Escale à Portofino opened the Escales de Dior collection in 2008. François Demachy conceived a citrus, aromatic eau de toilette, more structured than a cologne, made from mostly Mediterranean essences: Calabrian bergamot, Italian citron, Sicilian petitgrain, orange blossom, bitter almond and cypress. Its cylindrical bottle bears the house’s cannage.
Victoria Frolova (Bois de Jasmin) sees in Escale à Portofino a refined modern cologne, one of the best of its kind, luminous next to Tom Ford’s Neroli Portofino, and still counts it among her summer citrus scents years later.
Olfastory’s review
Bois de Jasmin, June 2008
Victoria Frolova places Escale à Portofino among modern colognes, softer than the classics, wrapped in musk rather than cedar. Its orange blossom is clean and sweet, barely heady; she judges it refined and elegant, without surprises, but among the best of its kind.
Next to Tom Ford’s somber Neroli Portofino, she finds it luminous and airy, more floral and playful than Chanel’s Eau de Cologne, and sees in it a summer dream: a sun-dappled beach, the whitewashed stones of the Mediterranean, an endless sky.
Bois de Jasmin, 2009 and 2012
In 2009, she describes it as light and fizzy, and finds it more interesting than Escale à Pondichéry, as a modern take on neroli cologne. In 2012, she recalls that it long counted among her citrus scents, accented with green almond and bergamot, and that she still loves it.