Cuba Red

This smells like an unlit cigarette. Which is great! I love it! I'd read a couple reviews of this that mentioned cinnamon and at least one that said it doesn't smell like tobacco. Both statements are false. Because it is an edt and not actually a cigarette there is a light metallic aldehyde or soapy base below the cigarette note but that base really is about as unobtrusive as you could possibly hope for it to be. Definitely not cinnamon. And the "smells like" list is a stretch - I did check Cigar and Burberry London just because those also have a tobacco note but please believe me Cuba Red isn't nearly as complex even as Cigar much less any of the more expensive fragrances there. Double Whiskey and Royal Gold really aren't that cheap now so I will probably never try them. Remy Latour Cigar is fantastic but unfortunately doesn't perform much better than the Cuba Red. Now this isn't a niche fragrance or beast mode juice etc. etc. but it is a perfectly accurate cigarette tobacco fragrance. And crazy cheap. There are fancier ones that cost from three to twenty times as much. (Three times as much is still cheap so if you want a Tom Ford tobacco vanille for $15-$25 you CAN find it-hint: Paris Corner, Maison Alhambra, etc.) But if you just want tobacco juice that you can over spray without remorse and keep on hand for any time that is dirt cheap then this is a very practical option. Also it is JUST cigarette tobacco so it can pretty much work with any other perfume or cologne and create no conflict. So that's it. It is weak and fleeting so frequent spraying is required but again at this price who cares? Peace.

Even though I don't smoke, I once bought a small bag of tobacco just to smell the leaves. I mentioned that as an illustration for you that I am a person who is already very partial to a tobacco scent. Yet, I strongly dislike the smell of tobacco SMOKE - I only really like the scent of unburnt tobacco. This is possibly relevant because I have read some reviews of Cuba Red where people described it as being reminiscent of exhaled cigarette smoke. Personally, I don't smell that at all; to my nose it is almost entirely like a fresh bag of tobacco. Once it dries down, pretty much all that I get from it is tobacco, I don't smell much else. And honestly, that makes me pretty happy. I like this fragrance a lot. I would also describe the fragrance as the most masculine one that I own, but keep in mind when I mention that, that we are talking of a collection of only 26 fragrances. To me, Cuba Red is very masculine, and no I am not about to define masculinity! I am not against a feminine fragrance, I am a man who owns and wears a few classically feminine fragrances. Yet, sometimes it is really nice to have a completely masculine fragrance. This and the other Cubas I have tried are not strong at all. and personally, I see this is a bonus. Wearing Cuba Red makes me happy, and it is a personal and private happiness that I would happily share with anyone I am physically intimate with. Oh, and when you first spray it, give it a few moments before you judge, all I discern at first is the alcohol.

If you like Cigar by Remy Latour and London by Burberry then this is the precise middle of the road. After that amazing pungent opening like cigar, this develops closer to the spicy tobacco of London while mingling with elements of both fragrances. This is still its own thing and more of an inspiration of those fragrances as well as classic green leaf tobacco and or oak moss fragrances. Reminds me a bit of Open by Roger and Gallet. Look...this is a cheapie of cheapies! Not a niche mind blown fragrance from the new and upcoming perfumers of the world. It's an amazing classic style masculine powerhouse well blended fragrance, even synthetics can be well blended! I personally love this! It reminds me of when men smelled like men and not like little boys who are afraid of showing any signs of testosterone. This ain't Dylan Blue or Sauvage, I actually like those lol! This is a lumberjack with a pocket full of Redman loose leaf chewin backy! Red Buffalo Flannel, blue jeans, leather boots and an old truckers hat that says John Deere. Splittin logs and spittin chaw! This is for a man that does stuff! Price 10/10 Bottle 2/10 so tacky Sprayer 6.5/10 not horrible Perfomance 7/10 ok as well Scent 8/10 I personally love it Overall, all things considered, for me personally this is at least a 7.5/10. Good cheap manly stuff here!

cheap in price but great tobacco fragrance, it has the character and strength on a different level of its siblings like "cigar" (Remy Latour, Burberry London and Havana (Aramis house); it's a very linear eau de toilette; opening with strong tobacco/wood scent and spices in its combination, after forty minutes or so the dry down turns it to a very pleasant sweet tobacco, wear this eau de toilette around your neck and chest, get intoxicated with the nice clean tobacco sweetness and the dry woods that combines turning this fragrance in a melody of notes so simple but enchanting scent;..........a fragrance doesn't have to be expensive to put a spell on the people around you, but it has to have the power of turning heads when you walk among them.; and CUBA RED will leave your personality printed in the people's memories.

Some people say "Cuba Red" is heavy on the tobacco note, which is the idea for a tobacco fragrance, and very masculine; it may not have the smoothness, and sweetness of more expensive tobacco fragrances, but Cuba Red is not a complicated, macho tobacco fragrance; it's raw, unpolished, rough manly tobacco EDT, for the guy who stands on his ground, alone and self-confident, may not be very long lasting, but, it leaves a deep impression, for the nature of its composition, Cuba Red is simply a fragrance for the wild lonely wolf, that walks alone on his terms; without explanations, or looking for compliments, the one who cannot give a damn about being noticed, or looking for acceptance from people around him.

I own both this and London Men by Burberry and they are very similar, but I seem to get better longevity and projection with London than this one. It's definitely a you-get-what-you-pay-for with this fragrance unfortunately. I don't mind finding a bargain at all and I certainly look for them! Price isn't always everything, I understand, but this one just fell short. London is definitely a colder weather fragrance and seems spicier and projects more than this one, but with the other notes for this I can see Red being a cooler summer evening wear. I still keep this one on my shelf for this reason as I've received compliments when it's a colder summer night out while wearing this. 6/10 for me!

Burberry London clone, and a decent one at that! It's less lavendery than Burberry, a darker version. An instant favourite for me. And considering the price its just absolutely insane. It even seems to have better performance than other Cuba's. Will be buying more. Dont hesitate the blind buy. Update months later: This is not a burberry clone. If anything this smells closer to Herod than anything else I can think of. Or more specifically Hercules by Lattafa. It's a sweet & very spicey cinnamon-ish tobacco. It's my fav Cuba, beating Gold.

A really lovely mellow tobacco fragrance. Got loads of character and is very pleasant. Starts soapy and gorgeous. The drydown is great like a lovely unsmoked pipe tobacco with spices and staying soapy. Very similar to Cigar by RL I'm sure I can smell patchouli in there. Staying power is good although Remy Latour's Cigar lasts longer, but it has a particularly pleasant sillage. The Cuba Paris Range are really great value and this is one of the best Cubas - love it!......In my top ten!

Seriously.........."More Bang for your Buck" has never been truer. This scent is MANLY so hands off ladies. How can they sell this so cheap and yet have it smell so sophisticated? One spray will do but you can get away with two if not in confined spaces or at work. Spicy and Tobacco-ey(?) but not inscense/headshop/kitchen type of spice-like. If you are here reading reviews because you're short on cash and you wanna spend it wisely..........then this is IT!! Thank me later...........

CK Shock (minus the amber) and Spicebomb Infrared (focus on the red fruits), and actual cigar leafs. I’m floored by how good this actually is. Got this as part of a 4 pack, curious about how these actually smell. The first two were garbage frags, Cuba Orange and Cuba Blue. By the time I dared to spray this one i expected nothing. But wow, seriously. Not for everyone or warm weather but perfect for any evening stroll here in San Francisco.

I get tobacco but it isn't the dirty tobacco a lot of people are commenting about. To me, this is an edgier version of Burberry's London. I am a fan of tobacco frags, cheap to niche.. Dirty to classy.. This is actually an incredible scent especially for the price point.. As with the other Cuba Paris frags I've tried so far, I am impressed...

For what it is this is really very nice. It’s a simple fragrance, mostly tobacco, but it’s done quite well. I’d say that this is perhaps the most wearable and versatile Cuba fragrance of the lot, at least that I’ve tried. Great for layering too.

As close you can get to a cedar/spice fragrance without smelling like hamster bedding. The masculinity to it is very classic, and a good statement fragrance. Can be a kicker though.

Perfume con olor a tabaco muy masculino, excelente precio, es ideal para los que comienzan a coleccionar perfumes y que no quieren gastar mucho dinero en un buen perfume

Idk it’s either cause it’s nostalgic to me or I just still love this fragrance for what it is.. MASCULINE

This is a great tobacco scent. I agree with Jersey Joe below.

This guy is not an homage to "Burberry, London for Men" as many claim; it's patterned after the similar-but-different (yeah, I said it!) "Cartier, Must De Cartier Pour Homme". I know, I know...you're thinking, "wait a second Big Al, London is a tobacco scent but MdC is not--how can "Cuba Red" (which everyone knows is a tobacco frag) smell like a non-tobacco frag?" Well...trust me, even though MdC does not claim tobacco as one of its notes, everyone knows it is a tobacco scent. In other words, while MdC may not claim to smell like tobacco, it does smell like all the things that tobacco smells like. Did that make sense? Let me restate: if you had to describe tobacco, it smells earthy and woodsy and sweet with some spice; MdC smells earthy and woodsy and sweet with some spice; thus, even though MdC doesn't say, "hey, I smell like tobacco", it shares the same scent profile. No, I didn't figure that out because I'm one of the "nasal elite"; I searched long and hard before finding another Web site that lists the "impression" which each frag in the Cuba line was going for [Blue="Calvin Klein, CK One", Gold="Jean Paul Gaultier, Le Male", Orange="Alfred Dunhill, Desire for a Man", etc.]. So it was there printed in black-and-white electrons on my screen: Cuba Red=Cartier, Must de Cartier Pour Homme. The reason for the first paragraph (instead of a simple statement of Cuba Red=MdC) is that it didn't make sense *to me* that a tobacco scent (Cuba Red) could smell like a non-tobacco scent (MdC) so I had to reverse-engineer an explanation in my mind and I was kind enough to have just shared it with you. Anyway, I wanted an inexpensive tobacco frag to mix with a cheap vanilla frag that I had gotten my hands on (Coty, Raw Vanilla); I was trying to see if I could whip up a cheapo Frankenstein version of Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille (for more on that story and to see if I was successful, look for my review of "Raw Vanilla by Coty" later today). After much research, I chose Cuba Red as the best combination of cheap price and decent tobacco scent (according to reviews anyway) and I bought it. I'll be reviewing Cuba Red by itself here (not as a mixture). First let me say this about the Cuba scents: they are, as others have claimed, STRONG (for the nose-nerds out there: tons of "sillage" and "projection"). They are stronger, even, than any of my $20-an-ounce everyday bangers or even my $100-an-ounce gourmand scents. All of a sudden I feel very cheated and used--apparently I've been paying a lot of money over the years for models and photographers and fancy ads and to line the pockets of designers when making a good scent only costs...5 bucks? Oh well, call me a sucker. Back to my story: not knowing the strength, I gave myself a squirt or two on each wrist, and on each antecubital, and behind each ear...WHOA!!! All of a sudden I was in a smoke-filled casino in Casablanca--or at the very least, a smoke-filled poker room in Brighton Beach. Yeah, it was that strong. I had to wash it off and even after that, I could still smell it! Yet despite this overwhelming throat-scratching karate kick to the sinuses, the longevity (as others have noted) was not equal to the more expensive stuff. Bottom line: Use less squirts, but squirt more frequently (did that sound gross?) So how does it smell? Well, when it opens it's definitely not a pipe tobacco impression--it’s a cigar tobacco impression. If you don't know the difference, I used to smoke both and here's my take: With a pipe I would kick back and say, "ahhh, this is pleasant..." whereas with a cigar I kicked back and said, " UGH! Why do I smoke these again?!" In other words, the experience is much harsher with a cigar and like a cigar, this guy opens a bit harsh (perhaps harsher than it should have since I sprayed so much) but it settled down into something very nice and pipe-like. After the drydown (actually, the aforementioned "wash-off") this scent was good...GREAT, even. While the opening had too much earth and cinnamon that I could almost *TASTE*, the middle was a very subtle sandalwood and tonka bean...a faraway pipe tobacco smell as opposed to an in-your-face cigar smoke cloud. Very nice; very mature. Synthetic? Yes. But so is everything else (cheap or pricey) unless you buy and mix your own essential oils no matter what all the redolence snobs say. That statement may be confusing because this is "cheap" in price but it's not "cheap" in quality. Probably the best line of designer knock-offs out there today. To recap: London is tobacco throughout. Must de Cartier is varying shades of tobacco. Cuba Red is also varying shades of tobacco. Thus, Cuba Red is a lot closer to MdC and consequently, more complex and mature. It's also "mature" in the sense that it harkens back to memories of scents that my stepdad and uncles used to wear--to me, it smells like something a grown-up would wear (even though I am now, sadly, a 30-something grown-up myself). Extremely well done...and for $5-ish, it's a masterpiece of value. It's so cheap, it's almost embarrassing to admit what you're wearing. So if you're cougar-hunting, tell the old broads who compliment you that it's Remy Latour Cigar (they’ll be familiar with the name Remy Latour). If you're kitten-hunting, tell them it's Burberry London (they’ll be familiar with the name Burberry). But whatever you do, only share the fact that it's really a $3-$6 knock-off called Cuba Red with your good buddies.

What kind of dirty scoundrel Republican Wall Street capitalist wouldn't like something this good, this cheap and this portable? First, its kitschy and campy packaging are a true ode to the great Cuban cigar innovators; the legendary Taino-Arawak peoples that crafted over centuries the fine art of cigar making that only Cuba is truly admired for; who were rewarded fantastically by the Spanish for their innovation by being rounded up en masse to mine for gold and quickly exterminated by the Spanish in the 16th century when the resources of the great island were exhausted. Secondly, nothing says 17th century plantation Chesapeake and thus American democratic roots more than the smell of freshly cut dry tobacco of the John Rolfe variety on a Virginia or Maryland plantation. Want to know what Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Monroe, Patrick Henry or for god sake even Robert E. Lee's grandfather smelled like on a typical fall afternoon? Put this up to your nose and inhale. This is the scent of man, or at least plantation owner, the first "noble American capitalists" who later bought themselves respectability in the House of Burgesses and laid the foundation for oligarchical representative government in the United States that looked after the interests of the well-to-do with religious devotion ever since. Only a true indentured servant, of low birth scoundrel wouldn't like this scent. It's pure dry leaf tobacco bursting at the seems, with a sprinkle of vetiver at the top that quickly fades into pure tobacco bliss for about 1-2 hours depending on your skin before toning down into a skin scent for another 1-2 hours that remains tobacco dominated but with the slightest hint of woods. 4-5 hours is what you will get out of this. Projection? Moderate early and quickly toning down into a skin scent. Cheap as can be but quality is not sacrificed here, worth seeking out a bigger bottle if 1 oz. isn't enough for your luxurious lifestyle, will cost you about $15 for the 3.4 oz. and will give you years of joy soaking in the real smell of money of America's first colony (tobacco was the official currency in Virgina and Maryland).

Kitschy Perfume at it's BEST ! When popcorn and drink at the movies easily ring up $20 (at least in Canada), you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger bang for your buck than THIS puppy! I (LMFAO)... the minute I pulled the giant cigar out of it's authentic looking aluminum sheath. I mean Wow, this thing's even ribbed! That's $8 well spent, right there. But, wait...the cap is the cigar tip?? Which I suggest you pull off with your teeth, for maximum effect. Now...The scent (and i kid u not), smells EXACTLY like a CIGAR ! Not some perfume that kind of reminds you of a cigar. But a cigar. Albeit one of the cheaper ones on the shelves behind the convenience store guy. But certainly a better facsimile of a cigar than some of the pricier "tobacco" fragrances I've smelled. It's salty-sweet, and pungent. Musk, for sure. Granted that this smells the most authentic from the sprayer tip to about the first 40 minutes on you; I was still rather surprised to get a whiff of it some 2+ hrs down the road. But by then, it had dried down to a soft sweet musky ghost of it's former self, and no longer so blatantly a cigar. Still recognizable though. But who cares! Now you have all the more reason to pull out that aluminum sheath at the dinner table and ask: Would anyone care to pass around my "Cigar" ? For the shear Hysterics, Theatrics, AND Economics! It's a no brainer. You best fork it over for this Big Daddy! P.S.----Buy the 30ml version to get the most realistic presentation of a cigar. Or risk looking like "Cheech and Chong" *, trying to smoke the 100ml version! Longevity:5/10 Projection(summer temperatures):7/10 Art/Creatives:10/10(the whole package! I mean C'mon!) How: casual, anytime for fun, great gift!, as a quit-smoking aid, it's cheaper than Nicorettes! *Google 'em !

I think the Cuba House is a bit underrated these days. That said ... not sure I can recommend this. Its not that it smells bad, but buy is this a challenging scent to pull off. Before I had this Bently For Men Intense was the most manly smelling scent I owned. So manly, it makes it quite a polarising scent. I have no issues with it myself though. This however? This is so testosterone drivven, so douche-bag manly, I really dont think I can pull this off. And I'm not an insecure person. What it smells like, well lets get this out of the way. Not Burberry London. Like if those two are the only two warm spicy scents you ever smelled in your life ... sure they're roughly in the same family. But so different. Nothing alike. London smells like christmas, and is a woman's favorite on me. Spices, cardemom and pepper forward. This however smells like an old pub. Booze and burning cigars. Booze and tabacco, at times even the ashtray kind, forward. Performance isn't good, but overspraying is acceptable at this incredibaly cheap price range. (I got this for 6€/100ml) It is not as performant as cuba gold and cuba prestige. (Two scents I genuinly recommend btw.) Dont get me wrong, the smell does conjure up memories of good times past with friends in exactly pubs like this. It does not smell bad. It is unique and interesting. I'll probably try to sneak it into my rotation on days I'm sure I'll meet noone. But I cannot recommend this to anyone who does not know what he's getting into.