Costa Azzurra Acqua

This smells like a niche interpretation of Bleu de Chanel EDP with a wet green twist. Up until now, BDC was the highest quality iteration of this type of scent that I had smelled. Now this is. Citrusy top (get an icy fresh and unique-ish gin feel at the top of this one), incensey cypress and mastic. The cypress is fresh beautiful and wet. The mastic is full and round. Warm, rich, and powdery amber and labdanum base. Cypress hangs on until the end. Blue green. This smells much better and more interesting than BDC. Although it 'performs' worse depending on what your goals are. Both fragrances are in my top 40 for different reasons. This one has more details when you get closer, as if you magnified BDC and found out that there was no further information upon magnification. And then brought CAA under a microscope and found a wealth of detail and information. But from across the room they didnt look totally and completely different. The gallery lit CAA with soft cypress green lighting. I do get some similarity to Gucci by Gucci Pour Homme, the cypress note is similar. Overall feel is similar too. Another lense through which I view this fragrance (which concerns concept rather than scent) is as opposed to Jardin En Mediterranee where Jardin en Mediterranee is artistic and realistic and natural and abstract and costa azzurra acqua is smoothed out and idealized, polished. Much more of a playboy than jardin en Mediterranee who is content to hang out at the rose garden or art gallery alone. Azzurra acqua wants some good looking company.

As a fan of the original Costa Azzura I was thrilled to get a sample of this. Having assumed ‘acqua’ implied lighter and softer, I applied four sprays from the sample vial before a long drive. As a result, I sat in a lush, thick, happy cloud of a humid cypress grove for three hours. CAA opens with lovely green aromatics. Juniper is most prominent, but there’s something else herbal and green. Checking the notes after testing, I can only assume this is the myrtle, with which I am unfamiliar. The cypress is there from the start but takes over the composition within half an hour. There is also a presence of pine once the juniper has faded, but much less strong and forward than the lovely cypress. Five hours later the cypress and pine, which have already started to soften, fade gracefully into the mastic that rules the drydown. I catch the barest occasional whiff of leathery spicy warmth if I hunt for it, but it’s really all about the mastic, keeping everything fresh and woodsy through the end. Ten hours after applying, the mastic is still here, and while the sillage is soft I can still smell it well above my skin. CAA, while not weaker by any means, is a fresher, woodier, more straightforward interpretation of the original CA. If you like the original, or need a summer scent that doesn’t feature calone, fruits, flowers, or citrus, I encourage you to give CAA a try :)

Have you ever driven up the coast of northern California in the summertime? Up where the really big redwoods grow. The temperature climbs into the mid nineties in mid July. After you park your car, you start walking west towards the ocean. As you tote your ice chest towards a small clearing near a cliff that overlooks the Pacific Ocean, you look back to see your partner following with a blanket and a couple of plastic cups. It's nice, you can feel the sunshine on your skin and ocean breeze. The temperature drops a few degrees, you can smell the Redwood trees you just walked through, or is that the salty driftwood in the breeze hitting you in the face? And you can smell the yellow lemons that you're now cutting in half to squeeze into your plastic cups to make some makeshift Moscow Mules because your partner thought; lemons, limes, it's all the same... Cheers! Perfect for the summer and for the gym, works wonderfully with my chemistry when I sweat... but falls flat on its face as soon as the temperature drops below room temperature.

This is very fresh, herbal, and woody when first sprayed. I adore the slight resinous undertone of the pine, cypress, and especially juniper, but I don't get tons of citrus at any point. Comparatively, Costa Azzurra is definitely warmer and woodier. The Acqua is cooler, fresher, with more citrus, whereas the regular Costa Azzurra is more of a primarily fresh spicy experience. I like this in the same way I like Molton Brown Coastal Cypress and Sea Fennel. It has a similar marine, fresh, balsam vibe without the prominent leather note that the Molton Brown has. Also, on me the Acqua lasts longer and projects better, which is not what I'd expected. In my collection, the Acqua is more unique and up my alley, frankly. It would be an absolutely perfect summer fragrance. Moral of the story - Costa Azzurra and it's Acqua are worlds apart on me. Don't assume they will be similar just because one is a flanker - test first.

Excellent, truly perfect and refined summer scent. I purchased this scent in late summer of 2019, wherefore I used it for just about one month before leaves started to fall. However, during that month, I truly liked this scent. As for the summer scents, some kind of citrus is to be expected. As well as general freshness. Where this scent excells, is the fact that somehow, it manages to combine freshness of citrus, while at the same time, it somehow manages to remain butterly smooth, a scent without any bitter or hard edges. As for performance, initially it projects well. For a summer scent. Nothing spectacular, as that would not be be expected from summer scent, but all in all, appropriate projection for this kind of scents. With respect to longevity, it lasts about 6 hours on my skin. After that, it fades to skin scent. In conclusion: Very, very good summer scent, with some little performace issues, however.