Sayat Nova Attar

Begins with a beautiful, nectary apricot, with creamy & fluffy, rummy & smoky vanilla already peeking through from the start. Divine. To my senses not terribly animalic, those facets of narcissus and oud kept in check mainly by the vanilla whose sweetness plays the yin to their yang, or the yang to their yin I suppose, the smoky, woody oud and sticky sweet rum comprising the darker aspects. About an hour in the lovely apricot begins to fade, leaving in it’s wake the most gorgeous, fluffy vanilla, it’s smoke and rum tinged edges giving such wonderful caramelized / marshmallow nuances. It’s actually incredible, I place it in the top 5 vanilla accords I’ve ever tested. Also seems to last for days. The attar itself is wonderfully dark and thick. Sillage great, strongest at first, soon becoming moderate with lovely wafts still greeting you every which way. Longevity as said awesome. I don’t remember being particularly wowed by the perfume version, but this attar has me on a vanilla scented Cloud 9. For $125 for 3g in a great looking glass, I consider it a rather spectacular deal! Bravo, good sirs!!! P.S. Thinking about it, it bears a significant resemblance to Maksim’s newer Vanilla Oud, and being a bit disappointed with how little a departure L’Oud Marin was from the joint effort of him Mr. Balkrishnan, Oud Indochine, I am a little saddened seeing that VO, which I am still enthusiastic about as one can see by my review for it, has such striking similarities with another of Rajesh’s works. That being said, I still applaud most of the young sir’s releases, and think he often does great when he aims for novelty. With VO being more similar to this than I find it’s corresponding perfume to be, they’ll be wonderful to wear in complement to each other nonetheless.

Perfect oud I’ve owned this one for almost three years now and it’s gone from this overwhelming manure inexplicably paired with apricot danish to a more mellow manure and apricot danish to what Oud in heaven must smell. I went from hating it to barely tolerating it to it becoming my most loved of the 8 Bortnikoff attars I own. In its current iteration it is this river of buttery, vanilla tinged Hindi oud with all roughness smoothed away. Every note is so well integrated in the whole that instead of an oud based perfume it seems like a pure oud that just happens to be perfect.

Heaven in a bottle. To start I cant pick out the apricot but the vanilla/rum combo is so smooth and creamy. The oud intermingles well and I dont get any barnyard smell like others have said. Just a deep, smooth oud that doesnt overshadow and instead mingles and enhances the creaminess of the vanilla and rum. Longevity is very good and sillage is moderate. I smell it all day in a nice little scent bubble around me. One of my favourite attars from Bortnikoff!

I need to find this one in Attar.

First Attar blind buy. Notes seems delish. Something seems just off with this like a slight sour pungent rose. Not worth the sale discount price I even bought this for so far. Will test again edit as necessary.

This smells about 100% identical to the spray except you get much heavier booming base notes. The oakmoss is on steroids and you really get this intense opening of ultra sweet, candied peaches with an incredibly earthy oakmoss and Oud note. These quickly settle into the familiar warm, baked apricot and toasted vanilla give of the spray version. Very nice. Intimate projection/sillage but overall a wonder value for the price.