Yuzu Man is the latest masculine release from Caron and personally I feel a bit sorry for it. It can’t be easy being the new guy on the block when your brothers are such highly acclaimed scents as Pour un Homme, Yatagan and Le Troisième Homme. Yuzu Man has a lot to live up to, and the standards for masculines set by the house are very high.

Does Yuzu Man live up to The high standards set by its counterparts?

In a word….No.

Yuzu Man is a perfectly pleasant scent but it most certainly is not on par with the other Caron masculines.

The Notes:

Japanese Yuzu, Indian Verbena, Indonesian Basil, Provencal Fig, Australian Sandalwood and Atlas Cedarwood. [1]

How Does it Smell?

The list of notes lead you to believe that Yuzu Man is going to smell exotic, and the description on the Caron Website bangs on about the ‘harmony between East and West’. The truth is that Yuzu Man does not smell exotic, in fact it smells rather bland.

The scent opens with fresh citrus, and the promised yuzu note is the first disappointment. Whilst pleasant, the yuzu doesn’t have that ripe, bitter and almost sour quality that makes the fruit so interesting. What we have instead is a generic, fresh citrus that thanks to some super-synthetic material manages to last all the way to the dry down. The top notes are crisp, peppery and ever so slightly astringent.

Basil gives Yuzu Man a herbal, green quality that unfortunately is hidden by the citrus. This vague greenness is supported by a fresh fig note with slightly earthy nuances. I can’t help but feel that if the green aspect of the basil and fig were more pronounced this would be a much better and more interesting fragrance.

After a few hours, the citrus is still there but it has subdued dramatically and what’s left is a soft, slightly warm musky base. The dry down is by far the best part of the fragrance and the cedar note adds a gentle woody-spiceyness that feels at once very comfortable. The cedar adds a dry quality that works nicely with the citrus notes and prevents Yuzu Man from smelling too ‘sporty’. Sandalwood is listed in the notes but I have to admit that I cannot detect at all.

On the whole I think Yuzu Man is a nice fragrance, however I can think of at least a dozen masculine fragrances that are better examples of the woody-citrus genre (Tom Ford for Men springs to mind) and it certainly isn’t good enough to compare with its brothers from the same house.

The Bottle

Yuzu Man is housed in the usual Caron Masculine bottle which is used for all masculine Caron fragrances (excluding L’Anarchiste).

Availibility

Yuzu Man is available in 75ml and 100ml EDT with prices ranging from £44-£59.50.

Disclaimer

This review is based on a sample provided by Escentual.com

[1] http://www.parfumscaron.com

Image 1 http://www.fragrantica.com

Image 2 mloge on flickr