slightly camphorated spice. The aniseed quality fades within ten minutes as incense and fir balsam move into focus. The smoke isn't dramatic. It accumulates slowly, becoming more defined as the herbal heart of rooibos and ginger establishes itself. By the second hour, the composition has shifted entirely. Benzoin and labdanum dominate, with myrrh and tolu balsam adding depth and a faint leathery sweetness. The jasmine sambac, which was barely perceptible in the heart, re-emerges in the base as a warm, almost skin-like floral note. The drydown is powdery and honeyed, tonka bean absolute and vanilla absolute wrapping the resins into something that lingers close to the skin for hours. On fabric, expect the benzoin and smoke to last into the next day. The transformation from sharp anise to warm resin is the entire point: this is a fragrance that moves through its own character, arriving somewhere entirely different from where it started.
Cultural impact
Resina arrives in a niche perfumery landscape where resin compositions have become a crowded category. What distinguishes it is the rooibos tea, an ingredient more common in food and beverage than in fragrance, and the structural restraint that prevents the composition from collapsing into sweetness. The 2020 release year places it alongside a wave of experimental work from the Madrid atelier, each fragrance bearing the year in its title as a nod to the brand's chronological cataloguing approach.
