Ambre Gris (2008)
by Pierre Balmain

Balmain Ambre Gris: Underrated? Oh yes, bigggggg Time! It’s not just this shiny disco ball cap, cool looking bottle, It’s a scent which will find lot of respect amongst us.
smooooooo - th notes of pina colada greets with light touch of florals and a smoky, woody notes... I have come across fruity scents...but, I can safely say, non like this. It’s beautiful and elegant in its composition; the blend is just perfect, like a harmony. The mood is undoubtedly dark (grey) and mysterious…the progressions, definitely exciting and ever-changing. By mid-notes, the fruity notes (think rich pina colada) melt into a smoky and velvety smooth accord of woods. The smokiness of this scent is the beauty of it, along with it’s lovely blend of woods (the smoke is not as intense as black tourmaline, nevertheless, is a distant relative of the same) all this on a base of warm notes of amber and musk along with resinous notes of incense and woods (think M7). The quality of amber and incense is very smooth and well rounded off leaving no sharp edges… It’s a blend which is very opulent and rich. By base notes, I feel I’m wearing a smoked, woody(intense), leather based scent with touch of incense. The best part is, though it may sound dark, it’s still remakarbly easy to wear to office or outings alike...
To sum it up, it's not fair to label it fruity scent; this is "much" more than that. It’s been 10 hours now and still, this scent is evolving, not many do. Close to skin, it still smells beautiful and mysterious; which goes on to show the quality on this scent.

The opening is very pretty and pleasantly unique. It is a smooth, cinnamon-spicy accord that is a bit resinous, and a bit floral. The pyramid says myrrh and I think I can feel it in the background, and, as so often happens, I don’t smell very much of the pepper that is supposed to be in the accord. The heart notes continue the quiet myrrh note and introduce the immortal flower and a grounding woodnote that stays quite reticent. If there’s any tuberose, it is either too well blended into the matrix or I’m not getting it at all. The middle is soft, neutral, and somewhat synthetic... but it is pleasant in an understated way. I can’t really grasp the middle accord as anything more than a smooth texture because nothing in it seems to stand out to me, except maybe its lack of longevity. The base offers very little more than the top two levels: soft woodnotes with a light, caramel / gourmand sweetness... again, a nice accord but too understated. To me the base comes across as excessively weak and if I sniff close to the skin, it seems to have a noticeable synthetic tinge to it. The movement and the direction of the fragrance’s performance on my skin seem goalless and vague.

When I first tried Ambre Gris, about all I could get was a very sweet / cinnamon spicy fragrance in the opening. Besides “sweet” it was generically synthetic. The opening has since stabilized to my nose to an excellently smooth cinnamon / myrrh accord that doesn’t last nearly long enough. The rest of the fragrance still lets me down: On my skin it comes across as pleasantly gourmand but much too weak. I’m pretty sure that I am unintentionally over-reading the synthetic tones, and missing several other notes that are meant to be. On paper or on clothing Ambre Gris performs much better than it performs on my skin: I get a broader spectrum of notes with a stronger presence of the accords, the movement of the fragrance seems more directed, and it lasts much longer. I guess this is another one of those skin variance things. At any rate, I’m voting a neutral, and I’ll be using it as a clothing fragrance.

Balmain Ambre Gris

When I was a child I received a rock tumbler as a gift. For those of you who don't know what that is, it is a large rotating cylinder which looks like a cement mixer. You added rocks and sand and had it roll over and over. I was fascinated that you could put rough rocks into the tumbler and out would come these polished shiny pieces of beauty. In the 2008 scent for Balmain, Ambre Gris, perfumer Guillaume Flavigny has performed a similar trick with amber and taken what can be a rough sometime harsh note and put it in his rock tumbler and created a shiny amber beauty that seems new to the nose. The scent opens with a floral flourish of tuberose balanced by pepper, cinnamon, and immortelle. The choice of immortelle is a particularly inspired one. Tuberose can be one of those extremely off putting notes as it can be too overwhelmingly sweet using spices like pepper to offset it is a well-known approach. The use of the maple syrup accord of immortelle really keeps the tuberose on a much tighter trajectory and allows what is to come in the heart the room it needs to breathe. The heart begins with a soft resinous accord of myrrh. This is joined by an amber of incredible complexity. When the amber first makes its apeearance it is a sheer accord which seems to rise naturally from the myrrh but then it gains some strength and becomes an amber which hews closer to its resinous qualities. This almost comes off like a full incense scent at this stage. This changes again and the amber becomes the sweet amber which takes over and now the cleanliness of gaiac compliments the sweet and brings this scent to a beautiful close. The dry down in the heart, as you feel the amber acting almost like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon to all of a sudden fully appear in all of its glory, is very special. I found myself sniffing constantly to catch the next bit of nuance that was happening all throughout the dry down. Amber can sometimes be a rough beast but in the hands of M. Flavigny it has been transformed into a beautiful shiny gem of a scent.

Balmain's (2008) Ambre Gris is a wonderful candy-like ( in a good way and not too sweet) , floral vanilla, slightly gourmond, complex fragrance that I fell for the instant I smelled it and it got better as I wore it. This fragrance uses high quality ingredents including ambergris. The tuberose is not overdone. There is a light smoke quality and then there is the vanilla, wonderful vanilla. As you can tell I am quite taken with this fragrance and it will one of my top ten fragrances permanently. It is quite inexpensive given it's quality so I give it a solid thumbs up.

Rich, deep and resinous. A great blend of tuberose, ambery notes and a musk. Love the smoky woods in this. Overall, a vanilla-ed rose. Nice scent.

This one smelled like two fragrances in a death grip, in the ocean. They are both going to drown, no matter who "wins" the fight. There is a nice "gray" amber smell, but there is also a very sweet smell too, which is very similar to the top notes of Belle en Rykiel. The clash between the two became nauseating to me after a couple of hours (or less). In Belle en Rykiel, those super sweet top notes calm down after a while, and an amber frag (with some clear but subordinate woods) come to the front. The two blend together well, if you survive that initial sweetness. This is not the case for Ambre Gris, which was so unpleasant that I am writing this after one sampling. I don't know if I will sample it again. Sillage and longevity seemed to be moderate to good, but I washed it off after a few hours. I'll give it a neutral because it may be entirely a matter of taste. From what I've read in the men's forum here, AG has plenty of fans, so it may be that it's so dissonant compared to what's in my rotation that it generates revulsion (sort of like ketchup and ice cream, whereas to others it's like peanut butter and chocolate).