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Welcome to Back of the Napkin, musings from Serviette for the cultured world.
Priscus was a Roman diplomat and historian famed for his writings on Hunnic society and culture—and, more deliciously, for attending a dinner with Attila the Hun himself. The meal was modest by imperial standards: meat, bread, red wine. It was served on silver and gold platters, though Attila, in a purposeful display of restrained power, ate from wooden tableware and drank from a simple wooden cup. The night ended with a toast to Attila’s victories. What Priscus did not know (and would later discover) was that his party had been dispatched as a diplomatic decoy while the Romans worked behind the scenes to have Attila assassinated. Nevertheless, the concept of breaching cultural differences over a shared meal—a very different sort of dinner party—remained evergreen.
I was immediately inspired by the image of Attila’s wooden cup full of wine. With this vision in my head, I began formulating. (The fact that I was working my way through HBO’s Rome at the time was, almost certainly, not a coincidence.) I was soon drawn to create a plum wine accord, one that would later become the basis for Priscus.
Why plum? I found that most plum-forward fragrances tend to veer in the same direction: dark, woody, resinous, heavily spiced. I wanted something else entirely: a plum that was more bright, ripe, and immediate, like piercing the taut skin of a juicy, ripe plum. Sweet, but only just. Think ume liqueur, or umeshu, for those familiar. That’s precisely how I ended up with Priscus.
Priscus opens in a rush of ripe plum—tart plum wine and soft plum blossom—that leans lush, boozy, and immediately mouth-watering. Heliotrope and osmanthus round the fruit with a gentle floral sweetness, touched with immortelle’s sun-baked depth. The drydown of patchouli and blond woods gives the scent a lasting, fermented glow. I truly can’t wait for you to smell it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this week’s newsletter. Good taste, after all, is best shared.