Hot Water Night Davidoff 2012

No question, cheap does not mean low quality and expensive does not automatically mean high quality. No perfume lover whose horizons extend beyond A for Armani should drift into these elitist spheres. There are plenty of examples for both cases. Good remains good. Ideally, you get the best fragrance quality for little money.

According to the opinion of quite a few, this is the case with Davidoff's "Hot Water Night." Why not? While regular hot water has vegetables and herbs simmered sweetly on low heat, this offshoot is supposed to be dry-spicy and, more importantly, significantly better.

It is immediately noticeable that it is different, in night mode. The ingredients read quite well, almost luxurious. Not only amber, it is also gray. Or oud, yes, even the noble agarwood is supposed to hide in the bottle, and all of this is still very affordable.

One thing is clear. You probably can't expect natural oud here, even though one should say goodbye to idealistic fragrance romanticism anyway. Pure nature is virtually non-existent, synthetic substances are truly not a bad thing, usually making up at least 50 percent of the composition, and that does not make anything inferior. However, there are also price and quality differences in artificial art.

Also, saying this doesn't mean much. "Sculpture Homme" is probably a synthetic bomb, but damn sharp, the chemical ingredients interact or harmonize wonderfully. Here, the price-performance ratio is close to its peak. However, with "Hot Water Night," one should keep the church in the village.

The top note is really not bad; something comes to the fore that works very well when properly placed in a fragrance, namely juniper berry. This dry spiciness is quite convincing. Pepper adds even more sharpness, but not in an exaggerated sense. However, it doesn't take long for the disillusionment to set in. Or the hangover after the gin.

This chic cedarwood or oud/gray amber base on paper lets it seep through relatively clearly, which is not surprising given the price. Pure chemistry, and here we are back to the topic. This is not reprehensible, but somehow or somewhere, savings must have been made here. The synthetic aftertaste in the Axe deodorant style clearly reveals where.

Seen this way, there is an interesting idea, but it fails due to an implementation for which the highest quality means were not available. The price does not fundamentally make anything worse or better. Davidoff's "Hot Water Night" is an average fragrance, even if it appears more attractive due to the price-performance ratio.