New Reves d’Eze candle from Beauty Pie

A minty fresh fragrance to shake up Christmas as you know it

Happiness is Beauty Pie.

That’s what it says on the inside of the baby pink box. Beautiful things arriving in the post has been a source of happiness for me during dark lockdown afternoons.

And I needed some extra cheer this Wednesday.

My parents had just Skyped (they’ve finally mastered it when everyone else has migrated to Zoom) to say that Christmas as we know it is cancelled – they won’t be making the journey to ours. They won’t be making any journeys anywhere until the vid vaccine is flowing through their veins.

First I felt sorry for them – they’ll miss out on all my wonderful catering (!) and on seeing their grandson. Then I felt sorry for him. It’ll be his first Christmas without his grandparents. And then I felt sorry for me, because it’ll be the first Christmas I’ve ever spent without them too.

Then arrived the Beauty Pie delivery with the new Reves d’Eze candle. My school-girl French is still ‘en pointe’ enough to know that it’s offering me dreams of somewhere, but where is that somewhere? A few Google clicks later I’ve located Eze as a mediaeval hillside village on the outskirts of Nice. I realise that I went there once on a day trip from Cannes and bought, rather stupidly, lots of very heavy terracotta pots that weighed down everybody’s luggage and caused no end of hassle at the airport check in. I don’t remember the smell of Eze. The leading olfactory note of that whole area is, for me, lavender. But this is not lavender at all.

If someone sent you a Mojito in the post it would probably smell like this. The candle – the whole packaging – bursts with minty freshness. The ingredients say there’s Eucalyptus in there too (one of my favourites) but that doesn’t hit me. The website talks about basil, and I get that on second sniff, but it had me at mint.

Christmas around here normally smells of the usual suspects – pine, cloves, wet dogs – this is a complete breath of fresh air.

The Reves d’Eze candle is available at www.beautypie.com from £19 with membership.