Collection Grands Crus : Hoja De Cuba
Berdoues (2017)

Cuban leaf?
I don't think so...
If you want something like Pure Havane or Tobacco Vanille, forget it.
It's a pale discrete Guy Thing, sweet synthetic woody with a hint of tobacco; more vape cigarette than Cuban cigar.

I don't smell the spice as spice so much as ozonic printer's ink plus vanilla. It fades SUPER fast through a boring sheer sugar stage (not unlike Mariah Carey's M on me) to nothing at all in less than an hour. I liked the non-sweet printer's ink vanilla a lot, but the sweet milky vanilla morphing into what is essentially a spoonful of sugar and just as easy to smell (ever tried smelling granulated sugar? It hasn't got much scent) is same-y and boring. And then it's gone so darn fast I might as well have not put on anything at all. Disappointing.

A pleasant, cool scent with a tropical edge. The brazen allspice-heavy opening is intriguing (and likely to be polarizing, though I think it's lovely), but Hoja de Cuba soon settles down into something smooth and a touch vanillic, like coconut milk with hints of tobacco.

It's nothing earth-shattering; there are flickers of greatness here, but they remain only flickers.