SOTD: John Varvatos Vintage · Brotherhood Of Scent

Feb 6 (edited) • SOTD 🍊

SOTD: John Varvatos Vintage

Good afternoon!

Continuing through all decants... moving on with John Varvatos Vintage. This one gets mentioned quite a bit among some fragtoubers, so I ended up adding a decant of it one day, as I needed one more to unlock better order pricing. 😅

Notewise, it already had my interest, but wasn't really dying to test it. Plenty of notes such as tobacco, tonka beans, juniper berries, oris root and patchouli caught my attention, as I usually enjoy them. But it has so many notes I'm very unfamiliar with. Interesting.

By the name alone, I was not sure I'd really like it, as I don't lean towards older-fashioned fragrances. And I was right. It, as eluded, leans on an older style of perfumerie, but to my surprise, to those kinds that even today, can be relevant.

The opening was rather strange for me, but still pleasant. Green out of its mind, but the rhubarbs fruity seetness accompanied by the peppery notes resonated well. Never got a blast of cinnamon listed on the mid, but even here, there's that extra spiciness I would attribute to it.

On the mid is where it started to shine for me. The sweetish/sour spiciness of the fragrance start coexisting, politely introducing the nice, sweet but somewhat lightly burnt tobacco note of it. Lovely. Didn't personally get much of the orris, which I kinda was looking forward to.

Drying down, you have the tobacco very clearly hanging around with you, along with the spicy nature of the fragrance, with an ever so slight leather accord, that I didn't pick up until this point.

Masculine, attractive scent, that does not shy away because of it's old-school intention, even though I feel it's still modern-relevant.

Performance was decent enough, clearly there for about 1h, a nice scent bubble for another 1.5 hours, and a pleasant skin scent for another hour. 4-5 hour scent. The fragrance feels heavier, so I did expect a tad better performance, but decent enough I guess.

Conclusion:

Do I like it? Yes, it is a very nice scent.

Did I enjoy the decants? Contrary to initial thoughts, I did.

Full bottle worthy, for me? Considering the price? I sure think it is. It's a rather unique profile for me, when looking at what I have in my collection. Even though it's not a scent I would generally wear, I can recommend it!

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