Eaux de Caron Forte
Caron (1999)

Eau de cleaning fluid.

**

Carded sample

What a weird one. This opens with a great deal of apple and bergamot, and immediately reminds me of the tacky, impassible beginning of Perry Man. Following this is a rich blend of coriander, musk, nutmeg, and also musk. Now I am smelling something akin to Viking by Royal Copenhagen (released in the same year). The floral aspects of EdCF are very weak compared to the fruit, amber, and musk, but help to offset the sweetness. My nose is in an interesting tug-of-war between interest and disdain, with interest ultimately winning out. In the end I like this but I'm certain that many won't; it's a bit too sticky and alien.

“Forte” means “strong” in Italian, and boy, this is strong. I am not sure if my bottle is corrupted, but Eaux de Caron Forte is the closest thing I've ever smelled to the stale, moldy smell of barnyard after the rain. It's all here: mossy, green, more pungent and “acrid” than simply citric, with nuances of wet hay, musk, even a grassy smell of wheat. And something plain “fecal”, I guess due to musk. The “fruitiness”, yes, there's some, but it's a sort of earthy and rotting type of fruitiness, like in Thierry Wasser's obscure masterpiece Dalì pour Homme. The only hint of something aromatic and more graceful is bergamot, but it gets completely lost in that stinky concoction. A woody-mossy-musky-citrus scent with a ton of muscles, closer to several masculine dark fougères than to fresh-fruity stuff as one may assume by the composition. Usually this would be a “pro” for me, but here it isn't really, mostly because it is all really too messy and screechy here. I like dark mossy scents, but this seems completely lacking in consistency and quality: it's a really sharp and loud blend with something just almost sickening inside it, probably caused by a general cheap quality and by the clash of several heavy, and heavily contrasting notes – the mossy-stale notes, the pungent citric head notes, the musk... a bit like a poor-quality hybrid mixing vintage Eau Sauvage with a dark moldy beast like Dalì pour Homme. Kind of cheap, and incredibly persistent.

5/10

These notes don't lie, however they also don't like me and I don't like them. The top note of apple makes this smell like watered down apple juice. No sweetness. A middle of spices and a funky weird powdery floral (assuming it's the musk and lilac combination) near the end before it poofs out of existence in 2 hours.

Something odd has happened to Forte. I bought some in Paris a couple of years ago having first bought it in NY. Forte is now being sold in London again so I bought some a month ago, it just is not the same product. The initial top notes are the same but what is left following the dry down seems to be an altogether different product and it appears to have half the longevity of the original, it is a great shame that this should have been allowed to happen. How I regret not having really stocked up in Paris.

I detect the same essence in Eau de Caron Forte that I find offensive in Body Kouros. It's not as strong but it's unmistakable. Some people adore that Kouros accord and an equal number detest it. Count me in the latter. I blindly purchased a 3.4 oz bottle of Eau de Caron Forte on Ebay that will now go unused. For me, there isn't anything in this that I find appealing.