Zemfira

I love roses. I love them bright and I love them dark, airy and heavy, red and green, sweet and sour, powdery and crystal clear, fresh and dried ones. I love all of them! Zemfira is a beautiful somehow light and bright (but with good performance) Rose Oud which you can wear easily year around. Fresh natural smelling roses are stars with mild oud in the background. Unlike the first collections, this 4th collection is floriental and has no animal ingredients except ambergris in it. Other parfums in this collection are Sir Winston and Symphonie de Néroli. This is a well-made rose perfume with citrus and honey shades in the base. It’s not sweet anyway or in any kind of way “jammy” like some people like to say which I think is an expression for very sweet and mellow rose mostly with Vanilla. I can’t describe well enough that intoxicating feeling which I get from this from the evocative opening until the dry down but it’s unique. I think it’s somewhat tart undertone which is one of the charasteristics of Vietnamese Oud. I have many rose perfumes and have tried a lot of them, this is one of a kind. If you like powerful and extremely persistent rose perfumes with a very light honey-oriental sillage, I think you will love this one. This is very easy level entry to Ouds but it’s noticeable though. 🌹Top notes: Bergamot and Pink pepper 🌹Middle notes: Rose de Mai, Hybrid Tea rose and Atlas cedar 🌹Base notes: Bengal sandalwood and Vietnamese Oud Thank you for reading, I hope my review was helpful. I would appreciate a lot if you want to follow me on IG and/or YouTube (English subtitles): @ninamariahperfumes It gives me a lot of motivation to write more. 🤗

I have a sample of this perfume. It is a perfume extract that lasts all day on the skin and leaves as a scented trail on the skin for the next day. With a very high intendity, so it is advisable to carefully measure the amount of perfume we put on. As a first consideration of this perfume, I think it is a perfume for people who know well the niche perfumes and the aroma of natural oud wood, to appreciate it correctly. The union of the rose with the oud wood is an aroma that we know, here we are presented in a refreshing outing with the bergamot, with spicy touches. The rose is fine and delicate from the rose of mai, and as it progresses over time, the aroma becomes even sweet, a sweet, pleasant, succulent and sensual oud wood. It is a mature, interesting, sensual perfume ... very well worked in the different woods and aromas that accompany it. It is a type of perfume that of course will be enjoyed by lovers of wood and oud wood, but in my case I see it as impressive as a male perfume, it is an elegant exotic sensual perfect for men. Precisely because it is a perfume with a marked aroma of oud wood, not a recreated oud, the authentic oud ... it is precisely that which can make you love this perfume or hate it, if you hate it it will not be because it is a bad perfume, rather because your nose does not appreciate or enjoy this special wood.

As always with a Bortnikoff, I'm immediately taken by the sheer quality and beauty of the ingredients. The initial blast gives me shimmering, dry bergamot with, of course, HUGE rose (Serge Lutens style, jammy and playful) and HUGE pink pepper, but also a strange, addicting woody undertone, not the oud, I think it's actually cedar. This is a cedar I don't normally encounter. As I'm trying to pin down what the wood is, the sandalwood starts to show up. This is where you really know you have something special. It smells like sticking your nose up close to a lump of raw sandalwood (which I have done recently at the Chanel exhibition in Paris). It's creamy, rich, ancient-seeming, and almost, but not quite, gourmandy. The oud is there all the while, but this isn't an oud perfume, it's a sandalwood marvel. I've just bought La Fille Tour de Fer, and there is a link here, with the natural smelling rose and pink pepper, but this one is the grand dame of the genre, while the lutens is a very respectable affordable rose perfume.

A fresh and clean rose fragrance with an elegant oud twist. This is a simple yet sophisticated oud/rose scent that truly shines in springtime. It opens fresh with citrus and pink pepper, and from the very first moment to the dry-down, the composition is defined by a very high-quality rose. After some time, the freshness is softened by a gentle sweetness and depth from the oud, with sandalwood also playing an important and well-balanced role. As always with Bortnikoff fragrances, the high quality of the raw materials is immediately noticeable — everything feels natural, luxurious, and beautifully composed. A perfect oud/rose fragrance for the confident man as spring arrives.

I have the Attar version of this. Open with a blast of bergamot peel, fresh tea rose petal, and woody note, they stay linear through the dry down. Bergamot is the predominant note on this one, safe to call it a Bergamot bomb here. The Oud is extremely light and almost undetectable, zero barnyard or medicinal here. Out of all 7 Attar releases, this is my least favorite, smell almost like the Guerlain Homme L'Eau Boisée freshy on steroid.