Cuba (2002)
by Czech & Speake

Minty citrus and tobacco opening and a floral and tobacco middle. There's a medicinal quality to the overall structure. It almost smells like the minty pine of bay rhum. Good robust fragrance.

A fine, controlled, unusual tobacco fragrance. This opens with a medicinal blast of mint dressed with some citrus, incense and florals. This is the only fragrance other than Creed's Selection Verte where I have experienced the menthol cooling my skin.

As the medicinal beginning fades spices and rose give a traditional barber shop or cologne feel to the heart which fades into the amazingly long lived base of sweet tobacco and green woods.

The frankincense straddles the whole composition as a good accord from this resin should.

In cuban music the bass anticipates the beat. This is disorientating to those unused to it who expect the bass to to state the beat while other registers push and pull. Similarly, this perfume suggests it may go over the edge into sour, into harsh, into abrasive, into chaos with some strident accords but always stays inside and pulls back when it really matters.

Wonderful fragrance..... for a woman. I really can't see this for a man. I has a very clear rose, overlaid with a spicy tabbaco. This would be a great fragrance for a womans formal wear. It gets its seductiveness from the spicy tabbaco, and a charming inosence from the rose.

Cuba opens with a strong citrus / spicy / tobacco accord that makes itself known without equivocation. Quite unusual, it is dense for a citrus accord, it contains a heavy load of passion and romance. Actually, what I really get the first three minutes is a strong fecal note, which then turns into the excellent spice and tobacco accord. After several minutes of the opening, the fragrance takes an astounding turn: It becomes a substantial and compelling green / woody / floral / mild spice accord the like of which I’ve not experienced before: It is totally captivating but I really have a difficult time identifying it; It seems as if it could be patchouli based—such as the patchouli in Borneo 1834, but even Borneo couldn’t match this accord. Since there is no patchouli listed in the pyramid, probably the opoponax / incense combination that is responsible for that extraordinary luxuriousness. I have always been a fan of opoponax, but I have never before experienced it so rich and lusty as this. I can readily accept that the ginger and the geranium are major players in that accord, too, and the combination, with a mint, rose, bay, tobacco, clove (very little), and greens tossed in, is wonderfully fulfilling, satisfying and… compelling. No kidding, this is one of the most accomplished accords I’ve ever encountered—completely addictive. I just have to own this one!

Both reviewers mention tobacco but there's no mention of it in the pyramid note. Neither is there a mention of rum, but it's there as well. I'll bet you a mojito, along with a Cohiba.

Wonderfully warm, charming and effortlessly elegant. This is one smooth and mellow juice.

Unisex? Well, in the sense that the 'male' Egoiste could be worn by both men and women--provided they have good taste--the answer is yes, it works.

Why are there no more reviews? Because it's expensive and very hard to get, esp. in the U.S.
To my mind, this is what Idole de Lubin tries to accomplish, but here the idea is executed far better--with panache and with subtlety.
Well done.

Absolutely fabulous, and smells like nothing else out there! Cuba starts and stays a rich tobacco scent. The first hour or two, Cuba is fresh, moist tobacco, fontal leaf to be exact, with the smell of damp cool earth and rain clinging to the leaves. As the scent wears on, something bizarre happens: it tranforms completely, leaving behind the amazingly realistic live tobacco leaf scent for something far more complex and interesting.

The geranium and ginger in the midnotes makes this scent sing. The sweetness of the geranium combined with the piquancy of the ginger elevate the scent into something organic and aggressively plant-like. It smells like being thrown into a pit of semi-decomposing leaves and flowers, mostly geraniums, with maybe a few musty rose petals and the odd lime blossom thrown in the mix.

The resiny base is genius and makes this scent hold for hours, continously developing. Tendrils of the early earthiness and sharp citrus peek out here and there, and Cuba keeps on going, a full day of scent, from sunrise to sunset. The day starts out in a lime orchard, damp, wet, musty, dirty. You work in that orchard, arranging velvety geraniums under the hot sun, petting a musk deer that passes by and gently places a rose at your feet, while occasional rain showers pass by, moistening your sun-warmed skin. That is Cuba.