Aoud Forest Montale for women and men

A lot of Montale fragrances have their thick, woody, almost medicinal oud note. I expected Aoud Forest to have this aura mixed with a dark green aroma and a mixture of woods, but my image of the fragrance didn't correspond to the scent itself. Aoud Forest is a forest of charp, long lasting chemical aromas that try to evoke a forest but fail to really deliver the smell of one. The Aoud is only contained in the name, in the scent you have a sequence of powerful aromachemicals. At first, a dry, almost unpleasant citrus note is followed by a blast of marine-calone freshness, very metallic. It's almost scary in the vial, but sprayed on skin this part fades quickly, replaced by seems to be a longlasting ambered aroma. I don't know if it's ambroxan, but seems to have most of ambroxan aspects: light, but powerful, very diffusive, with a mixture of a velvet wood aroma, a faint flowery impression, a bitter honey aroma. It reminds me of Le Labo Another, but here mixed with an adstringent ginger aroma, that captures more the rooty aspect of ginger. There is something slightly smoky too, that can be interpreted by some noses a cigar smoke aroma. A little bit linear and for me not a fragrance that i would highlight from this house.

In keeping with the forest name, it starts out on an evergreen theme, with cedar, pine, lavender and rosemary, but within minutes warms up to reveal green grass, a tiny pinch of spice, and something vaguely woody. Then it turns blatantly aquatic and green, with minor woody-ambery undertones.

I’m not a big fan of aquatics, and have to say that the combination of manly mowed grass and strong aquatic notes ruins the whole forest impression for me, giving instead the distinct image of any number of commercial men’s colognes that are out there. I don’t know where the promised oud is, but if it exists it’s been drowned in a raging sea of calone-like aromachemicals. The green aquatic phase lasts through the entire rest of the day, with little change except a slight whiff of white musk toward the end. Not my style.

Montale AOUD FOREST opens with a decidedly Pine Sol-y demeanor: citrusy, aromatic, and relatively loud, with a lot of evergreen trees creeping in shortly thereafter. What I interpret as brash may well seem merely bracing to others, but I don’t think that anyone can really deny that, at least at the outset, AOUD FOREST is far more masculine than feminine.

As the citrus and aromatics begin to fade, a dry vetiver-like woody base shows its face, reminding me vaguely of some of the more masculine Bond no 9 unisex edps (MONTAUK, BLEECKER et al.), especially the ones with gentle leather in them. I’m not smelling much in the way of aoud here, but it’s becoming plain after a few cases that Montale wields aoud with a measured hand. Most of the “Aoud” perfumes I’ve tried from this line do not emphasize the note, though they include it in the name-—perhaps for marketing purposes or to justify the cost? I’m thinking that some of these should be renamed: FOREST (with a jot of aoud), ROSE PETALS (ditto), etc.

I do find the smooth quasi-leather vetiver drydown of AOUD FOREST rather likeable and something that I wouldn’t mind wearing in certain moods, but the Pine Sol opening is all-too-jolting for this tender nose. Désolée.