Café V

*cue music that plays in the cafe in Persona 5* The evolution, complexity and quality in general is always amazing with Olympic Orchids and Cafe V is no different! In the opening act, cardamom and chai are the stars of the show. Both are so realistic and fragrant. There’s a heart of rich, dark wood but it’s mainly a warm spicy carda-bomb (ha) There’s this addictive acidic scent in the espresso and dark cacao notes that is so lush. This is a gourmand in Ellen Covey’s style, it’s not sweet or dessert-y but roasted and full bodied and spiced and delectable. Then I smelled my sample strip a few hours later and got this lovely, smooth, worn in leather with the scent of coffee being ground in the next room. I always cherish when I find a scent that genuinely evolves right under my nose (HA!!!). The cardamom and chai now take a backseat to leather and a bit of dark roast espresso beans and rich mahogany wood. I wouldn’t say the coffee notes are front and center at any point but it’s more so the atmosphere and cafe ~vibe~ This takes me back to working overnights as a barista at this cafe called Monkey Nest in Austin when I moved out there on a whim at 17. It smells exactly like the loose leaf chai tea and the lattes I would powder with spices and practice foam art on, and reminds me of the coziness of the low lighting, chatting with regulars, listening to the “chill indie” playlist on repeat. Or the yearly art fest they have in November near me where the air is crisp and cool and there are handmade leatherwork stalls and coffee pop-ups grinding their own beans and pouring from French presses.

Yum! I fell head over heels for cafe'v! I have been searching for an ambery,cozy,deep dark fragrace for fall. I had a large decant of amber sultan and almost bought that but decided to try one more. I love spicy,leathery,woodsy frags so i blind bought a full bottle of cafe'v. I didn't know what to expect and reveiws differ. Well, delicious! This perfume is high quality, thick,dark,woody,amber,cozy and perfect for fall. It smells like October. It starts with a blast of strong sweet cardamom (my nose perceives as cinnomin) cocoa. Soon it begins to smell similar to Amber Sultan, the ambery quality with the same green note that smells like angelica. Next it changes into a hot mug of creamy chi tea with an extra sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg and it's sitting on a bed of suede. Doesn't smell like harsh stinky leather, it smells like a soft luxurious suede blanket; it's not a dominant note but it's there. Finally it morphs into what reminds me alot of Chergui. Oh my gosh! I found my cozy, warm, spicy, frothy fall fragrace! Sillage is magnificent and longevity outstanding! 12 hours, and sillage is a good 6 feet. One spray lasts all day. Its georgeous. I also love that Ellen Covey hand signed a thank you for the purchase, the packaging is so elegant and i received 3 free samples. I will definatly be buying from her again. I just wish they sold bigger bottles:)

It's been 4 years since I purchased this and its been a couple years since I've worn it. This gets better And stronger with age! I keep all my perfumes in a dark wooden cabinet and Cafe V got stronger and darker and thicker oh, I didn't think it was possible to get any stronger and it did. It smells even better now that is aged than it did when I first got it. I wore this today and got compliments from everybody about how good I smell. It starts with strong burst of cardamom and cinnamon and then some leather in dark coffee come out along with whipped cream and some dark woods. It smells like a cafe. Absolutely delicious. Great to wear in the fall and winter. It smells like you could eat it. Cafe V will stick to your skin and clothes until you wash it off. So it starts strong and stays strong and a scent Trail follows you until you shower it all off. This is the only perfume that has stayed as strong as it was from first spray that I've ever tried. Definitely worth the money if you like Gourmet Coffee smells, Smoky leathery Woody smells, spicy perfumes ,then you'll love this. It reminds me of chai tea and coffee while sitting in an old Cafe.

Opens with whipped cream and vanilla, quickly throws off some caramel, cookie and marshmallow, like the inside of one of those puffy, bundt-shaped, chocolate covered marshmallow cookies, and a little bit like a samoa. There's also something slightly sharp that my partner described as minty, but it's much subtler, like a spearmint flavored mint, might be the cardamom. The chai flirts in and out. If you drink chai regularly, you might notice it more. The coffee is also subtle, smelling more of an overly flavored vanilla latte. There's no fresh grinds smell in this if that is what you're looking for. Slowly, it gets more leathery, like a well worn full grain leather when it's cool. A great gourmand and smelling salt. Some women may find it too masculine because of the leather, and I saw many reviewers detected heavy woods. The Cafe name is apt, but it smells more like a cafe that mostly does sweets and serves drip coffee than the brewing espresso scent you might expect.

I adore this perfume. The more I wear it, the more it smells like white chocolate. I also detect vanilla and a base of woods. This is a very creamy, woody gourmand vanilla, for sure! Sillage is fantastic. Similar to House of Matriarch Coco Blanc, but so much better and far more interesting. Makes me remember rainy days in Seattle when I would duck into a coffee shop with steam covered windows. So cozy and one of the creamiest wood scents out there, without being sugary sweet. An artisan masterpiece. Update: I now own a 30ml bottle. It’s different from my travel spray. In this one I smell hot cinnamon and leather. My first purchase was a few years ago, and it was creamier and wasn’t spicy nor leathery at all. Still beautiful in any case and well-blended! This one is like the same steamy coffee shop, but it has cozy leather chairs.

I just got this sample in the mail and I am both intrigued and very happy! It reminds me of a beautiful shop I used to visit, almost a baroque place full of stationery and bits and bobs and especially for Christmas Decorations, as if you were INSIDE THE TREE talking to the elves and the goblins! It reminds me of the smell of tapestries and ink wells and mysterious books and tea in linen bags and coffee in Italian espresso machines and biscotti-cookies in parchments, with the rain falling steadily outside the window panes. My husband said at first that he thought it was not feminine AT ALL but as it dried he changed his mind and said it was starting to convince him. :D

Ive tried a few coffee dominated fragrances now but this is head and shoulders above the rest Montale etc etc. Cardamom is one of my favourite spices and I am pleasantly surprised a how well it goes with coffee. This is sweet but also equally leathery and smokey. The sillage is big so handle with care. Great longevity and definitely unisex. Ive currently got a 15ml bottle but definitely buying another as a back up. I also own Sensei and I can see why someone considers it similar. Yes, they are both strong coffee fragrances but Sensei is less spicey and has a big swig of whiskey present. Cafe V is very coffee centred unlike Sensei.

I tried this a while back, and now a few years later, it's interesting to compare my notes. Yep, it's still dusty and woody. A beautiful leathery scent. To me, it smells like old leather-bound books and just ever-so-slightly of coffee. I don't get much sweetness in it at all, and that's something I appreciate about Olympic Orchids scents. They don't give you cavities, but they efficiently massage the sweet tooth. This one definitely falls on the "masculine" or "unisex" side. And it's not gourmand so-to-speak. It's more of an experience than a fragrance. But entirely wearable. Certainly in the running for a bottle!

Exquisite gourmand wood! Hands down the best I've smelled. It transports you to a quaint little corner cafe that's been there for years and only the locals know about. Rich layers of coffee and pastry aromas that have soaked into the woodwork after a few decades. A deep saturation of the most mind-blowing woods ,white chocolate and a touch of leather. This is what Coco Blanc should have been. Noire Excuis tried to achieve this as well and failed miserably (so disappointed). But this is just...wow ! I find myself craving it frequently in cooler weather. Ellen Covey is talented beyond words. This is a must-have!

Based on the notes, I was expecting a sweet gourmand. Luckily, I was wrong. Cafe V smells like drinking a dark cardamom coffee on a leather chair near a burning fireplace. The opening is warm spicy coffee. Then, smokiness and quality leather takes over. The woodiness comes out on the drydown. The fragrance is perfectly unisex. I don't find it sweet or particularly edible. It truly does smell like lounging in an upscale cafe. Projection is moderate. Wear time on skin was 4-6 hours.

I won a sample of this and a few other new scents from Olympic Orchids in a givaway on the perfumers blog. For me this scent is all about the wood, a light and spicy cedar note. I also get a very delicate, non-foody, cardamom. This is really not a very gourmand sort of scent on me... It is not very sweet, the vanilla is barely noticable and the cream nonexistent... The coffee is only a distant memory. Café V doesn't bring a café to mind for me, but it is beautifully melancholic!

This isn't a coffee scent. This is a cafe scent. Sure there's a bit of the dark coffee note but there's even more leather and spice. I swear I get nag champa and tobacco too! I get more whipped cream than vanilla in the dry down. It never looses it's dark and smokey side. This is the classic Northwest cafe with hippies and folks smoking on the sidewalk out front and real leather. It's 1995, but in a way that also feels timeless. I am in love.

This perfume I find very earthy and aroma-rich if that makes sense. As Axum mentioned it does smell of vegetation/undergrowth, but also strong leather and spice notes with a touch of vanilla lingering in the background. It really does evoke a deeper sense of feeling in me than any mainstream perfume I've ever tried. It feels alive, like lingering memories of places I have been, things I have felt and people I have seen

Coffee and cardamom with a big burst of a dark woodsy cacao. This is an ancient library with a local coffee shop nearby. It’s the gleaming wood shelves and vanillic binding of old books and the perfect spiced cocoa in your hand while your partner has his black coffee. You both settle into leather chairs and settle in for a cozy read. Comforting and delicious.

Well I bought a back up bottle of this spicy coffee bomb. I never want to be without it. It is STRONG and with impressive sillage. If I wait a while I finally can pick out the chai and cream. First and foremost this is about cardamom and coffee. It's still my no 1 coffee scent. Amazing juice!

Love this fragrance! It’s kind of a spicy, dark roasted burnt coffee scent. I don’t understand the SL Chergui comparison but it does remind me of SL La Couche du Diable but more gourmand with the cardamom. Brilliant and memorable, I am loving this perfumery.

On a paper blotter, this is very one dimensional and wood-centric. One skin, it blossoms into something quite special indeed, with the whipped cream waltzing with wood and coffee.

This starts off very rich. You made the mistake of breaking up with someone at a Starbucks, and they've dumped their entire venti mocha frap with cream all over you. It gets more palatable with time, but that start is sickly sweet. Growing up, my mother was a chocolatier, and I spent lots of time in the back rooms of the shop, surrounded by the strong, penetrating scent of sugar. Humans are attuned to sniffing out sugar as a valuable source of calories, but the experience of being surrounded by a sheer quantity of pure sugar far beyond anything you would experience in nature overwhelms the senses. To this day, I can only eat the darkest, most bitter chocolate. Anything else makes me feel a little sick. So this could be a personal association (trauma?) but I get the same punch here, and in particular the whipped cream note almost makes me dizzy. As the cream melts away the wood and leather and spice comes out which is very welcome, and after an hour or two, it's closing time at the cafe, which is a much more comfortable volume of sugar for me. Despite being so rich at the start, this really doesn't have as much "body" as a gourmand perfume, so don't go in expecting that, it likely won't make you salivate. Overall, really impressive and unique, and even though I wouldn't wear this, it brought forth a lot of interesting personal memories. This isn't something that is missing the mark, it knows what it wants, it's just not for me. Worth a sniff, I reckon.

Cafe V is a misnomer. First time I sprayed the sample, I thought I got it mixed up coz you expect a strong coffee note when a frag is called Cafe V. Nope. What this is is a gourmand masala chai fragrance. If you are Indian, this is the smell of tea time, Cardamom or elaichi tea with lots of milk and sugar and cream pastry on the side. There is the smell of coffee grounds in there somewhere and the leather notes peek in during the base but the cardamom masala chai and whipped cream notes dominate. This is the first frag I have smelled that gets our Indian masala Chai note bang spot on. Very cozy fragrance, especially here during the monsoon and tea time is usually a fun family ritual for most of us so this has very relaxing connotations to it for me. A comfort frag if you will. I dont think she was going for it but Ellen Covey has perfectly captured the smell of evening tea time in India. Good longevity and projection as well. Very impressed and I am having a lot of fun wearing this one asking friends and family to guess the smell... a few moments of confusion because the smell is so darn familiar and then that aha moment when I say "Chai"!!!

OMG I'm not sure why they placed this into Oriental Vanilla category, because it's so not where it belongs. There is nothing oriental or vanilla about it. This fragrance to me smells exactly like Tom Ford Tuscan Leather, EXACT SMELL! Stinky leather, stinky leather and more really stinky leather with a touch of cocaine, yep, and I'm not really into that. No coffee, no cream, no cardamom, no masala chai - just leather. This is definitely more of a male fragrance, I cannot imagine this on a woman. But there is a good thing to it as well, its not very expensive, so if you like Tuscan Leather, try this instead cause its way less money. The packaging is great, I ordered 5ml and it came beautifully packaged, I also got a few samples, which I think is wonderful. Longevity of this fragrance is INCREDIBLE, this is the only perfume in the history of perfumes that lasted on my skin 7 hours, and I've tried at least a thousand niche perfumes, none of them stayed on me that long, at the most 4 hours, and those are very few. The samples they sent me I enjoyed so I would definitely be interested in trying more stuff from this house.

Am I the only one that gets a serious blast of booze in the opening of this? It smells like I poured a dram of single malt while wearing a leather jacket, leather gloves, leather chaps, while sitting on a sweaty saddle. What I'm indicating here is that it's very animalic and leathery. At first it's a little too in-your-face and I almost want to scrub it off! After a few minutes though the more sweet, spicy and vanilla notes come out making it much more friendly to my nose. I don't get much in the way of coffee or chocolate but I swear I get a whiff of coconut! Overall it's not unpleasant but far from making me swoon. Maybe I'll use when I feel like smelling a little raunchy.

Unventilated wood café at a national park. The inside is incredibly dark and musty. They've been serving black coffee, hot chocolate and rum for the past 50 years, though now they're out of commission. The fumes and spills of those liquids have embedded themselves into the wood and you can only smell a feint ghost of them, combining all 3 into an aromatically beautiful and bitter blend. All Ellen Covy's perfumes have a different flavor of "USA national park wood-house cabin" and this best showcases that. I wouldn't wear it out but I love vague feelings and memories this brings out of me.

Opening: a coffee scented leather chair Dry down: cardamom and other spices, similar to chai tea. Base: hot chocolate with whipped cream Cafe V has three distinct phases. I picked up all of those notes over the span of a few hours. I’m sampling from a dauber discovery set, and think it’s important to note that a spray would probably make the performance better. I always enjoy testing Olympic Orchids scents. I liked the dry down and base better than the opening, a solid like for an easy to wear leather/gourmand.

I agree that cardamom, with its green pepper / spice quality is front and center in Cafe V, along with notes of damp vegetation, vanilla and - yes - sweet whipped cream or milk foam. It's got a Pacific NW vibe for sure, and the atmosphere of a cafe on a rainy day - which is perhaps the point, not coffee itself. No one could possibly mistake this for department store mainstream: the composition is truly original, and the quality of ingredients is excellent.

354 Cardamom, coffee, leather, wood, pastries... I love the strong cardamom note in this and growing up in the Pacific Northwest in the 90’s during the era of coffee culture, I understand the coffee shop scent experience this is going for. I am not a fan of the plasticky leather smell and if toned down a bit, it would be perfect. More of an experience or a memory of a past place gone by... 7/10-not bad!

I agree with the folks that compare this to Lush's Cardamom Coffee, there is a lot of overlap here. I think Cafe V is better, it has a creamy slightly clean orangey aspect and the coffee isn't so in your face and it develops more, but if you have one you probably don't need to get the other (I have the Lush personally).

This fragrance is a wild ride. It is so weirdly medicinal when first sprayed. However, then all of a sudden chocolate and coffee come blasting through. I actively hate chocolate notes in perfumes, but coffee is more neutral aspect for me and I love leather and spices, especially cardamom. At the point of dry down this is mostly chocolatey chai tea, without any sort of milky/lactonic aspect to make it interesting. It also seems to fade very quickly, as in 15 or 20 minutes after spraying. I do not specifically get a lot of cardamom. That note seems lost in a miasma more powerful spices like cinnamon and the infernal lingering of chocolate. I do get some fairly decent woody base notes. But how people are rating this as strongly cardamom and leather ... I have no idea. I think if you want a generic chai scent, this is fine. But if you were looking for serious cardamom and leather, I suggest looking elsewhere. My personal, ultimate cardamom and leather is Histoire d'Eau Mauboussin. And, if you are wanting a chai scent that is less gourmand and has woody depth and complexity, I'd suggest Carner Barcelona's Palo Santo.

Mostly leather and wood on me. Dark, sour, and a bit spicy but not as well rounded as I had hoped. I don't really get any whipped cream. The coffee, chocolate, and chai are all sort of blended together into one drink and lose the uniqueness of each. As a result it's sort of cinnamony spice amalgamation with depth but reminds me a little of Christmas cinnamon bundles and scented candles.

to start off it was very spicy and i couldnt smell anything else but leather. but as it dried the vanilla, coco and coffee bean slowly started to come in it was a lot better and pleasant to smell. 6.7/10

coffee breath in a dusty leather booth

Rain-drenched actors... congregated. For sure. Damp, maybe mildewed, herbal and woodsy notes as others have said. My difficulty with this is the camphor/medicinal aspect of those herbal facets. I can't place that in any cafe, coffee, damp landscape, or actor's body at all. That note plays too loud and spoils the composition for me, unfortunately. Because I feel like, underneath that note is a beautiful idea and a fascinating scent.

My expectations were too high for this - really wanting the deep dark roast scent that I do get when I walk into a coffee shop in Seattle. I agree with LaDomna - unfortunately the coffee scent is lacking in this for me. I get the aroma of leather and damp wood - and it's heavy on the cardamom.

This smells like a dark shadowy bar in Louisanna that plays acid jazz and is frequented by hot lesbian Wiccans. The incense vibe is alluring and the chocolate notes give me a sense of familiarity but alas, I go home alone because I wore Cool Water that night.

Very earthy, dirt accord on the leather on this one. A little coffee, a little spice, a little smoothness from the cream, a lot of soil/leather. It's nice but not as much coffee as I was hoping for. Very strong leather note.

It's a beautiful scent, but it's not for me. With my body chemistry, it comes out as a sharp leather smell with damp wood and a hint of cardamom. None of the other notes really come through on me. Very masculine on me.

First it's like a doctor's office that sells baked sweets, then it's just sweet and artificial. Very simple and shallow.

way more leather than coffee to me

As is true of DEV 2, this is definately a unisex scent, with something of an aromatic/woody opening and slightly sweeter drydown. Delightful. I think Cafe V has much to live up to in the name, possibly more than any one fragrance can supply. Each one of us pictures a certain kind of cafe and coffee scent, which no one perfume will deliver! With an open mind, we may actually see what Ellen Covey's Cafe is... The woody aroma is lovely here, almost a cedar presence, and I was instantly reminded of an excellent men's cologne. But then I finally identify what I am smelling - wood, leather, and a LARGE dollop of Cardamom. Near the drydown, a creamy quality enters, indicitive of a distant cafe con leche or cappuccino, with a hint of softly sweet vanilla. In the end, this particular scent is neither the strongest nor the most controversial of Ellen's inspired creations. I would encourage you not to view it as your favorite cafe OR a coffee-centric scent. Allow it to take you on a trip to ANOTHER place, skillfully sketched out for us in Cafe V. Enjoy! Thoughts: Not a scent for the shy - though applied in small quantity it stays quite close to the skin. Apply at your discretion. :D Avoid if you hate Cardamom. To me, it adds a wonderfully unique character, but it is very, very prevalent. Oh my, do we have outstanding longevity here. Ellen Covey is to be congratulated!

I'm a feminine woman very comfortable wearing this, even to work. It smells nothing like what I had imagined it was going to, but have been pleasantly surprised. The spice is very subtle. If there's coffee it is old and cold and there are cigarette butts beside it. Café V is a scent of place and time: for me personally it smells exactly like the inside of very old rattler train I used to take in my late teens and early 20s through a mountain pass to reach home in the cold months. It perfectly captures the locked up smell of the train booth-the old leather seats, the brass trimmings, the old wooden racks, the scent of travellers and their luggage and newspapers. It also reminds me of the smell of a classy antique store-the books, some old clothes, black and white photos of nameless, forgotten people. Absolutely love Café V for when I want to be aloof and melancholic. This will not be a compliment gatherer among the masses. This is scent for one. Love.

I am for sure seeing a theme emerge here with the samples the perfumer sent me. That is amber galore. Labdanum drenched in vanillin making the classic sweet amber accord (hint, it's the labdanum that makes this brown colored.) Unlike Night Flyer that has no amber note (except for an absolute mountain of Siam Benzoin. This one starts to verge on cloyingly amber sweet for me. No coffee c02 here, but cream and sugar galore. Has a huge hit of coumarin (Tonka bean) too. Leather? Hmm, maybe a pinch of IBQ or Suederal, not much though. Possibly affixed by a wood chemical like cedarmbre or vertofix. Also possibly a tiny amount of orange blossom or oranger crystal here to fatten it a bit, (like Tauer likes to do). Here is a little hint, all the sweet you smell is something like this is always vanillin, here it's boosted by coumarin and labdanum and maybe a tiny bit of ethyl maltol.

How anyone can draw similarities between Cafe V and Coco Blanc is beyond me. Coco Blanc is a soft, creamy skin scent, but this cleans out your sinuses! It's unfortunate because I LOVED the sample I had from a few years ago, but recently fragrances with dominant spices have been anything but kind to me; I guess this is payback for my long love of heavy orientals. On me, this is relentless cardamom and woods; the sillage and longevity are outstanding though! In this case, I will say it's not Cafe V; it's me, but I cannot wear Cafe V anymore. I have a 30 ml bottle that's only been sprayed a few times and it's now up for swap; if you want it, message me.

Ellen Covey for Senate! Seattle is the king of coffee. I hear that Olympic Orchids Artisan is based out of Seattle. It's only right that Cafe V would be the best in it's coffee classification, right? Correctamundo! Have you ever been to Diary Queen and tried their Cappuccino Moolatte? Well, this smells exactly like that. The only downside(for me) is that the biggest size comes in a 30ml. That's like a musical album having only 8 songs haha! I can't complain too much. At least the price is only about $40 dollars.

When people talk about leather scents, they make references to everything from saddles to handbags to various types of suede, but leather notes never smell like leather to me, and that’s the problem I have with Cafe V. To me this smells something like coffee with burnt rubber. It’s certainly original, but severely limits occasions when I might wear it. It feels like something I’d wear to a pretentious art installation in a warehouse space filled with 15ft high Mapplethorpe fetish photographs.

This is one of those scents, that for me, is reminiscent of something way, way, back in time. It carries a wood base that seems a trademark Covey. It's colour is of brown crackling Leather pair of Chaps. The Cardamon adds a dry, dusty, spicy almost paperlike smoke that parches slightly. It carries a tone similar to Heeley's Phoenicia. Unisex? I would say it is the kind of thing us boys like.

I think it kinda smells gross, like stale coffee spilt on a dusty old leather chair that’s been sitting outside mixed with fake blood made from corn syrup and cocoa powder, but I kinda like it at the same time? I’m never going to wear it out, but happy to have it in my collection because it’s definitely a unique fragrance

I get a dark, worn wood and leather scent, with a bit of cardamom and maybe a pinch of coffee grounds. Not sweet at all on my skin. An interesting scent, but not really something I want to smell like.

Woody scent drapped with leather and undertones of spices. Has a sweet fluffiness to it as well. Reminds me of an old library with exquisite wood furniture.

I get cardamon, leather, and coffee. It smells pleasant just not my style.