Santal Volcanique Maison Crivelli 2018

Tried today at the store on my arm, 3-4 sprays.

At the beginning, a strong blast of cardamom & cream. Huge huge similarity with Penhaligon’s Lothair.

Then it settles and i absolutely understand the similarity votes with Envy & By Man. I’d say much more Envy than By, but the vibe is there.
To my nose it’s a meeting point between those 3 perfumes i mentioned and which i own/ed.

At the beginning i could barely smell it, it had no projection at all, but magically i started smelling it after a couple hours, and overall i really like it.
But at the same time reminds me too much of those old fashioned 90s legends perfumes, so it makes me step ahead because the retail price is 180€ and for me that’s top much for what it offers, as there are a couple clones of Envy and By Man which nail the originals.

I really like it

So this is the Crivelli perfume where sandalwood takes the main role. It’s accompanied by a really great fresh opening. The lime and ginger clearly stand out.

Then the beautiful dense sandalwood comes to life. Personally I don’t match with sandalwood very well, although I do love the smell a lot. I like to smell it, but I don’t want to smell like it so to speak. And this fragrance is just on the edge or probably just a little over it.

It projects pretty good. Longevity’s a bit lacking. So no full bottle for me.

Sandalwood got really dandy, Italian style, in this Maison Crivelli gem of a fragrance. The opening is a gorgeous male summer scent, full of zesty bergamot with a sprinkling of cardamom and ginger. There's a very slight sulfuric tint in the opening that is not bothersome at all but adds a facet of unexpected interest. The sandalwood is smooth and sexy, and it projects and lasts and lasts. A lot of the scents I've tried from this house have amazing projection and longevity, and this one's no different. I sprayed a modest amount from my sample before bed, and it was going strong hours after waking up the next morning. Definitely recommend for sandalwood lovers.

Santal Volcanique started out spicy and a bit soapy with a burst of cardamom joined by lime and ginger. The cardamom, with its strong hesperidic facet, dominated over the lime top note for me. It reminded me a bit of Akro's "Awake", which likewise has a strong cardamom note combined with lemon and coffee. But Awake's lemon note is stronger whereas I perceive the lime here as more buried in the mix and the lime and cardamom combination here as more soapy.

The opening took a while to settle down and didn't give me as much in-your-face lime as I wanted, but I forgave it as I sniffed more and got used to how the notes surface themselves.

It was over an hour before the heart of this fragrance started to emerge, and when it did, it was magical. Sandalwood, lime, sweet cedar, and coffee emerged, blended beautifully, very creamy, with a spicy glaze of the aforementioned cardamom and ginger, now more balanced. I had to search for the ylang-ylang, which seems to ground the fragrance on the bottom. It was low-key and in its dewy, green aspect, which was perfect for this composition. So many of my favorites. At this point, I was besotted.

I'm no stranger to sandalwood. I've worn the blended attars for over four decades. I keep a vial of now-rare Mysore oil as well as Australian plantation oil, which has a drier woodiness. But oils are famously low in persistence and sillage, so though I understand that most modern alcohol based fragrances use scent molecules and not natural oils, I still wanted to find a signature "sandalwood dominant" perfume. It was a nice-to-have, though perhaps, I knew, a far reach, if such a perfume with a strong, core sandalwood accord had better performance than an oil.

All the perfumes I've tried have strong cooperating notes; none are "pure sandal." I've been looking for the perfumers magic, though. The chords in Santal Volcanique are quite harmonious and appropriate for mingling with sandalwood and don't, for me, call forth hyphenation: "a sandalwood floral", "a sandalwood incense", etc. They are present, yes; they lend a personality, yes - spicy sandalwood, but they cooperate without dominating. Most other compositions I've liked - Santal Basmati, Sandalo Nobile - lean heavily on orris to amplify the creaminess of the wood. I adore the (unfortunately short-lived) basmati rice note in the former, which on application calls forth a mild cherry rice pudding (I mean, yum, right?). The latter mingles the orris with fig and dries down to a lovely light resin and sandalwood, but you'd have to like fig-forward scents like Gris Charnel, which is actually more interestingly complex than Sandalo Nobile.

Maison Crivelli's other sandalwood offering, Papyrus Moleculaire, is actually more sandal focused: a drier, more woody, splintery sandalwood with burnt tips of papyrus and very reminiscent of Santal 33 (but better). It's light, more subtle and clean, while Santal Volcanique is sweeter and more assertive. While I enjoyed the drydown of Papyrus Moleculaire quite a bit, it was all a bit tame for me. Volcanique is more, perhaps, erotic, (in the largest sense of the word), whereas Papyrus Moleculaire is, as they say, "office friendly."

The far drydown here is a delicious sandalwood musk, enriched by coffee and lingering spice, and with a wisp of round ylang-ylang lending touch of classic florality. I'm going to reach for this one a lot.

Within seconds of applying Santal Volcanique I wished I hadn’t, because I was confronted by the same musky fox-spray / sour-milk scent I’d detected previously in MFK’s Masculin Pluriel and Gentle Fluidity Silver. It has been suggested to me that I’m picking up a synthetic fixative or possibly Ambroxan, but my own research suggests the offending elements are a combination of woody-amber aroma chemicals and synthetic musk. Whatever it is, for the first fifteen minutes it overwhelms nearly all the other listed notes. Later, hints of coffee and cardamom creep in, which slightly improve the experience.

After thirty minutes on my skin, some aromatic and woody notes emerge alongside the coffee and cardamom, but that musky scent persists and is difficult for me to tolerate. Later, there is some further improvement, as it turns powdery and an underlying "struck match" accord delevops, but this is not enough to sway my opinion to a more positive position.

This is clearly one of those fragrances that I perceive very differently from most others, at least in the opening, which is a shame, as in its latter stages I feel it has potential.

Tested: 1ml decant
Seasons / occasions: None
Key thoughts: Overpowering musky opening, with hints of coffee and cardamom later. Not a positive experience for me.
Overall rating: 3/10
Buy full bottle: No