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Encre Indigo is Annick Menardo‘s unique black tea and vetiver combination from Lalique, arguably the best value-for-money house in the smell-engineering business. A niche house could package and sell this for $200-250. You can get it from discounters for $30-35. It is the best fragrance investment for the smallest amount of money you will ever make, along with its vetiver-infused Encre Noire cousins. To me this is incontestably a year-round fragrance. In the spring and summer it feels like what a drink of tall unsweetened iced cold tea tastes like. In the fall and winter, that same tea note is warming and comforting. I own about 15 backup bottles of my favorite frags. This is one.

One thing I’ve noticed about myself as a fragrance collector is that I’m rarely trying to own an entire house, but at the same time, I also don’t really like owning just one fragrance from a house. If a brand interests me enough to add it to the collection, I usually want to explore it a little deeper. With most houses, I end up with two or three fragrances—the ones I believe represent the best of what that house does. I spend a lot of time testing, sampling, reading, comparing, and researching before deciding what actually deserves a spot in my collection. I’m always looking for the best of the line, not just another bottle. There are about a handful of niche/artisan houses where I own, or have wanted to own, essentially the entire lineup. Those are the exceptions. For a house to get me to that point, I have to believe there is something consistently interesting about the perfumer’s style and that the collection offers enough variety to justify going that deep. As my collection has grown, I’ve become much more selective. Early on, it was easy to chase releases, hype, or completeness. Now I would rather identify the two or three fragrances from a house that really stand out than own ten bottles just because they share the same name on the label. But I also like having enough from a house to actually understand it. One bottle can tell me I like a fragrance. Two or three can start telling me whether I like the house. That’s a big part of collecting for me now: testing, researching, comparing, and curating. I still want to experience as much perfumery as I can, but experiencing a fragrance and needing to own it are two completely different things. For me, the fun is finding those few bottles from each house that make me say, this is where this house really shines.