Café-Café Puro for Men
Cofinluxe (2002)

Disclaimer: I didn't pay for this bottle; it was thrown in for free by the seller during a fragrance haul. It sells for about €18, which according to my complex logarithmic calculations is at least €70 too much.

Cafe Cafe Puro Pour Homme opens with synthetic herbs and lots of cardamom and dries down to a very realistic accord of smoke coming out of an old television set. I guess the perfumer tried to recreate a coffee accord by mixing acidic metallic synthetic notes with dry citruses, and failed miserably. This has been relegated to room freshener.

On another note, that bottle... The sculptor put his tools down, stood back from his work, and nodded with satisfaction. "A large canine phallus!" he exclaimed. Dreadful.

Masculinity Level: This is what an electrician smells like after a day spent soldering on circuit boards.

Strange fragrance that starts citrusy and a bit herbal and evolves in something woody, very very spicy  and dirty with a chemical undertone of smoked coffee that is prickly and pungent by hints of black pepper. The burnt electronic circuit effect the other reviewers talked about is produced by the interaction of coffee, woods and black pepper with an hint of synthetic smoke. The fragrance stands dry, dusty and dirty in the "fragrantic" universe. Poor longevity and low price.

Strange. Kind of cheap.Was offered and tried - then putted aside. Just don't understand this cologne - is it so bad???

Cafe Cafe Puro pour homme (ccp) is a text book example of seduction via top notes. An inviting and well balanced fruity-citrus bouquet of notes makes a good initial impression. From there, it all goes down hill. My nose picks up some clove and spices before an extremely generic and synthetic plasticky drydown hits like a ton of poorly mixed concrete. It has that "I have smelled it elsewhere" vibe to it - well yes we have, we have smelled it in every generic mens cologne released since the mass use of cheap synthetic molecules in perfume. Its a chemical fart of epic proportions really and it wont let up. Even at $15 per bottle, this is not a "good value" fragrance. You really are getting what you pay for. Old Spice is good value. Brut is good value. Iceberg Twice is good value. Hell, many classic YSL fragrances are now amazing value. Ccp is not "good value". The most interesting thing about Ccp is its sinewy snout-like bottle, which along with Smallto Fullchoke's bottle might find multiple uses inside and outside one's personal den. Sad really.

I'm not sure I'm posting under the right name. My bottle says Homme de Café, but the fragrance in my bottle is definitely the one Griff refers to as smelling of flux. Whatever. This fragrance in the brown coffin-reminding bottle is an unusual scent that first centers around that sharp muriatic acid-fluxy smell that anyone who has soldered metal, stained glass, or electronic circuit boards will recognize. Besides the flux, the opening is citrus / spicy and moves into a solid and attractive smoky / woody middle and drydown. Café is pleasant spicy, woody, and almost incensy. It is sharp and lively, and it's a unique scent is offered at a low price. The bottle is coffin shaped (‘Cofinluxe'–get it?) and the fragrance's longevity is so short that it, too, is probably a philosophical reminder of human mortality.

I've had this one for about a year now and it's time to decide whether or not I'll buy a new bottle. When I first started using this fragrance, I thought it smelled a bit like Tommy but after a while I found this one to by much more lively, where Tommy seems a bit too synthetic. It's not thát special but just a warm, clean and fruity summer-smell. In this price class (around 25€ for 100ml), it's definately a keeper!