Reviews of Acqua di Selva (1949)
by Visconti di Modrone (orig. by Victor)

I have tried Acqua di Selva four times. I was keen to try it because of the favorable reviews and the alleged pine aspect – a quest of mine is to find the perfect pine scent. Each time I come to the same conclusion: AdS has a wierd, obnoxious green note like over-cooked peas or boiled cabbage! I conclude that the oakmoss used here is very aggressive, or maybe the herbal notes are out of control. I really like good fougeres, and appreciate oakmoss as a fragrance component; however, AdS fails in those regards. I think this would scare people away. As for the pine notes, they are non-existent as far as I can tell. I’ve tried most of the pine fragrances listed in the reviews below, and like many of them very much. I am a big fan of the rare Silvestre by Victor, but in my opinion, AdS has no redeeming features at all. Its appeal utterly mystifies me! Perhaps the bottle I keep sampling was stored at Chernobyl and it has mutated into something noxious.

Very average to my nose - too much soap and feigned nobleness. Seems pine is as difficult to capture in a scent as it is to achieve a raspberry flavor in food that wouldn't taste fake and plasticky. I've tried a lot of scents in my quest for True Pine and haven't found any yet that I would like whole-heartedly. Selva comes close to both Agua Brava and Pino in that you can tell from the first whiff it's a budget fragrance (not that it's bad in itself, but I don't think budget works with pine). There are Blenheim and Creed's Epicea on the other end, but I find both too pretentious and sweet. Polo and Bowling Green are solid scents in their own right, but neither one is exactly pine. The only one I did like was Knize Forest, but it also has a lot more going on in there than just pine. In short, if what you want is pine, go for essential oils.