Shooting Stars Collection: Oroville Xerjoff for men

I'll probably have to resign to the fact that Xerjoff is not my favorite house (euphemistically). Most of their fragrances are like bad songs played by an incredibly skilful band. The musicians' ability is stunning but the songs don't move you.

Oroville makes no exceptions. The clary sage/tobacco made me initially think about something challenging, dirty and very masculine but all I got was a powdery vanilla/tobacco mix, leaden by an harsh white floral presence during the opening and the middle phase. In the drydown things get a little better bot nowhere close matching my taste. Too polished, to mannered, too affected.

Rating: 6/10

Oroville got me interested on it because of the promised tobacco note, in the hope of a fresh tobacco fragrance. It`s not that kind of fragrance, but i`m really liking what i smell. My overall impression of Oroville is of a vintage formula adequated to materials available today. Seems like a masculine spicy fragrance which you don`t see anymore - full of contrasts. The opening is very short on my skin, a slightly fruity and urinous combination of chamomile and sage. The sage is not as urinous as the one you found in Jules, but it reminded me of Jules at the opening. Then, the scent fastly goes to what seems a very italian citrus aroma, and then suddenly on me it`s all about carnation and tobacco. The carnation is more evident, and it`s the kind of carnation that you see in masculines from the 80s, that liqueurish and dark carnation melted perfectly with the tobacco aroma. After some moments the sage seems to join the carnation and tobacco. After two hours it`s a skin scent on me, with some musk and just a trace of the bitterness from galbanum. The scent seems to project a vanilla that i cannot detect by myself, since my mom told me, when i entered at the car to go to work, that she was smelling a fruity aroma (i imagine that she was refering to the citrus flowers) and some vanilla. I get the citrus part, but the vanilla scapes from me. The overall balance is of an aromatic spicy fragrance of citrus and musky accents, that may sound intense at the beginning but is skinscent after some hours. I really liked it, but i wished it had more sillage.