Coffee you just inspired me to try Paestum Rose by Eau d'Italie. It's a pretty pink pepper-laced patchouli rose and worth sampling if you are into modern roses. It is not very unique - this a very crowded genre these days, I can think of half a dozen patchouli roses at different price points - but definitely not a quaint makeup-smelling old lady rose. Patchouli is an earthy, musty, pungent wood and rose is a rose is a rose, so patch-rose in some sense plants a pretty rose in the ground. You smell the earth in some way. Pink pepper to me has a dill-like scent - it's a trendy ingredient, everywhere at the moment.
The smell of rose can be elicited in different ways. If you take rose leaves and steam-distill them, you will get a jammy, sugary thick smell (curious? Smell Chanel 18 or Une Rose Vermeille by Tauer) unlike any rose you would ever pick. There are gentler ways of extraction (solvents and carbon dioxide) that result in raw materials that smell more like real rose to us. But a lot of rose used in perfumery, especially at low end, is actually just synthetic - a bunch of molecules mixed together can approximate the smell of rose pretty well (much like the best silk flowers look almost real). All this explains how rosy perfumes can smell so different, and also often unlike real roses.
Hamster I have a few friends who are very into BPAL. I never got sucked in, mainly because there are too many and I already have such a huge backlog of perfumes to smell. I have some friends in the industry, so that I always have many more perfume samples than I have time for. I also sometimes go to perfume fairs - still have a bag of 40 new niche scents from last spring, mostly still unsniffed. There are just so many new things coming up... At the moment, I'm trying to expand my knowledge by smelling systematically some classics and raw materials. And I live near very good perfume boutiques, so I follow new launches perfumistas are talking about. There is even a perfume bar in Rome that I sometimes go to.
Re: samples, I thought about buying a full bottle last night (Eau des Iles by MPG, it has been on my list for a long time) but decided against it: for the same money, I can get 15 good spray samples (best sources for these: Alla Violetta and First in Fragrance) of perfumes I have already tested on skin, enjoyed and want to learn more about (examples: Sienna a l'Aube; a few Tauer Pentachords; Sweet Dreams and What We Do in Paris is Secret by a Lab on Fire; Aedes de Venustas EdP; another Blood Concept fragrance, and yes, also a new sample of Eau des Iles). A full bottle is a big commitment...
Oh and Haberdashery ignore my entire list of perfume suggestions 
. I carry off sweet scents really well (perhaps because I'm skinny, always a little cold, and have dry skin). My skin loves vanilla and amber, and I own some of the most vulgar intense gourmands ever made. I don't use them exclusively - I'd get diabetes if I did - but for me, they are comforting night time and bad weather perfumes. Lately I've gotten more into dry, more bitter and herbal and leathery perfumes (mostly masculines). The curious one I was hooked to last night was Blood Concept 0. I think it has the same catchy leather-raspberry accord than Tuscan Leather... but it is much more bare-boned and metallic.