Baccarat Rouge 540 (2014)
by Maison Francis Kurkdjian for Baccarat

Sweet, long lasting, compliment getter, expensive... Not sure I'll ever be buying a full bottle, but I've enjoyed my sample a lot. Smells great on my wife too.

Baccarat Rouge 540 is probably ingenious but is definitely a "not for me" fragrance. A great success combining spicy-metallic, mineral, fruity, medicinal, woody and earthy/boisé elements with a solid virile (ambergris) animalic basic presence (in a balanced mild way). I detect similarities with "damp" scents a la Penhaligon's Juniper Sling (or partially with Rouge Bunny Rouge Tundra) which smells equally woody but finally sweeter and less boisé. I detect by soon peppery spices, earthiness and aromatics (juniper, angelica?) with a main woody/earthy presence linked with something mineral and undiscernible. What I appreciate is the general virility which is anyway overly dissonant (with weird "bloody accents") and audacious for my full pleasure (vaguely a la Zoologist Bat). The opening provides a sort of sugary metallic note as well, quickly linked (in a weird way) with mineral/woody patterns and with ambergris in a sort of fresh/fluidy boisé cedary way (fir and cedar combined with ambergris in a light fluidy way). The effect is sophisticated in its mineral/boisé juxtapositions but is frankly too paradoxical for a worshipper of (at most revisited) classic alchemies as me.

This stuff projects like crazy, and even 2 or 3 showers later, I can still smell remnants of this rancid odor. Who can possibly give this fragrance a thumbs up?

Saffron, Marigold and - a bit less prominent - as well as a jasmine impression join in together to reveal an usual and creative opening potpourri.

The drydown mixed some amber with leather, dried oak wood, with a phenolic undertone (the Evernyl mist likeky) - a but like an artificial mossy impression.
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The base continues the wood theme - cedar and for balsam - and mixes it with a highly plasticine ambergris.

I get moderate sillage, very good projection, and ten hours of longevity on my skin.

A bright spring scent, which is egregiously synthetic but with a good performance.

Baccarat makes some of the finest glassware in the world. This scent, alas, although not bad, is of a lower standard. 2.75/5

You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between this and the 2016 release, because your brain is lit up at first sniff.
You'd also be hard pressed to not like this. I was not a fan initially, it was just so in your face. But as I catch facets of it, I sometimes only want to wear this, period.
Only other fragrances that have this effect on me is Aventus and Tuscan Leather. Owning all three means you will be well complimented all the time.