cinnabar

I see you already have the 2016/2018 Weenie This Wan White Humming Hive (White patchouli leaf, beeswax, ambergris, and pale incense) on your wishlist, so you know about it, but I want to throw this in as my vote. I got a strong, creamy, not-too-sweet beeswax from it, and certainly no honey. I liked it enough that I tracked down a partial bottle. I bet you could find some decants floating around! One other that occurred to me and hasn't yet been mentioned is the recurrent Yule (most recently 2018) Hanerot Halalu: Olive oil, beeswax, and smoke. Its beeswax was a bit sweeter but I wouldn't call it honeyed, and the olive oil gave it a rich, foodie vibe, which I don't care for but many people do.

The two you name were very different in character to my nose - Black Forest was all pine needle and juniper greenness, while Fenris Wolf was a warm and woodsy (not leafy) cologne. If it's the true-foresty greenness you like, I'd recommend Theoi Nomioi most of all, as it's easily the best and purest "forest" BPAL I've tried. It's LE, but recent and I don't think very hard to find. If you want to stick within the GC, I would recommend Arkham, RPG Ranger or Ochosi for a similar feel. Arkham and Ranger are the most similar to Theoi Nomioi on me, but Arkham has a touch of flowers too, while Ranger has a noticeable leather component. If you're looking for something more like Fenris Wolf, less leafy and more woodsy, you have a lot of good choices - I feel like this is at least half of the masculine-coded scents in the GC. I would particularly recommend Dee. To my nose it's a better, more complex Fenris Wolf. (They share rosewood in common, and Dee has "soft woods" as well, which I think means fir or cedar.) In the same family of lovely woodsy colognes, the 2018 Luper Globe is also very good, although I haven't seen it kicking around much lately.

In general, the more listed notes something has, the more "perfumey" it smells, to me. Something about not being able to pick specific notes out of the jumble, I think, which I never can with commercial perfumes even if I'm looking right at the list of notes. Base notes of white/"pale"/"crystalline" musk, white or grey amber, white sandalwood, and white patchouli also often give me a "perfumey" effect, especially in combination, and so do "orchid" and "aldehydes." From the GC: - Shoggoth (citrusy floral over white musk) and R'lyeh (citrusy aquatic over white musk) had very perfumey drydowns for me. - Hades and Hunger immediately made me think "Wow this sure is a Perfume!" even wet; the note they share is "black narcissus," whatever that is. - Oberon was "old-fashioned traditional perfume but with juniper on top." (It has orchid + white musk.) - The Caterpillar, on me, was almost an exact dupe for Yves Saint Laurent Opium - very "Floriental." For LEs, you've already mentioned Ava and others have named Coin Trick (metallic aldehydes reminiscent of Chanel) and Zorya Polunochnaya (which is simply fantastic dry.) I would add Privilege (which is cool and green, not sweet despite all the flowers, and somehow makes me think of Calvin Klein), Dolce Stil Nuovo (complex rosy white musk), Swift as Light... (vanilla + white musk), and Butterflies, Flowers and Jewels Attending, which I got a decant of recently and was annoyed to discover really is as good as everyone says. Of all of these, BF&JA is the most distinctly "Fancy Perfume, For Her" besides Ava. Then there are a few older Lupers/Shungas (Snowy Mountains and Kingfisher, Sumai no Sechie, Street Festival, The Sorrow of Love) that also make me think "traditional perfume." These might be hard to find now though.

When you said "reminiscent of dirt, freshly wet" my mind jumped instantly to Dee. That's literally in my comments for it: it smelled like dirt ("but NICE dirt") when wet, and then dry was the most lovely, sniffable woodsy cologne. I also think it's quite broadly popular, so if you don't like it you won't have trouble rehoming it. And it's a common imp to find on sales/swap pages too, if you want to try it for low cost first. So that would be my recommendation.

At first, on my skin this smells overwhelmingly of something sharp, kind of... tickly and arid. I'm not very experienced with perfume and perfume notes (in fact, this is the first BPAL imp I've ever tried), so I don't know whether this is the ivy or the sandalwood. At a guess I would say sandalwood, but other reviewers seem to be smelling ivy first. While it's not unpleasant, it's kind of sterile-smelling, like an air freshener. Or a new wooden box, which I suppose is the point of the title. After an hour or two, though, it smells very different. Not as sharp or astringent at all: softer, a little bit sweet, still very fresh. More what I imagined a 'green' scent should smell like. Whatever the first note was, this must be the other one. Or maybe it's the 'powder' that others have noted, although that seems to be a complaint and I quite like this. Either way, I didn't like the first part and do like the second, so if I can learn which is called what, I'll know what to look for or avoid in the future. Overall, I don't think I'll keep this vial, but it's been instructive.