The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Liquorette was imagined as a chocolate filled with liquor, a gesture tied to the transitional phase between adolescence and adulthood. Anunsith Wongkornvanich, the perfumer behind the 2025 release, built the composition around that threshold: the moment sweetness becomes something more complicated. NOMR, the house behind it, treats each fragrance as an artifact of memory, and this one sits squarely in the candlelit part of the archive: cherry liqueur poured into dark chocolate, the kind of treat that signals you've crossed into a different room. The brief was less dessert and more attitude, using the interplay of sweetness and bitterness to reflect emotional contrasts. Confidence, yes, but the kind shadowed by uncertainty. Bravery with vulnerability tucked underneath it.
The structural risk here is what makes it work. Oud and chocolate can easily collapse into something heavy, cloying, the kind of gourmand that announces itself before you've introduced yourself. Wongkornvanich avoided that trap by giving the oud air, letting it sit alongside caramel rather than bury it. The brandy's boozy lift in the opening keeps things from sinking, and the cherry carries a tartness that prevents the sugar from winning outright. The base is where the composition commits: labdanum, Peru balsam, and patchouli doing the quiet work of turning something sweet into something that lingers on skin like a memory rather than a confection.
The evolution
The first 30 minutes are pure invitation: brandy warmth, the chewy depth of dried fruit, cherry with just enough brightness to keep things honest. Nothing performs too hard. It sits close, generous but not loud, the kind of opening you lean in toward rather than step back from. Around the two-hour mark, the composition pivots. Chocolate arrives slowly, folding into the caramel in a way that feels less like a confection and more like something toasted, warm. The oud surfaces here, but quietly, more shadow than statement, lending a woody gravity that keeps the sweetness honest. This is the phase that surprises people. What felt like a boozy dessert reveals an actual architecture underneath. Past hour four, the base settles into its true register: labdanum and Peru balsam creating a resinous warmth, patchouli adding a subtle earthiness, vanilla softening without sweetening. On fabric the next morning, it reads faintly honeyed, faintly spiced, the ghost of the entire arc compressed into one warm whisper.
Cultural impact
Liquorette stakes out a particular position in current gourmand perfumery: compositions that treat sweetness as an ingredient rather than an endpoint. The fragrance threads oud and labdanum through the chocolate and caramel, so sugar reads as one element in a layered chord instead of the whole conversation. It keeps its volume in check, preferring to murmur than to broadcast, and that restraint changes how the scent behaves across a wear. The chocolate and caramel do most of their talking in the opening and heart, presenting rich and slightly bitter curves that soften as the oud and labdanum rise underneath.
