Malbec Flame

A great sweet, fruity, a bit peppery masculine dating scent with a hint of leather. Right from the start you get the sweetness of red grapes and a touch of pepper—at the same time there’s a subtle, masculine leather note coming through, which gives it that “Hugo Boss-style” dating vibe. Thankfully, it’s not pumped full of the typical vanilla or amber accords you often find in dating fragrances. Instead, the sweetness comes mainly from the red grapes. Definitely blind-buy friendly, and an interesting alternative to the Hugo Boss Bottled flankers (with less performance) —you just have to find the O Boticário fragrances at a good price. In the drydown the grapes become weaker and the decent leather note becomes a bit more prominent. The sillage is a nicely moderate level for a dating scent—you don’t want to suffocate the other person with your fragrance; you want them to notice it only lightly.

The second Malbec I had contact, maybe six years ago and I finally bought it, it gives an 'old solid wooden door' vibe. Well apparently they didn't change the formula, so I'm happy, a good evening wear.

PT É um perfume excelente para o frio, pela performance fantástica e pela nota belíssima de uva e couro. A arquitetura das notas não foi feita para o calor, porque o patchouli, o musgo, a baunilha e o cashmeran evaporam de uma vez só, e muito rapidamente, em temperaturas acima dos 25 graus. São notas lindas, mas precisam de tempo para se revelar lentamente, e isso só o frio permite. Nosso suor apócrino em um dia quente, por exemplo, nos deixaria com um cheiro azedo... Como fragrância chypre-gourmand, é interessantíssima. EN It's an excellent perfume for cold weather, both for its fantastic performance and for its beautiful grape and leather note. The architecture of the notes wasn't built for heat, because the patchouli, moss, vanilla, and cashmeran all evaporate at once, and very quickly, at temperatures above 25°C. They're beautiful notes, but they need time to unfold slowly, and only cold weather allows for that. Our apocrine sweat on a hot day, for instance, would leave us smelling sour... As a chypre-gourmand fragrance, it's fascinating!

Nice smell but very light and soft, not one for you, if you want a scent that pushes.

This fragrance is like eating cucumber: it's good at the moment, but then you burp it all day long and feel it over and over again and it's not so good anymore. First time it happened to me with a fragrance.

This smells like it has a rose/oud undertone. It stinks like it has those notes in the bottle. Major pass. It also has a slight ashtray undertone until it completely dries to a floral oud type scent. Maybe its anamalic leather. Terrible!

The longer I wear this, the more I like it. It wears like an Oriental-lite, as if the perfumer was trying to make an Amouage for people who hate Amouage. To a certain degree, they've succeeded. Flame is one of those funny fragrances where it's very well-blended, so I don't clearly pick out individual notes, but rather vague accords that remind me of a note or another fragrance. For example, I'm not picking out a leather note per se, but I can definitely compare it to some leather fragrances (e.g. Memo - Iberian Leather) or describe it as "leathery". I know the notes don't include vetiver, but I'm getting a peaty, scotch-like vetiver/woody note that I've smelled in other fragrances. I find nutmeg always makes me think of vetiver, likely because there are multiple fragrances that use them together. There's a mildly sweet, warm, balsamic feel to this fragrance that is very inviting, though unexpected for an inexpensive designer scent. Overall, this will no doubt be a challenging scent for what I imagine the O'Boticario target crowd is. When a Western (Brazil, in this case) fragrance company puts out a fragrance for $50 or lower, you expect it to be a mainstream-accessible scent profile like Bleu de Chanel or Gucci Guilty. It doesn't help that the company is sacrificing any identity with the name, bottle design, or marketing of this fragrance by stamping it as a flanker of the very popular (in Brazil), super accessible Malbec. While the sweetness does bear a resemblance to the sweetness found in Malbec, this is really its own fragrance and quite a shock to find from the brand and price. Definitely worth a try if you like the idea of a dirty, woody Oriental, but have found a lot of the offerings from some bigger Middle Eastern houses to be overbearing

This is a hidden gem that compares to may very expensive big name fragrances. The dry down is amazing. I like the smokey component in it and my wife has said this her favorite of over my collection of fragrances. Worth a try and quite affordable as well.