Amarena is the vanilla ice cream and sour cherry cough drops after you get your tonsils out. Medicinal, comforting, delicate, soporific… one to wear to bed when sleeping alone.

The sugary musk on the bottom is delicate and delicious, but also metallic, like the scent of a tin of silver dragées.

I’ve doled this one out over a decade, my Rx at the end of a rough day. I’ll be heartsick when the last drops are gone–I look for it at every airport shop, every high end thrift store.

My all time favorite song ever, with so many different cover versions  to love–I just discovered Nina didn’t write it!–originally from the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd.