Cuba Express by AbdesSalaam Attar Profumo

This is the only perfume by La Via del Profumo where I don't hesitate to give it a thumbs down-rating. This stuff is hardcore, it's just too overpowering and even brutal! Well, maybe Fidel would like it!

As much as I had high expectations for this one, it is just too much pulling in too many directions - and very little of the blend says CUBA to me (and I have been there). This is not to say that the blending is wrong. It is actually quite creative and does try to inject the atmosphere with the frenetic patchwork of Havana's sensual overload. I just find it distracting to have so many moods (fresh / bright / sweet / boozy / syrupy / green / herbal / resinous) all packed into one fragrance. It is as if we have a layering job where polar opposites were chosen for effect. I will try again, but for now I feel like storing my "tabac," my beloved "seawood," and my "gringo" in separate bottles.

I cannot detect any rum, any chocolate, any coffee. This fragrance really disappointed me, since on my skin it only has a nasty curry smell. I felt like a big indian meal.

I balanced my childhood diet of wild cherry cough drops and play-doh with delights planted by Daddy, just for me, in the den. Am I the only one who happily gorged on matchheads with a light dusting of cigar ash? The Internet suggests this is a disease with its own name: Pica, but the medical experts are confused, and dont know what good is. Bacon has nothing on a burnt match.

Cuba Express combines the non smokers comfort I find in tobacco with the toasty char I craved as a child. Though I know it contains not rum, coffee and chocolate as well as tobacco, I experience cedar. An olfactory hallucination or something a chemist might explain? It sucks the moisture out of my brain, and paints my throat and brain with the pleasure of pipes, Connecticut shade-grown cigar wrappers and ashtrays.

Cuba Express lasts and projects well. In fact, I'd call it forceful, and it makes me feel timid. There's a lot going on, like a raucous celebration that overwhelms me. The notes do not clash--they are harmonious in their way; I am, admittedly, a wimp. Thank goodness Mr. Duckfinder can break apart the elements in a more useful way for the reader.

Cuba Express

Begins with a strident blast of sweet rum, dry cocoa, something peppery and a distant orange, I think also some frankincense. Next I get a mocha effect with a gentle sticky coffee and dusty cocoa coming to the fore. As the tobacco creeps in underneath there is, I think, some spicy bay oil giving reference to the traditional bay rum formula. What a tobacco note! - deep rich powerful and horsey! At once herbal and animalic. Now it settles with the tobacco up front and the spices giving a physical depth, as if I can smell into my arm. Then cloak and dagger games with coffee, spicy notes, rum all spinkled with light, warm cocoa. It is vivid, like a 3D film. Eventually the tobacco and spice seem to burn off a little uncovering a slightly vanillic, mild coffee, residual rum with just a hint of tobacco.

A wonderful journey! I particularly like the way the cocoa lies very lightly on top throughout. None of the supporting notes are loud, in fact none of the notes at all. The balance is evolving and always interesting.

The sillage is pretty good for an all natural perfume and the endurance good.

Oh yes.