Perfecto Fino
Czech & Speake (2020)

Perfecto Fino opens with a super-brief faint, dulled lemon before quickly transitioning to its early heart. As the composition enters its early heart, rugged dry leather and smoky, ashy tobacco take the fore with hints of dying grass and earthy patchouli in support. During the late dry-down the perfume morphs to a leathery labdanum driven affair, with moderately sweet sandalwood gradually displacing the labdanum as time passes, supported by a touch of amber through the lengthy finish. Projection is good to very good, and longevity excellent at well over 12 hours on skin.

Perfecto Fino is one of less than a handful of perfumes I have tried over the decades and changed my mind about, in this case to the positive. The first couple times I tried it on skin I was near-immediately put-off by the aggressive ashy tobacco/hard leather tandem that almost immediately hits you in full-force when applied on skin. Quite frankly, that part of the perfume's development really biased me against it due to it being completely counter to my tastes. It wasn't until the third and fourth attempts that my nose got past the ash and was able to enjoy the really gorgeous leathery labdanum led early part of the late dry-down and the sandalwood to follow through the finish. Once I got there and could really focus in on it, I found I actually like the stuff. The bottom line is the $240 per 100ml bottle Perfecto Fino is a tough perfume to like early, but those that can get past its off-putting start are rewarded for their tenacity with a fine finish, earning it a "good" to "very good" 3 to 3.5 stars out of 5 overall rating and a solid recommendation to the more patient among us.

Perfecto Fino is simply perfect according with my taste. If you ideally combine vintage Trussardi Uomo, Zoologist Rhinoceros, the classic Quorum and Etro Vetiver (with their charge of tobacco, frankincense, earthiness, mossiness, smoke, woodiness, starkness, rootiness, uncompromising virility and spicy exoticism) you l'll catch the essence of this stout Czech&Speake-creation. This fragrance opens with a notable blast of birch tar combined with angular bergamot, grassy patterns, hints of frankincense and peppery spices in order to morph gradually down towards a "boisterous" but "literary" (in a caribbean way) accord of leather/tobacco, smoky sandalwood, smooth labdanum and earthy vetiver. The note of tobacco conjures me the bottom of an unlit pipe's aroma. Leather is a stout high quality "seasoned" leather but as combined with vetiver, labdanum and grass (cypriol oil?) produces a quite silky olfactory "tail". Dry down is still robust on woodiness, toasted tobacco and seasoned woods but at same time surprisingly smooth, cool on greenness and silky on leather and mossy grassiness. The bottle's packaging conjures effectively an american cigar-box or something apothecarian in a old-school way. Absolutely stunned by this "gentleman exotic" fragrance.

"Perfecto Fino" EdP 100ml Spray -

"CELEBRATING LATIN AMERICA: Perfecto Fino reflects the rich, complex, exciting yet tough world of Central America. Unapologetically masculine; fiery and powerful."

IMO this is unisex all the way. Nothing sharp or animalic in the tradition of "unapologetically masculine" fragrances. In its defense, there is zero sweetness.

The opening is burning campfire with a haze of grass floating in the smoke. After an hour the basenotes begin to appear, particularly a well blended sandalwood and leather.

The tobacco has a minor role here, as the blending is so smooth it does not appear as you may expect in the form of cigar ash. Again, unisex, wouldn't want to offend anybody!

Overall, a neutral rating (3 stars) as for me this fragrance would not be an easy pull or very versatile. It definitely leans winter time only. The colder the better and the last time I checked that type of weather is hard to come by south of the equator.

At $225 for 100ml, this juice is fairly priced as 1-2 sprays is all you need. If you are only spraying in the winter then you could get 10 years out of one bottle.

Pro Tip: Hot, cold, humid, dry, rain, sun, smoking, non-smoking - don't matter to the king of versatile tobacco frags - ARAMIS HAVANA.

Posting my comments on a thread as review:

There is a nice opening of citrus and grass. It has a very outdoors feel to it. There are some smoky notes just after this reminding me of putting different kinds of wood on a barbecue. Spices and tobacco comes later, but I don't detect leather. I do feel that the grass and smoke are very well done.

After a while the drydown on exposed skin is a little faint but a very pleasing tobacco and sandalwood. However, I still get the spices from under my shirt and these are not so good, a little stale and a little flaccid.

A few observations: it's interesting that the overtly cigar-box themed PF doesn't include cedar, which is a staple of the genre.

I think a lot of people will like this, but on one wearing I wouldn't buy it myself. For half the price you could buy Je Suis Un Homme. For another £30 or so you can buy Derby.

It's also interesting that C&S evidently think that they can have Perfecto Fino and Spanish Cedar in the same collection and sell both. For me, although not completely similar, they operate in the same space. SC has more birch tar than smoke and (for me) has more coherence with fewer ingredients; it's also a bit stronger. PF has more breadth. Perhaps C&S have a loyal enough clientele and they know what they like. But if you're only an occasional shopper at this price point, I'd choose Spanish Cedar.

Finally, the variations in price of the C&S parfums are quite interesting. They range from £95 to £160. Spanish Cedar is £130, Perfecto Fino £150. Are they trying to give us some indication of what it costs to produce these scents?

Could have been great but far too flabby for me to countenance.

Rarely does something this good turn up in 2020. Love the likes of Bel Ami, Knize 10, Quorum, Sycomore and Polo Ralph Lauren? Smoke & leather powerhouse fragrance lovers, this is one new scent that you need to at least sample.

Perfecto Fino opens with what is quite possibly the most enormous thump of (birch) tar, ever used in a fragrance this side of the Millennium and the new age of ingredient restrictions. Smokey as a smouldering camp fire, it calms down after a good 30-45 minutes or so, releasing its tobacco, leather and woods combination. The extreme dry-down is smokey woods, likely vetiver, representing what remains of the preceding fire.

The simplistic and quite cheap-looking bottle doesn't do the fragrance justice, as what is inside is unique and very nicely woven together. Even the packaging which is supposedly similar to a Central American cigar-box is very elegantly crafted. The bottle however resembles a potion bottle that was hastily put together in the back room of a very questionable medieval pharmacy.

The scent is long lasting and projects well throughout the day. Its progression is very noticeable - you won't mistake this for a 'linear' scent. Pricing is a bit of a joke; it is considerably more expensive per ml than any other scent in the otherwise venerable C&S range.