A Bold Bluff

[zankoku_zen]

Cherry tobacco, tonka, and hops.

Oh man, this is what a night after a really bad bender smells like. Stale smoke and stale beer. With a hint of baby powder.

Yeah. Not for me.

[Gwydion]

In bottle: Cherry tobacco, tonka smelling almost vanilla, and faint flowers I assume are the hops. Wet: Very male smelling, pipe tobacco and a hint of beer with a sort of musky fug. The hops are still managing to parse as flowers/pollen as well as alcohol. Middle: Dries to a strange woody pollen smell with a strangely alluringly feminine muskiness, with almost an anise edge. WTF?!? Dry: cigar box. Don’t get me wrong, it’s strangely pleasing, but not what I’d expected.

[stillalive]

kind of an earthy cherry honey smell... not what I imagine beer to smell like at all, but kind of a nice nectary scent...

[catattack]

Bottle: Prune juice and leather.

Wet: Leather in a library. I think "library" because I'm smelling a dusty note.

Drydown: Leather and musk. There's a slight sharpness that I think is the hops and leather together. The musk is not sweet. It's a pungent musk.

Overall: My review probably did not do justice to this scent. It's quite interesting to wear. I couldn't stop sniffing myself. It's quite masculine. The leather is not of the shiny black kind. It's more of a leather chair found in a saloon. I like how it smells on me, but I think it'll be better on the DH.

 

ETA: Okay, there's no musk note listed...hmmm...perhaps the tonka is presenting itself to me like a musk in this blend...hmmm...

Edited May 12, 2009 by catattack

[DurAnorak]

On the plus side, this is the only BPAL I've tried thus far with a listed cherry note that hasn't turned into an all-singing, all-dancing CHERRY EXTRAVAGANZA musical where only cherries are allowed on stage or in the audience.

 

On the less plus side, it really does smell like someone on the wrong end of a long, heavy night out. Heavy, overheated, musky, beery unpleasantness. I don't drink or go in for particularly serious clubbing any more; I kept sniffing my hand in confusion wondering why it seemed so familiar, until I realised it was the scent of a particularly unfortunate ex-boyfriend of mine. Swap pile, stat :/

[hkhm]

bottle: vanilla tobacco.

 

wet: almost a hint of rosewood under a very sweet swirl of tobacco smoke. this smells lighter and more feminine than i would have expected.

 

dry: this has turned to a honeyed vanilla tobacco scent. no cherry to speak of, just sweet tobacco. lovely.

[kawaiiferreto]

Wet this is pretty overwhelmingly powdery and sweet. When it's dried a little bit, it gets both richer and sweeter — I assume that's the cherry tobacco and maybe the tonka. There is a certain bitter/spicy note that tickles my nose when I smell this and keeps the sweetness in check (hops I assume.)

 

I like this, but I couldn't see me wearing it. It would make a lovely and fascinating room scent if it smelled like the drydown and not the wet stage!

[fairnymph]

Light yellow oil. Slightly medicinal, mentholic, artificial red cherry, smoky tobacco, and a nice wallop of fresh and slightly bitter hops. Sweet, but not cloyingly so.

 

Sweeter and less medicinal on my skin, though still mentholic cherry. More tobacco, almost an earthiness to it as well as the smoky quality.The hops is still going strong and is very fresh, almost grassy, and almost sort of fizzy. Gosh I love hops in perfume! More tonka too, but it's not too much. I'd love this without the cough syrup cherry.

 

Not much morphing, though it's fading a bit - this is a slatherer -and the cherry is dying down relative to the other notes, so this might be promising. The hops and tobacco are totally delicous and the tonka remains bearable. I wouldn't mind a bit less tonka-sweetness/richness, though.

 

It's nice, but not quite amazing. The hops eventually fades, leaving mostly tobacco (a little too 'stale cigarette smokey' for my tastes) and tonka with a hint of fake cherry behind. Low throw but poor longevity.

[porcelina]

AUUGH why.

 

i won this on bay and i thought it would be perfect- i was hoping for rich cherry pipe tobacco but what i get is an astringent, chemical, bitter, awful smell. i don't even know what else to say. i actively want to wash this off.

[Lucchesa]

A partial imp of A Bold Bluff was frimped to me, and I am delighted to have it. In the imp I can smell the bittersweet hops, but on my skin it's all fruity tobacco and tonka, with maybe the hops as a silent partner keeping the blend from getting too sweet. It doesn't scream cherry to me (no cough syrup vibe), and it lasts longer than most pipe tobacco scents do on me (which is about 20 minutes). Very nice!

[Geminirubyshoes]

I was curious about this one having experienced cherry tobacco in a few other blends that I really loved. 

 

In the bottle it is....no pleasant. Kind of astringent and I think that it is the hops being turned up to 11. I decided to put it on anyways because you can never judge a BPAL from just smelling the bottle if it's something you are really interested in. 

 

Once applied, it smells like a cigar left in someone's jacket pocket that got rained on. Come on buddy, I don't want this to be a fail...

 

Dry: warm, sweet pipe tobacco!! This is what I was hoping for. It takes a few minutes to get to this point. I see myself wearing this in the fall/winter and hopefully can just deal with the beginning part of the scent because I know the end result is what I wanted.

[storme]

Wet: a weird combination of wet, lagery effervescence and a sweet, warmish groundedness.

Dry: If I could smell no beery hops I would love the rest of this as I can detect warmth and sweetness and it's really comforting. As it it that wetness sort of unsettles me? Hrm. I'd ordinarily just assume it needed to age into something smoother, but that's probably not the case here.

Edit: oh. Given an hour and a bit, the hops has gone... this is a warm, smooth tobacco scent, very pleasant!

Edited May 8, 2021 by storme