The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Raer Scents built its name on botanical restraint, 100% natural ingredients, hand-blended in Berlin. Neroli + Cannabis marks a departure. Neroli has always been the portrait of clean: bright, soapy, uncomplicated. Ted Rohn's 2025 special edition answers with cannabis leaf, not as provocation, but as counterweight. The green, slightly earthy quality of cannabis leaf grounds what could have been another pretty floral. It reframes neroli as something worth thinking about. The combination invites you to reconsider what you know about neroli, pushing past its reputation for simple brightness into something with more depth and complexity.
The note pairing is more deliberate than it first appears. Hemp and neroli share a certain green quality, the leafiness that connects two botanical sources usually considered opposites. Cannabis brings its own brand of herbal complexity: dry, slightly smoky, unmistakably green. Neroli is its opposite in many ways, sweet, floral, luminous. Where they meet, the tension creates something more interesting than either could alone.
The evolution
The opening arrives bright. Orange Blossom and Green Mandarin create an immediate citrus-floral burst, clean, sparkling, luminous. The brightness is immediate, clean, sparkling, almost startling after the first inhale. The cannabis leaf announces itself quickly, arriving in the heart with its green, slightly herbal presence. It doesn't fight the floral. It sits alongside it, adding dimension without darkening the composition. The beeswax warmth builds slowly, sweet and honeyed, while the orris root emerges as a sophisticated drydown, powdery, clean, slightly floral in its own right. The drydown is intimate rather than projecting. Close enough to notice, not loud enough to announce. As the top notes fade, the base reveals its true character, with the orris root lending a refined finish that lingers gently on the skin.
Cultural impact
The neroli and cannabis pairing in this 2025 special edition represents an interesting direction in niche perfumery. Raer Scents, founded in Berlin in 2017, occupies a distinctive position in this landscape with their botanical-only formulation philosophy. Their approach sets them apart from both traditional naturals houses and more experimental indie brands, focusing instead on restraint and botanical purity. The combination of neroli's clean floral brightness with cannabis leaf's herbal depth speaks to a certain sophistication, avoiding overt signaling in favor of subtle complexity.
