Why the Scents Change When the Leaves Do

Around Labor Day we start pulling certain fragrance oils off the shelf and setting out others. Not all of them, just the ones that feel wrong once the light changes. Coconut lime doesn't sit right in October. Neither does anything that smells like sunscreen. We can't explain it any better than that. It just stops making sense.

What comes out instead is the usual cast of characters. Clove. Cedar. Something we call apple spice that smells more like a bakery than an orchard, which is fine by us. A little bit of woodsmoke in one or two blends, not so much that it smells like a campfire, just enough that it reminds you of one. We test these on ourselves for weeks before they go anywhere near a batch of soap. If it doesn't smell right on a Tuesday morning with coffee in hand, it doesn't make the cut.

Part of this is just paying attention to what people want. Nobody's asking for grapefruit in November. But part of it, honestly, is that we get tired of the same smells too. Making soap all summer with the same handful of scents starts to feel like eating the same sandwich every day. It's fine, it does the job, but you're ready for something else. Fall gives us permission to change the menu.

The hard part is the timing. Fragrance oils don't behave the same in cold process soap as they do in lotion or body butter, and they definitely don't behave the same as they do straight out of the bottle. Something that smells like a perfect autumn afternoon in the jar can turn a little strange once it's mixed into raw soap batter and left to cure for a month. We've learned this the expensive way more than once. A batch of what was supposed to be pumpkin bread ended up smelling faintly of cough drops by week three. We laughed, we scrapped it, we moved on.

This year the Premium Specialty Soap is carrying most of the new fall scents, since it takes fragrance a little more gracefully than our plainer bars. If you like something lighter, the Goat Milk Soap holds cedar especially well, we think, though we're biased toward whatever's currently curing on the rack. The Lip Balm gets a fall lineup too, mostly because chapped lips don't care what season it is and we like having something small and cheap to hand out at the market table.

We've noticed the Beard Oil and Beard Balm get more attention this time of year as well. We're not sure if that's the scent switch or just that beards get more use once the weather turns. Either way, we've kept the woodier blends in stock a little longer than usual, since that seems to be what folks are reaching for.

If you've got a favorite scent from a past fall that we haven't brought back, tell us. We keep a running list, mostly in a notebook that lives on the kitchen counter and occasionally gets soup spilled on it, but we do look at it. Some scents come back because enough people ask. Some don't come back at all, and we're honestly still not sure why cranberry never took off.

If you're in Ashland or passing through Hanover County this month, come by the table or stop in for pickup and smell a few for yourself before you commit to a bar. That's the best way to know what fall smells like to you this year, not just to us.