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Tallow + Steel "Boreal"
Island Bladeworks "Bullwinkle" | TGN Finest
Star 1912 | Gem PTFE (1)
I've been working through the five new soaps from Tallow + Steel, and Boreal ended up being number four. Since, I've previously commented on my impressions of this base, I'll just stipulate that the performance is easily in my top five, four of which are tied. There's simply not a mark against it: the lather comes easily, superb slickness, residual slickness, and post-shave.
Like many soaps, this one is not what you think it's going to be based off the dry puck impressions. Lathering immediately releases a bold crisp, cool, green, fragrance followed by a faintly sharp cedar wood. Throughout the shave, it takes on an earthiness that's not dirty which is well balanced against the spruce/fir notes, and the minty notes give the impression of breathing in cool air. The most impressive aspect of these notes is that they are at levels that are natural and complementary.
The splash is initially aggressively minty, but the highs burn off quickly and leave a soft plant-like musk. Over the span of about an hour, the mint gradually fades allowing more fir and cedarwood to come to the forefront but the hand-off is subtle. The splash fragrance is probably about 3-4 hours, but it's difficult to really establish due to the nature of the fragrance. Boreal smells less like a worn fragrance and more like a real place. It transports you to chilly evergreen forest in which a light frost has just begun to dissolve the oils on the tips of the leaves and soft earth underfoot emanates the fragrance of years of crushed tree litter and undergrowth.
Addendum: Unlike some of the other new offerings from Tallow + Steel, Boreal is not particularly mysterious, but the musky plant mint fragrance was bothering me because it was so familiar. I therefore revisited the documented scent notes and one was unfamiliar--- Monarda. It turns out Monarda is the genus of a plant with which I'm quite familiar, but that's not the word we have for it in Texas. Here, this is a weed that's prevalent in open sun-baked fields and it attracts lots of bees. We call it horsemint. When you mow a pasture rife with these weeds, the result is a minty musk explosion, and to a much more controlled degree, it's the peculiar note in Boreal.
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