Mancera Intense Cedrat Boise

We're baking a cake with orange zest

At the beginning, it's mostly very distinct citrus zest backed by some sweetness. As the name might suggest, this is even more intense than the base Cedrat Boise. They might have overdone it a little bit, it's really quite sharp. It is also fuller, which is good, as often is the case with EDP/parfums compared to EDTs.

Anyway, If you have ever had the experience of witnessing someone baking a cake with citrus zest and vanilla in the recipe, this is pretty much exactly the smell. It is fine but not exactly what I want from a perfume.

It gets better after the zest fades in about half an hour from application (with it goes the strong initial sillage). The fragrance becomes a pleasant, woody-sweet type of smell with leather and spices giving it a sharp edge. Some of the cake energy remains, which makes things a bit weird in combination with leather. The sweetness is not explicit but milky and implied, like in ice cream - it doesn't really smell sweet but you know it's sweet. This yummy, soothing body vs sharp top composition reminds me of Bleu de Chanel, even though the two fragrances are very different.

After about two hours the smell settles into "a kitchen table with leftover smells from preparing the cake", with zest and vanilla again the most prominent aspect, although at much, much lower strength level than initially. In general, the performance is very weak for a parfum, on about an EDT level.

4/5

7-8/10