Barking Up The Right Tree: Method Cinnamon Bark Hand Soap

The new round of Christmas-themed Method hand soaps has hit the market, more or less. There are three of them: last year's Peppermint Vanilla, plus one called Hollyberry (probably as uninteresting to my nose as last year's Frosted Cranberry) and another called Cinnamon Bark. Unfortunately, only the lattermost one has shown up locally, for reasons I can't guess. I'm very sorry not to be able to get last year's Spiced Pear again, because it was lovely--I'm just about using up the last of it now--and I don't know why the Peppermint Vanilla isn't available here; I would buy a couple of bottles for sure, because I finished up my one bottle months ago. But the Cinnamon Bark is exceptionally good, so I should be thankful to have that.

There were exactly two bottles in the Superstore--a Canadian supermarket chain--the other day; I noticed them because, unlike the other Method soaps in their clear bottles, the Christmas releases are a pearlized bottle, very festive. (Also, the Christmas bottles now have a little stylized snowflake just below the embossed Method logo. And also the bottle was brown, a colour I'd never seen before in the Method line.) I bought one; perhaps I'll have to go back tomorrow and snap up the other, if it's still there. Or perhaps, in a spirit of Christmas generosity, I'll leave it for some other lucky soul.

Is there a leak in the bottle? I can't find one. Is there some sort of technology that makes the bottle smell like its contents, or did someone smear some of the soap onto the bottle, or is it just so strong that it penetrates the plastic? Because Cinnamon Bark soap is so strongly scented that I can smell it without even using it. An hour after I put the bottle into the bathroom, before I even tried it, I walked in and was puzzled--astounded, really--by the intensity of the scent. It's still there every time I walk in.

It doesn't smell like ground cinnamon; that's a Christmastime cliché. It smells more like wood than spice, and although it's clearly a cinnamon scent it smells more like mixed spices than specifically like cinnamon; there definitely seems to be a clove note in there. In fact, it seems like some gorgeous, complex men's scent--not any particular one, but a mélange of the sort of notes you'd usually find in a spicy-woody scent such as Calvin Klein Obsession for Men or Halston Catalyst for Men.

And it lasts forever! The scent soaks into your pores and stays there; you can still smell it on your hands a couple of hours later. For a soap, that's a hell of a feat.

You can mail-order this stuff, but damn, the shipping is expensive: at best, it doubles the cost of the product. I'll take my chances with finding it locally. Sometimes the universe is telling you to put the brakes on.

The Superstore had, in addition to the Method soap, a house brand (President's Choice) in a very boring apothecary-styled bottle; that one was called Honey Cinnamon Kitchen Hand Soap. I bought it despite the boringness of the bottle: I'm not sure why it apparently ought to be in the kitchen, but it's going in my bathroom. It's nothing like the Method Cinnamon Bark soap, for two reasons; first, it smells not of honey or cinnamon but, bafflingly, of Obsession bar soap (the women's version), and second, it leaves no trace of scent on the skin once you've washed it off. Neither of these is a bad thing.