The Reek-O Award for the Worst Perfume I've Smelled in Years

...and the winner is, Vera Bradley Appleberry Champagne.

I thought nothing could smell worse than Celine Dion's namesake fragrance. I was mistaken. Meet Vera Bradley's Appleberry Champagne. Appleberry isn't a word, and this fragrance doesn't smell of champagne. It doesn't even smell of bargain Cold Duck. It smells like Boone's Farm, but only after a teenager has barfed it all over your lawn on their way home from a night of underage drinking at someone's house while their parents were out of town, 

I'd rather splash on some Boone's Farm than risk inhaling the caustic mess that is Vera Bradley Appleberry Champagne. I knew in the first five seconds after spraying it would be a scrubber, but I wanted to do a fair review so I resisted. I made it all of ten minutes, but by then my lungs were burning, and I thought I might need to avail myself of a few puffs off an Albuterol inhaler. I have seasonal allergies that can very rarely escalate to breathing problems, but no pollen has ever triggered such a rapid onset of wheezing as this shit did. I did one small spray on my wrist. One. It took several lathers with Pears soap (my secret weapon for neutralising terrible perfume) before it was (mostly) gone. Oh my god, I don't possess the vocabulary to articulate how thoroughly disgusting this fragrance is. What's worse, it is also available as a scented candle. I've stopped asking myself, "Why?" long ago with respect to fragrances, but this one really confuses me. How it ever escaped the lab, much less made it to market where people handed over honest-to-god-real money for it...well I'm sorry, I can't comprehend it. Burn this noxious shit as a candle, in a closed space? Perhaps if you were training for the Special Forces and wanted to acclimate your lungs to chemical warfare. It occurs to me that Appleberry Champagne would make one hell of an effective self-defence spray. Mace and pepper spray got nothin' on Appleberry Champagne. 

Notes? Are you serious? There's a fake, chemical green apple note followed by cheap alcohol and something woody-probably the pencil shavings the school janitor would toss down on the ground when he'd be called to sweep up vomit in the classroom after Billy got sick from the bus ride to school. The effect is sharp, piercingly so. There's nothing pleasant here, only pain and suffering. Vera Bradley Appleberry (not a word) Champagne isn't even trying to be good or at the very least wearable. No, this is the worst thing I've smelled in years-possibly ever.

The bottle is pretty though, like a quilted Vera Bradley handbag. So why the hell would you fill it with THIS?!

Sorry, lost my composure there for a moment. I can't imagine any circumstances where I'd be willing to spray this awful stuff on my person ever again. As I don't want to expose any other unsuspecting person to Appleberry Champagne, I'm binning it. I have a feeling even the landfill will reject the unholy substance, and as the saying goes, the Devil won't have it in hell for fear it will take over. 

Wear at your own risk-I warned you.