Havana Plum Annette Neuffer 2020

Havana Plum - a name that reveals the most essential aspects of the scent in just two words, even though the fragrance shows different sides of itself depending on the air and skin temperature.

The scent is dark and intensely cigar-like, with overripe dark plum adding a subtle sweetness to the composition. The cigar impression is not sharp or smoky, as if the cigar had just been extinguished, but rather like soft, gentle, thick smoke that has been left floating in the air of a room and refuses to disappear. At the same time, it has settled into everything around it: the sofa, armchairs, curtains, and carpets. The scent is not stale - instead, it is extremely pleasant, luxurious, and velvety.

When it comes to alcoholic associations, rum comes to mind much more than cognac, and certainly more than Absinthe. It is dark and highly spiced, and when enjoyed, the taste blends together with the impression of a high-quality Cuban cigar. I still love rum, but I also loved cigars before, and during my wilder youth I sometimes smoked them indoors (something I would never do again). I can say from experience that the smell stayed and stayed - it was almost impossible to remove for weeks. Havana Plum brings me back to those years.

Although Coffee Blossom does not truly smell like coffee, and can instead be compared more to jasmine, Orange Blossom, or Honeysuckle, the fragrance could easily include a dark roasted coffee accord, carefully blended with the sweetness of caramel and honey. The caramel itself is not realistically distinguishable, but the honey is beautifully executed, as is often the case in Annette Neuffer’s fragrances. The sweetness is restrained, yet clearly present, and all three elements that create it are now among my favorite notes. The honey is not animalic, but pure and innocent.

Havana Plum is thick and rich - its base notes create a kind of three-dimensional texture, although everything is blended so seamlessly that no individual note dominates. The base is woody, with vanilla adding softness, sandalwood providing density, and patchouli bringing depth. Over the hours, the fragrance develops into something more airy and tobacco-like than it was in the beginning, when the sweetness was more prominent and the tobacco impression was distinctly cigar-like.

Although Havana Plum is intense and filled with notes that seem made for colder weather, it does not become suffocating in warmth. It is certainly not a fragrance profile that many would immediately associate with summer, but to my nose, it does not feel too heavy. I could easily imagine wearing it in rainy weather.

The fragrance is completely unisex, with good longevity of around eight hours and moderate projection. It doesn't

Thank you for reading, I hope my review was helpful.

Uncommented Scents No. 150

I am pleased that my 150th comment on uncommented scents pertains to a perfume by Annette Neuffer. From the very beginning, I liked the fragrances; I have eagerly followed the development of the brand, and so far, I have not encountered a weak scent. Of course, one must appreciate the DNA of Neuffer's natural perfumes. Much has already been written about this, but only Annette herself could probably explain it fully. An attempt: All the scents strike me as rather dark, very balsamic or resinous, oriental-spicy, without leaning towards the direction of Arabic fragrances, rather as an inheritance of the Euro-Oriental fragrance culture (YSL Opium, Lauder Youth-Dew and Cinnabar, Kenzo Jungle) with strong spices (without animalistic touches from cumin; in fact, to my knowledge, the animalistic accents of older traditions are absent: civet, castoreum). Commendably, none of her fragrances contain animal ingredients like real civet (from civet cats) or real musk (from musk deer). Annette Neuffer has clearly positioned herself here, which can also be read on Parfumo, because the strange trend of small niche brands and manufacturers recently returning to such fragrance materials leads, in my opinion, to ethically unacceptable excesses. Moreover, Annette Neuffer's fragrances demonstrate that such ingredients are simply not necessary to compose an outstanding scent.

Havana Plum also stands in the tradition described above, but it develops it a bit further. I like Chyprette a little better, which is why I rated that one 10.0 and this one, Havana Plum, 9.5. There is already an excellent comment on Chyprette, so an addition there did not seem necessary.

Initially, I was a bit skeptical about Havana Plum because I usually enjoy scents with plums, rum, dried fruit character, flavored tobacco, etc., but I have never been able to rate them outstandingly because they tend to have too much gourmand character for my taste - and I actually don't like that.
However, Havana Plum pleasantly surprised me throughout, as the plum note is indeed very strong at first, and one can clearly smell the aforementioned accents of rum or cognac, but soon they are integrated into the typical characteristics of Neuffer's fragrances: dark spicy, very dense, complex texture, reminiscent of an intensified Opium, a sweeter Youth-Dew (minus aldehydes), a fruitier Jungle, a more pronounced Cinnabar. Havana Plum lies between all these scents in an intersection yet on new territory, complemented by a sweet dried fruit-rum note.
In the base, the fragrance develops a dark wood tone that I do not recognize so strongly from the aforementioned scents; it still retains a certain sweetness but becomes more austere than when first sprayed. It reminds me of the smell of an old piece of furniture. We have a cabinet from 1780. When I open the door and take a whiff, a wood scent wafts out that has been enriched by the breath of two and a half centuries: very pleasant, very melancholic, a bit wistful, as it makes one think of past times - without ever really seeming old.