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Montale Vanilla Cake - a gourmet scent like in a book. A fragrance that already smells so sweet and strong on the sprayer that it almost knocks you out or makes you float on cloud nine. At the first sniff, it's clear what this is all about: nothing but juicy cake, the name says it all. Not every Montale is like that, sometimes the names are misleading.

I find it difficult to divide these nuances of fragrance into a pyramid, because so much simply comes together at once: Vanilla, sugar, cream, a little toasted almond, and in between strawberry and cherry (although not listed). It actually smells like a perfect strawberry tart made by grandma and prepared with love. Next to it a hot milk with honey and the cosy winter dessert is perfect. After a few minutes you are already full of the smell :-)

Vanilla Cake wraps the wearer in a strong silage for a long time, which has the potential to fill a whole room. Maybe this is the reason why you should be careful with the spraying. The scent hardly changes for hours and remains largely linear. The light fruity notes slowly disappear over time, leaving a sugary vanilla base. Somehow you can't keep your nose off, you prefer to bite your arm constantly.

Yes, Vanilla Cake is definitely more feminine but definitely conceivable as a unisex scent. Perfect for the winter, maybe for a date, Vanilla Cake is simply tempting to bite

In the meantime, I have the feeling that the fragrances at Montale are "cheating packages". Why? Because again and again what you expect or what the name promises is not in it. This is also the case with Montale Aoud Forest. Without letting myself be influenced by previous comments, I tested Aoud Forest and expected a fresh, green and woody summer scent. As Montale is not always oud, I didn't expect to smell an oud note clearly.

Aoud Forest actually starts out very fresh and green in the first 30 seconds, so my first thought made me hope that this is a composition I associate with forests. But appearances are deceptive, as the tangy grapefruit becomes more and more prominent. Seawater? Not a trace. I wouldn't know what seawater has lost in the forest, at most a breath of fresh morning dew. A few minutes later the scent drifts through the ambergris in a much sweeter direction, which then increasingly turns into shower gel. The scent becomes much more synthetic and unnatural. Still no forest in sight.

In the drydown it is a mixture of sweetness and shower gel, interestingly enough I take honey - maybe the forest honey that is supposed to make the whole thing authentic? ;-)

Anyway, for a fresh scent, durability and sillage are good, at about 7-8 hours it ends on my skin. The scent is definitely more masculine than unisex. I would possibly call it a niche version of "Yves Saint Laurent Y" because of its character. However, it is not clear to me why I would spend a lot of money for a shower fragrance at a niche store. Anyway, they do not meet my personal taste

Parfums Vintage has become known primarily as a clone house with dozens of variants of Creed Aventus, which seems to represent a science of its own in perfumery. I discovered Rush of Unicorns as absolute hype almost two years ago as perhaps the most popular new summer scent within the Parfums Vintage product line. At first I didn't realize that the fragrance was inspired by Creed Millesime Imperial, and I probably didn't care. A few weeks later, I bought a bottling at Parfums Vintage. I'd never smelled this salty marine accord on a perfume before and immediately found it very appealing! My thought: The Hype is real.

Nevertheless, I waited until a few weeks ago to buy a 50ml bottle of this fragrance, although it had been on my wish list ever since I first tested it. Now I could test it extensively and I have to admit that I regret having spent about 80 dollars on it. Why? Well, this salt accord is original, summery and invigorating, but it is just too dominant throughout the fragrance. Top note: Lemon - where? Melon - with some imagination. Heart note: currant - flashes briefly for 30 seconds. Lavender - yes, you can feel it a little bit and gives the otherwise marine and salty tone at least a slightly floral character. Base note: honestly, I don't know. I smell only salt and light aquatic from beginning to end and a little lavender in between. The same game really from beginning to end. Durability and sillage are pretty bad, as you can also hear with Millesime Imperial. With luck Rush of Unicorns on my skin has a shelf life of just over three hours. Maybe Parfums Vintage copied a bit too much of Creed here, when clone houses usually claim better durability...

I have to admit that until just under two weeks ago I had no direct comparison with Millesime Imperial and therefore could not evaluate to what extent Rush of Unicorns is actually based on Creed. Since I had the luck to test MI, I knew that Rush of Unicorns is inspired by it but somehow acts independently. MI already has these beautiful fruit nuances of melons etc. in the top note. The salt accord nestles discreetly to it and gives the fragrance a unisex character. The fruitiness remains with MI for a while, while I'm desperately looking for it with Rush of Unicorns. As for the scent character, I like MI much better, but it's not worth the money for the performance.

In a Youtube review I learned that Rush of Unicorns is supposed to be more similar to older Millesime Imperial Batches. I don't have the comparison, only the comparison with what I recently got to know. So maybe the older batches were more salty? Well, in the end, Rush of Unicorns doesn't have a happy, creative "unicorn scent" that is versatile and light. It is far too linear for my taste. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend it to others

I would like to do without a big introduction to Montale Tropical Wood and come directly to the fragrance description. Wrapped in a typical Montale bottle, this blue and gold bottle offers a fruity, summery scent with woody undertones. Montale is not one of the most expensive niche brands (115€ for 100ml, 65€ for 50ml for Tropical Wood). I was very curious about the scent pyramid, so I got myself a bottling.

The attack is very fruity with immediate spicy woody undertones reminiscent of oud. The whole thing has a really tropical, summery and happy vibe in combination, but it disappoints after a short time. That the fruit should smell like passion fruit in the prelude is a matter of doubt, because I have no comparisons. I can't really perceive pineapple. In the following minutes Tropical Wood becomes more floral, discreetly rosy and sweeter. While the oud nuances slowly disappear, my nose senses unpleasant side scents that remind me of rubber. Really unpleasant and should not be in this fragrance.

After about 2.5 hours the woody oud tones have completely disappeared. In the base, sweet vanilla pushes itself more into the foreground and merges with the fully synthetic fruit mix, whose individual components cannot be separated. The further course of the fragrance remains linear, sweet and fruity.

For my taste, the fragrance tends more in a feminine direction. The idea behind the fragrance, to combine tropical fruits with tropical woods of the agar tree (which grows mainly in South East Asia), from which the oud is made, is basically interesting. In fact, Montale has managed the tropical prelude well. However, the woody note is just too short for me, I would have needed woody base notes for my taste and not vanilla. This could have been better for the synthetic fruit. Montale didn't miss the theme at all, but the "wood" was missed out.

The durability of TW is good with about 8 hours, Sillage on my skin is average. Nevertheless, I won't get a bottle, I imagined something better and in the end it is too feminine for me personally. It seems to me that the perfumer didn't take the time to perfect this fragrance and has hastily launched it on the market

Meanwhile, among the gourmands, I find the coffee scents as the almost cuddliest scents. I myself only own one bottling of Mancera Aoud Cafe. One coffee scent that I appreciate and also own is Montale Ristretto Intense Cafe, about which I have already written a comment. Ristretto Intense Cafe is what I call a "top note blender", because the top note is really wonderful with the strong roasted coffee aromas but fades away after a short time to a much too sweet vanilla-sugar-honey-mixture with a touch of cappuccino. So the conclusion for me was that Ristretto does not keep what the name promises.

With Mancera Aoud Cafe I naturally hoped that it would be a perfume that would make the coffee notes last much longer. The first time I sprayed it, of course, it immediately became clear that it was primarily about coffee. For me it smells about as if a coffee machine would just roast the beans fresh and process them to a (not too strong) black coffee. Those who love coffee will surely enjoy the start. Now the top note here says that you will find bergamot, peach and black currant. However, my nose cannot perceive all these three components. Instead, I smell a plum, perhaps soaked in a little rum, and a hint of fig. The light fruit sweetness harmonises beautifully in the background in the top note, but is by no means dominant. Over the next few minutes, coffee, together with woody nuances, comes more to the fore and gives the impression that, fortunately, Mancera here presents the coffee notes much more pronounced and longer than with Montale Ristretto. Personally, I like that quite a bit. In any case, I can't perceive quite as much of oud, at least it's not an "aggressive" stinky oud, but very soft woods.

After a good 45 minutes, however, disillusionment increasingly sets in. The so-called "gourmet notes" from the base penetrate. For my nose, these gourmet notes are an alternating combination of vanilla, roasted nuts (maybe walnut) and - unfortunately once again - too much sugar. It's as if Montale and Mancera had both started a co-production here and copied each other. There's that honey note again, which penetrates for a few minutes and not only completely sweetens the coffee, but almost completely displaces it. This way it stays long for the rest of the fragrance. A pity. I can't classify Aoud Cafe as a "top note blender", because at least coffee is perceptible all along the line, even if the base note is relatively weak.

The durability on my skin is quite decent with a good 8 hours, the sillage is not too strong. As a date fragrance I could well imagine Aoud Cafe. Compared to Ristretto Intense Cafe, I like Mancera Aoud Cafe better but not much better. If Mancera had made these "gourmet" notes less pronounced and simply made the base note darker, I would probably even like it. Mancera could have gone its own way here and brought a much more original coffee scent to the market. But because Aoud Cafe is too similar to ristretto in some aspects, they are to a certain extent interchangeable. So for me, the search for an even better coffee scent continues. I can't recommend buying it this way, but would advise you to bottle it first. At Mancera on the website there are small samples to order