Bentley For Men Intense

I finally got my hands on this and just from the bottle design and its aesthetics, you know you're in for a treat. High quality glass, hefty cap and that juice colour perfectly conveys the message as to what this will smell like. Upon first spray many people will get a sweet rum and incense note. You will notice overtime as your nose gets used to it. It will filter that out and upon first spray you will smell the Bay Leaf and Black Pepper prominently. I am 20 and I know many my age or close to it, who would not enjoy this scent profile but for me personally this is just the kind of fragrance I needed in my collection. A very good masculine, barbershop-esque fragrance, it is bright, spicy, aromatic and all of those notes are enveloped by that rum and leather note. You do not smell like some drunkard on the street, this is fine quality liquor that is well blended. There aren't many fragrances that smell like this and even lesser people who wear fragrances in general, so I would say this is a standout. Projection is moderate, though my bottle is of 2025 so it may need to mature a bit, the lasting is subjective, personally for me, can last around 6-8 hours with good moisturisation, for some, it may exceed that.

As Kilian mentions below, this is high on the list of "hard to wear" fragrances. I have now bought bottles/decants of this fragrance three times, and have sold it twice, keeping only a decant. That is more than any other fragrance in my collection. I bought it because it is high quality, well-blended, performs well, and has a rugged, distinctive character that appeals to my sense of adventure and individualism. I sold it because this is even more austere than I like, it has a really strong boozy note that tires me out, and it lasts a very long time in a very linear way. I ultimately decided two things. First, I'm going to keep a 20ml decant of this for the next time i want to buy it. Second, both this and Absolute are flankers of Bentley For Men, sharing the basic dna of that one, but Absolute hits the goldilocks ideal of "just right" in austerity and adds in an incredible note of cedar. The OG Bentley for Men is also very good, softer but cut from the same cloth.

I originally smelt this in 2019 from a decant. Was quite magical, though I didn't understand it and found it cloying after one spray on my shirt neck and not the skin. But after practising with these new fragrances I began to appreciate it and long for it. So, I've ended up with a bottle to mate with my old bottle of Bentley the original. It's made me appreciate that one even more because it's more wearable than Intense, though I have to say I love them and hope to find more moods and situations to wear them. This is still a brutal, brilliant bottle and I so wish to go back and smell it a first time to see if I've forgotten any details in my real bottle. Fellas, this has almost certainly not been reformulated. It's still bold and professional; a beast mode recent classic for heavyweight collections.

This is one of the best amber fougeres out there for men, but it's for everyone. It's not fresh and clean in the way that most of the market expects, and it is furthermore driven by woods once the beautiful beautiful boozy and chocolatey opening fades. (Don't worry, I just mean it has this chocolaty nuance, doesn't smell too sweet or gourmand). I don't really pick up cinnamon or leather once it starts drying down, but I do detect something akin to cummin. And of course woods, and all of it is smoothed out by a little vanilla and benzoin, but it's not the most exiting drydown to be honest. And I think it's for a bit of an older market (30+) the same way something like Grand Soir is.

This stuff is just plain old fun to wear. Peppery, woody, boozy, smoky, leathery. For the love of all that's good in the universe folks! Just give me a big screen TV, a Saturday afternoon with a good college football game and if you need more than that to be happy, you should probably examine your life! ;)