Atelier Cologne debuts Canada-inspired scent

The new Citron d’Erable, with its lemon, maple and smoky wood notes, smells good enough to drink.

Complex, refreshing, intriguing, soul-satisfying: To me, great fragrances and great cocktails have these characteristics in common.

Maybe it’s the fact that my brain was fully in nostalgia mode leading up to this long weekend of summer—and the Canada Day holiday at that—that explained why, when I first inhaled Atelier Cologne’s new Citron d’Erable scent, I thought it smelled delicious. Like a cocktail that I would want to sip on a dock at sunset. In cottage country. In the summer. Fresh, subtly sweet but smoky, light but warm too. To me, this new perfume smelled good enough to drink.

Citron d’Erable is the fifth spritz in Atelier Cologne’s Collection Azur. In fact, it comes inspired by Canada. Or rather the iconic Canadian cottage country of the Great Lakes region. The poetry surrounding the campaign photography captures the essence of it all: a moment shared, or at least appreciated and fantasized about, by many who reside north of the 49th parallel.

Citron-d'Erable

“They heard about a retreat in the Great Lakes regions: a couple of days in authentic wood cabins where all is raw and original, yet still beautiful. Each night promised new encounters, enjoying the warm citrus aroma of that familiar drink they shared. It was clear these moments would change them, maybe forever.”

The brand’s perfumers, Sylvie Ganter and Christophe Cervasel, are speaking my language.

Inspired by them, I misted myself with their great new cologne absolue, and got to mixing an all-Canadian cocktail. Into a cocktail shaker I placed:

The All-Canadian Lemon Maple Whisky Cocktail

1.5 oz Canadian whisky
1 oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ oz dark maple syrup (the darker, the better)

The ingredients for this cocktail recipe take their cue from Citron d’Erable, of course, which mixes together a maple syrup accord with fresh citrus, pepper, eucalyptus and blackcurrant, as well as all-Canadian wood notes—maple, sequoia, cedar.

I gave that shaker a good brisk shake and poured its contents into a chunky old fashioned glass. The result was amazing and absolutely apropos for long-weekend cocktail hour.

The same can be said for this cologne, which is both rustic and refined, not unlike the great country that is Canada.