Mint is a difficult note to build a candle on because it goes to toothpaste faster than almost anything else.
Abd El Kader never lets the mint stand alone. Ginger and clove arrive in the same breath, with blackcurrant bud, lemon and apple, so the green comes across warm. Jasmine follows. Vanilla sits at the bottom. Trudon's brief is a gust off the Mascara coast and the mountains picking up fresh mint on its way, the heat of ginger and the tea and tobacco of the Ouled Naïl.
The name belongs to Abd El Kader, born near Mascara in 1808. He led the Algerian resistance to the French conquest for the best part of two decades and was also a writer, poet and philosopher, respected, in Trudon's words, even by his enemies. Of all the Trudon scents it is the one the house sells most. Poured by hand in Normandy into green glass from Vinci in Tuscany, shaped like a champagne bucket.
It suits a January house. Shut by eleven against the heat, blinds down, opened again after dark. In a dim room the mint and ginger read cool rather than sweet.
Spec
- 270g Classic candle
- Top: blackcurrant bud, lemon, clove, ginger, spearmint, apple
- Heart: jasmine
- Base: vanilla
- Made by hand at the Trudon workshop in Normandy, France: poured, wicked and labelled by hand
- Glass handmade in Vinci, Tuscany, 25 to 40% recycled glass
- 10.5cm high, 9cm diameter
- 55 to 60 hour burn time
