I got Vanille Havane and Ambre Supreme recently. Vanille Havane is what I always wanted TV from TF to be, a slightly sweet but realistic tobacco/Cigar leaf note with some fruitiness and a gorgeous cacao throughout, the oud version was definitely an attempt to appeal to the oud heads, and despite the limited version, it's in all the shops, they even have it in store here in Cyprus, so must have not sold well if there is availability in so many online stores. Hope the divorce gets finalized and you come out strong and healthy! :)
Great descriptions all around. Can't wait for post-D Ramsey to finally make his debut. 😆 Are we even gonna recognize him? 🤔 All smiles and sh**? 😂 I mean...smiles and oud? Let not lightheartedness be mistaken for passion. ☝But when the two combine...magique.
You're spot on, Ramsey! I think Antoine took a cautious approach here, being his first time working with real oud extract. He could have gone bolder with at least 5%+ oud. Still, this is a good real oud fragrance for beginners. It’s pricey, but compared to other niche releases these days, it’s decent, you know exactly what you're getting. Cheers!
I love love VH, a perfect winter fragrance for me. I hope to try this soon, great to hear your thoughts! I still think Bortnikoff and Areej are the main Oud players, and I will go there for that, but an oud added to a fragrance I love, sounds interesting. Also, everything will eventually fall into place, a ram is strong! 💪 Cheers!
Hey ram. Not sure if you’ve done anything like that, but so far you’re the person that breaks down ouds into much easier terms. Would you ever do a video on “types of oud?” For example, ranking Indian oud as the most animalic or Thailand as sweeter and more resinous, etc. cheers🎉
🐏glad you enjoyed the sample, even if the scent didn’t blow you away. I don’t regret buying it but I wish it were $100 less. I think this is what I’d call a wearable Oud for Oud lovers.
100% agree with what you said. I was not impressed with this fragrance especially for the price. I still love the original and extrait a lot more. Performance was a bit lacking as well for me compared to my Areej or Bortnikoff. Great review.
Hope you're doing well Ramsey! Gonna be another long form flow of conscious comment haha. Hope you can get the time to read and respond at some point. I've been getting into oud fragrance DIY lately - and through studying GCMS formulas of the perfumes I'm inspired by, I've learned that there are two schools of thought when crafting an oud accord while still having that 'genuine' and truthful intent. 1) overdose on the oud or perhaps several strains of it and let it speak for itself, while providing some accents to blend in. or 2) Treat it as if it were a fancy rose absolute or something in that vein, and create an accord centered around a good but not huge dose of the material you're trying represent, and then bolster it with other materials to help bring out the aspects you want to explicitly highlight. While a lot of the artisan and indie brands that live and breathe oud do that first approach and to amazing success, I think the second approach like we see here is certainly still really valid. However in this fashion, you can choose to highlight the aspects of oud that follow suit with the big and bold, complex animalic qualities-- or instead focus on the subdued woody and spiced nuances. It seems like this is the latter too. The tricky thing about perfume composition is that the addition of an ingredient or accord doesn't equate to linear amplification. Oud and a lot of strong aromachemicals are great examples of this; simply including those materials by itself will have a big impact even at 0.5 to 1%, BUT ramping up the concentration inch by inch actually won't mean the intensity increases a ton. I have around 4 formula's that I'm looking at, and one of them has a huge overdose of oud, but I'd say in my experience it's in the same ballpark of stank and oud characteristic compared to the ones that have the 2-5% oud concentration due to this nature of amplification and the blend with other naturals that push the intended aspects of the oud outward. The oud perfume that I intend to build upon and learn the most from is amouage silver oud - while it is cypriol front and center, the framework of a massive artisan oud beast is in there and the cypriol does lift and push the persona of the genuine(confirmed through gcms!!!! big news!!) oud in there. It's probably the only amouage that is built in the fashion of modern artisan houses, using majority naturals and zero super ambers or synthetic musks, and only a small bit of huge aromachemicals. also in terms of price - in the original Vanille Havane, we're already seeing in the ballpark of ~$50 of vanilla bourbon absolute alone in the composition, the oud at whatever 'low' percent would be another addition in that same price range depending on what kind of plantation variety it is. So while I'm not sure if that equates to a pretty much double cost price tag, the significant jump in price isn't tooooo farfetched to me - I don't think its as much of a cash grab as its made out to be. From your description and others i've seen its clearly not intended to be in the same playing field as the heavy duty OUD front and center perfumes and instead more like an accent to change the 'color tone' of the overall vanille havane experience.
Oh and I'm interested to see if you still notice your silver oud feeling 'watered down' from the previous sample you got in the older bottle style. It could be something as simple as time to age and develop everything, but also the GCMS I saw had a good amount of dipropylene glycol in it, which is known to be a popular diluent. When I make my own batches and variations I'm not using any DPG and instead opting for whatever concentration feels right
@@RamseytheRam the GCMS I have is interpreted by an experienced reader and formula maker so I take his word pretty well, but gcms can only get so accurate and the interpretation can be wiggled around. Silver Oud is blended so well that theres a handful of the top 10 ingredients that will light up for agarofurans and agarospirols and they make up around 27% of the whole formula. From the interpretation I received, the bulk of that is cypriol and guaiacwood taking up 20% then the rest being gurjun balsam and agarwood. The working interpretation I have has 1.5-2% agarwood oil when diluents are taken out but it can be played around with because these materials have similar components, as long as there's the same number of agar molecules you'll be in the ballpark. I'm personally going to up the agarwood to see if I can get it to around 5% which is PLENTY. I think the cypriol is just as much of a player in that fragrance as the oud is, if not more, but the agarwood itself is a rather terpenic animalic one to begin with so it plays with the cypriol really nicely. another welcome surprise is genuine castoreum, not a synthetic recreation. The one thing that is certain is that it is a BATH of cypriol and patchouli. The overall composition of the whole perfume is nearly 60:40 naturals to aromachemicals whereas the average luxury niche (other modern amouage included) is around the ~15-25% naturals range.
That's exactly my problem with this. Vanille Havane is such a peak that I feel the oud here takes away from it. Not that it's not good but I find the original is still superior. As someone was saying on Fragrantica, the oud here is "distracting" more than it enhances the whole of the formula. Les Indémodables is such a great house usually that I find this all the more disappointing.
Hi Ram, first of all I am sending some good vibes for the divorce. I was so looking forward to your review as you are a real Oud fraghead. I bought a bottle of VH Coeur de Oud and it did not blow my socks off which I expected for that price. It felt so thin. So I sold my bottle. I felt that with this fragrance they killed a fly with a bazooka. They got that "expensive" piece of Oud, completely stripped it off the interesting barnyady characteristics by fractionating the Oud extract and removing those dirty notes. As Valérie Pulverail (the owner) does not like Oud, if they had not done that she probably would not have validated the fragrance. The fragrance is nice, don't get me wrong. But from les Indémodables and Antoine Lie, I was expecting more. During a Persolaise interview Remy Pulverail even confessed that they could produce the same fragrance with any piece of Oud due to the fractioning process they use.
I don't know what a good amount is but I wouldn't argue about someone saying they used some of those type of materials in here...it's usually inevitable now a days but it's done right in here...not overdosed like in uniquee luxury frags or something like that lol
@@RamseytheRamI envy people not getting irritated by them - started smelling them on minute five. And it hurts me to wonder why would the brand need to do that - I'm fine with a perfume lasting 6-7 hours instead 12, as long as there's beauty and skill involved, but it got completely ruined for me, as I couldn't smell much behind "amberwoods". Your review is great as always, thank you 👌
Delighted to see your saga coming to its final conclusion, never really winners when all’s said and done ,however both parties should ensure your little princess the victory on the day and all the days that follow, great video I wanna say we all know where to go for premium ouds for comparable prices. Thanks brother have a good one 🤛💪👊
To me this is just a cash grab... maybe if they kept it a direct online exclusive to them, then they could have used a wild oud, but they are in lucky scent who instantly take 50% and yet they are still making 💰.... it's why i respective ALD who only used Lucky to get his brand out there, and isn't like Les Indemodables and Bortnikof, etc, who have to factor in margins for middlemens cut, which affects and restricts the compositions.
Absolutely spot on ,very perceptive and the maths speak volumes. I’m very aware how plantation ouds are on the go now for enough years to produce , real but sustainable lower priced produce , nothing wrong with that at all however, Oud loving customers really have to know this and important to know price points between these plantation distilled and wild rarer oils 🙏👍
I’ve had this for over a month now and I still don’t know how I feel about it…..the original is so perfect that I’m having trouble appreciating the CdO which is nice but seems way more linear and not as complex as the original.
Why yes… I have seen Russian Adam smoke his clothes 😂😂. I think he sprays more than curly fragrance does. Real oud though 🎉🤌🏾👏🏽 Also since it’s “oud week” on channel ram 😂 can you do the CARTIER ouds. ( Pink & Ambre )
I got Vanille Havane and Ambre Supreme recently. Vanille Havane is what I always wanted TV from TF to be, a slightly sweet but realistic tobacco/Cigar leaf note with some fruitiness and a gorgeous cacao throughout, the oud version was definitely an attempt to appeal to the oud heads, and despite the limited version, it's in all the shops, they even have it in store here in Cyprus, so must have not sold well if there is availability in so many online stores. Hope the divorce gets finalized and you come out strong and healthy! :)
Thank you my friend 💪🐏
I think I prefer the extrait more.
I was expecting a OUD in this oud version and it’s a soft oud…
“A little sweet”? That stuff gave me three cavities. Too intense.
Love this review. Good work
Thanks so much for the support
Great descriptions all around. Can't wait for post-D Ramsey to finally make his debut. 😆 Are we even gonna recognize him? 🤔 All smiles and sh**? 😂 I mean...smiles and oud? Let not lightheartedness be mistaken for passion. ☝But when the two combine...magique.
Lol ahhh thanks for the smile Doni 🙂
Brilliant as usual! 👍
Thanks so much for the support
You're spot on, Ramsey! I think Antoine took a cautious approach here, being his first time working with real oud extract. He could have gone bolder with at least 5%+ oud. Still, this is a good real oud fragrance for beginners. It’s pricey, but compared to other niche releases these days, it’s decent, you know exactly what you're getting. Cheers!
We are in 100% agreement there 🤝
Great work my friend,it sounds really good but it’s super expensive!
It is expensive... thanks for watching & commenting🍻
I love love VH, a perfect winter fragrance for me. I hope to try this soon, great to hear your thoughts! I still think Bortnikoff and Areej are the main Oud players, and I will go there for that, but an oud added to a fragrance I love, sounds interesting. Also, everything will eventually fall into place, a ram is strong! 💪 Cheers!
@@andreicutar9959 💪🐏
Hey ram. Not sure if you’ve done anything like that, but so far you’re the person that breaks down ouds into much easier terms. Would you ever do a video on “types of oud?” For example, ranking Indian oud as the most animalic or Thailand as sweeter and more resinous, etc. cheers🎉
I have not but its a great idea 💡
Let me sleep on it
Great review….i may sample and try some day
Thanks so much Ajay 🙂
I have both VH and VH extrait roll on. I layer then, waiting for this one to arrive. Super pumped!
That's an awesome strategy
🐏glad you enjoyed the sample, even if the scent didn’t blow you away. I don’t regret buying it but I wish it were $100 less. I think this is what I’d call a wearable Oud for Oud lovers.
I would agree with that for sure!
@@RamseytheRam I’m curious to your opinion of the Amber and Oud special edition that smells like they used more real Oud than the VH!
Enjoyed tfs
Thanks for watching 👀
Free 🐏!!! 🎉🎉🎉
😂😂😂
Exactly
100% agree with what you said. I was not impressed with this fragrance especially for the price. I still love the original and extrait a lot more. Performance was a bit lacking as well for me compared to my Areej or Bortnikoff. Great review.
Yup this is one of the few misses from the brand
I haven't smelled it but I have got Vanille Havane extrait absolu and that is fantastic
I really want to smell that one one day
Yeah Buddha !!
Eugen!! 🧠🐏
Beautiful
ANDY!
Rams , You should get your nose on Adam’s Arabian Heritage !
They are 🔥 full on Soliflores of oud ambergris and sandalwood!
I want to smell them!
Musc des Sables is being delivered to me. That...beautiful waiting
I text you from here, javierortuzarxxx and a random alphanumeric name. Maybe depends on the device I were watching TH-cam to idk hahaha
Hope you love it!
I have revealed it on the channel if you want to hear my thoughts 🙂
Hope you're doing well Ramsey! Gonna be another long form flow of conscious comment haha. Hope you can get the time to read and respond at some point.
I've been getting into oud fragrance DIY lately - and through studying GCMS formulas of the perfumes I'm inspired by, I've learned that there are two schools of thought when crafting an oud accord while still having that 'genuine' and truthful intent. 1) overdose on the oud or perhaps several strains of it and let it speak for itself, while providing some accents to blend in. or 2) Treat it as if it were a fancy rose absolute or something in that vein, and create an accord centered around a good but not huge dose of the material you're trying represent, and then bolster it with other materials to help bring out the aspects you want to explicitly highlight.
While a lot of the artisan and indie brands that live and breathe oud do that first approach and to amazing success, I think the second approach like we see here is certainly still really valid. However in this fashion, you can choose to highlight the aspects of oud that follow suit with the big and bold, complex animalic qualities-- or instead focus on the subdued woody and spiced nuances. It seems like this is the latter too. The tricky thing about perfume composition is that the addition of an ingredient or accord doesn't equate to linear amplification. Oud and a lot of strong aromachemicals are great examples of this; simply including those materials by itself will have a big impact even at 0.5 to 1%, BUT ramping up the concentration inch by inch actually won't mean the intensity increases a ton. I have around 4 formula's that I'm looking at, and one of them has a huge overdose of oud, but I'd say in my experience it's in the same ballpark of stank and oud characteristic compared to the ones that have the 2-5% oud concentration due to this nature of amplification and the blend with other naturals that push the intended aspects of the oud outward. The oud perfume that I intend to build upon and learn the most from is amouage silver oud - while it is cypriol front and center, the framework of a massive artisan oud beast is in there and the cypriol does lift and push the persona of the genuine(confirmed through gcms!!!! big news!!) oud in there. It's probably the only amouage that is built in the fashion of modern artisan houses, using majority naturals and zero super ambers or synthetic musks, and only a small bit of huge aromachemicals.
also in terms of price - in the original Vanille Havane, we're already seeing in the ballpark of ~$50 of vanilla bourbon absolute alone in the composition, the oud at whatever 'low' percent would be another addition in that same price range depending on what kind of plantation variety it is. So while I'm not sure if that equates to a pretty much double cost price tag, the significant jump in price isn't tooooo farfetched to me - I don't think its as much of a cash grab as its made out to be. From your description and others i've seen its clearly not intended to be in the same playing field as the heavy duty OUD front and center perfumes and instead more like an accent to change the 'color tone' of the overall vanille havane experience.
Oh and I'm interested to see if you still notice your silver oud feeling 'watered down' from the previous sample you got in the older bottle style. It could be something as simple as time to age and develop everything, but also the GCMS I saw had a good amount of dipropylene glycol in it, which is known to be a popular diluent. When I make my own batches and variations I'm not using any DPG and instead opting for whatever concentration feels right
Thanks for sharing that man
What was the % of oud in Silver Oud according to GCMS?
@@RamseytheRam the GCMS I have is interpreted by an experienced reader and formula maker so I take his word pretty well, but gcms can only get so accurate and the interpretation can be wiggled around. Silver Oud is blended so well that theres a handful of the top 10 ingredients that will light up for agarofurans and agarospirols and they make up around 27% of the whole formula. From the interpretation I received, the bulk of that is cypriol and guaiacwood taking up 20% then the rest being gurjun balsam and agarwood. The working interpretation I have has 1.5-2% agarwood oil when diluents are taken out but it can be played around with because these materials have similar components, as long as there's the same number of agar molecules you'll be in the ballpark. I'm personally going to up the agarwood to see if I can get it to around 5% which is PLENTY. I think the cypriol is just as much of a player in that fragrance as the oud is, if not more, but the agarwood itself is a rather terpenic animalic one to begin with so it plays with the cypriol really nicely. another welcome surprise is genuine castoreum, not a synthetic recreation.
The one thing that is certain is that it is a BATH of cypriol and patchouli. The overall composition of the whole perfume is nearly 60:40 naturals to aromachemicals whereas the average luxury niche (other modern amouage included) is around the ~15-25% naturals range.
❤❤❤
🫂🫂🫂
I would love to get my nose on this one
I hope you get to sniff it one day ... it's good ...not great but good
How does this compare to Ambre Loup?
I wouldn't have made that comparison personally
Too many Perfumes, too little time & money...great review as always Rams 😁🔥👍🏻
That's the story of life lol
That's exactly my problem with this. Vanille Havane is such a peak that I feel the oud here takes away from it. Not that it's not good but I find the original is still superior. As someone was saying on Fragrantica, the oud here is "distracting" more than it enhances the whole of the formula. Les Indémodables is such a great house usually that I find this all the more disappointing.
Well said
Thanks for watching & commenting 🍻
Soon you'll be free to marry Rich and get your UK passport! No more intercontinental shipping woes.
😂😂😂
Hi Ram, first of all I am sending some good vibes for the divorce. I was so looking forward to your review as you are a real Oud fraghead. I bought a bottle of VH Coeur de Oud and it did not blow my socks off which I expected for that price. It felt so thin. So I sold my bottle. I felt that with this fragrance they killed a fly with a bazooka. They got that "expensive" piece of Oud, completely stripped it off the interesting barnyady characteristics by fractionating the Oud extract and removing those dirty notes. As Valérie Pulverail (the owner) does not like Oud, if they had not done that she probably would not have validated the fragrance. The fragrance is nice, don't get me wrong. But from les Indémodables and Antoine Lie, I was expecting more. During a Persolaise interview Remy Pulverail even confessed that they could produce the same fragrance with any piece of Oud due to the fractioning process they use.
Yes I totally agree with you...very bleh 😬
Could anybody confirm my assessment that there's a "good" amount of amberwoody materials in the composition?
Cheers
I don't know what a good amount is but I wouldn't argue about someone saying they used some of those type of materials in here...it's usually inevitable now a days but it's done right in here...not overdosed like in uniquee luxury frags or something like that lol
@@RamseytheRamI envy people not getting irritated by them - started smelling them on minute five. And it hurts me to wonder why would the brand need to do that - I'm fine with a perfume lasting 6-7 hours instead 12, as long as there's beauty and skill involved, but it got completely ruined for me, as I couldn't smell much behind "amberwoods".
Your review is great as always, thank you 👌
I'll be honest, i thought you were 'distracted' by Tinder not court 🤣
Nothing so exciting my friend 😂
Delighted to see your saga coming to its final conclusion, never really winners when all’s said and done ,however both parties should ensure your little princess the victory on the day and all the days that follow, great video I wanna say we all know where to go for premium ouds for comparable prices. Thanks brother have a good one 🤛💪👊
You are spot on as usual Bren
Hope u r not divorcing Mark😂😂. Just kidding
🐏🐐
I find the oud in here very rubbery and a bit “burnt” smelling.
It’s nice, but it’s a little boring. I like the original VH a lot more.
I have been wearing the OG Vanille Havane from 2020 for like 4 or 5 days straight
@@RamseytheRam man its so damn good, definitely my favorite tobacco vanilla fragrance out there
To me this is just a cash grab... maybe if they kept it a direct online exclusive to them, then they could have used a wild oud, but they are in lucky scent who instantly take 50% and yet they are still making 💰.... it's why i respective ALD who only used Lucky to get his brand out there, and isn't like Les Indemodables and Bortnikof, etc, who have to factor in margins for middlemens cut, which affects and restricts the compositions.
That is a fantastic shout 🗣
I think you are spot on 🤌🤌🤌
Absolutely spot on ,very perceptive and the maths speak volumes. I’m very aware how plantation ouds are on the go now for enough years to produce , real but sustainable lower priced produce , nothing wrong with that at all however, Oud loving customers really have to know this and important to know price points between these plantation distilled and wild rarer oils 🙏👍
So true!
I’ve had this for over a month now and I still don’t know how I feel about it…..the original is so perfect that I’m having trouble appreciating the CdO which is nice but seems way more linear and not as complex as the original.
Why yes… I have seen Russian Adam smoke his clothes 😂😂. I think he sprays more than curly fragrance does. Real oud though 🎉🤌🏾👏🏽
Also since it’s “oud week” on channel ram 😂 can you do the CARTIER ouds. ( Pink & Ambre )
They are on the list man...I haven't forgot
@ 🙏🏾🙌🏾