Fortunato

[sarada]

A deep, rich sherry encased in dusty darkness, touched by oak, and damp catacomb stone. The scent begins with a sense of drunken glee, of orange peel, bittersweet berry and rose hip, and moves inexorably towards the dread and terror expressed in black patchouli.

What's wrong with me, that I never reviewed this? I adore this scent. Actually I think my review was eaten when the forum was up and down a lot earlier this year.

So let's try it again:

Cold stone, ivy, slightly sweet, slightly sour fruits and wine, wood soaked with sweet cold wine, damp greenery.

I tend to think of this scent as a series of adjectives, since it has so many distinct fragrances talking to me in unison.

Cold, fruity greenery. Wine caskets swollen with subterranean dampness. Damp stones.

It escapes being purely fruity, because these are musty fruits -- a painting of a still life iced over by dust in the cellar.

As it dries there is less fruit and it is more like dark wood and stone on which a dry wine has splashed. It's a faintly sour and purple wine that strengthens with time.

I love the complexity of this. It's a bit of a cousin of Black Tower...less woody and smoky though.

The four Maelstrom scents I initially ordered back when they debuted are still among my favorite LEs ever and this series is probably still my favorite series thus far.

[vacpl]

I wanted to like this, truly I did. But my skin just doesn't behave!

 

It started of very bitter on my skin. Now it's down to a fairly nondescript orange-berry scent. I feel kind of like I'm wearing Snapple with a bit of powder.

 

This one's going off to someone whose skin loves it more than mine does.

[Monster]

This is one of those bottles I purchased, sniffed a couple times, forgot about and am now just rediscovering it

 

Out of the bottle it has a musky berry scent...and something that reminds me slightly of cough syrup, like Robitussian (but not in a bad way..something sharp and medicinal)

 

On my skin the berry/medicinal note comes out, maybe it's a boozy smelling berry? I can't tell. The musk (probably patchouli..my skin loves patchouli) is very strong on me! Sweet and delicious

 

As this dries down an earthy quality comes out with the sweet berry note lingering softly in the background.

This is a really gorgeous blend. Very dark and rich smelling. This is something I'd wear at night to a party where I had to dress up or out to a nice dinner. it's far too glamerous smelling to wear during the day

 

Love it!

[MoonlightGdess]

Vial: Men's cologne-ish. Mostly patchouli, and orange.

 

Wet: Very orange, less pachouli, no berries or rose hips.

 

Dry: Interesting change. Musky, with a touch of vanilla, a hit of patchouli, and a sweet undertone... the sherry maybe? I feel like I'm in an occult store in Berkeley.

 

Interesting mix, but not my mix. Too incense-y for me.

 

EDIT: It's mellowed a bit since it dried... it's still a bit incense-y but may be a keeper for nights out. Now I smell a bit of patchouli but a lot more sweetness.

Edited October 24, 2006 by MoonlightGdess

[Loligo]

Like cheap potpourri -- a jumble of harsh, fake, cloying notes. I think it's the sherry screwing things up for me, because nothing with alcoholic notes has worked on me in ages.

[supremegoddessofall]

I wasn't expecting to like this because of the orange peel, but I do. I'm getting mostly the fruits and the oak, with a hint of alcohol from the sherry. The rose is in there, but hiding somewhere just under the surface, and it's not overpowering the others. The patchouli is the base from which the other notes are rising. Smells somewhat old and a bit masculine.

[kraken]

In the Bottle: The berries are strong, tinged with what smells like burnt, dried orange peel.

 

Initial Wet: Sweet and fruity with an undercurrent of sherry. No dark woodsy smells, but this isn't a light fruity scent. It reminds me of a spiked berry punch.

 

Initial Dry: The smell of orange peels and rose hips comes through the sweetness, with all the mustiness of a dried potpourri. Overall, it's still berries and the throw becomes quite noticeable.

 

Drier Dry: It's now gone all sour-sweat smelling on me as berries tend to do. Occasionally I get the patchouli instead of the sour in the throw, but it's mostly sour and will probably stay like that.

[wikkidraven]

i was talking with a friend on yahoo when i dabbed this on, and my words to her were omg, it's awful! like burnt, boozy potpourri.

 

terrible on my skin, i don't know what it is making it smell so off but this just isn't my style.

[Extispex]

I like this a lot, but....

 

No, let me start over. My niece thinks this scent smells better on me than any of my BPALS. She loves this one on me, and so do I, sort of.

 

The best way for me to describe this fragrance is 'surprising'. According to the description, it starts off gleeful and moves toward darkness. On me, it does the opposite, beginning sort of dark and gloomy and moving toward glee. Fortunado Retrograde, I guess.

 

In the bottle its a rich wine aroma, with a hint of berries and woods.

 

Wet on me, I get a blast of earthy patchouli (patchouli always smashes me in the face, then fades) with the fruits and wines lingering in the background.

 

The dry-down is really amazing. Fortunado mellows quickly into fruited wine. On me it smells exactly like an expensive, bittersweet orange liqueur. So good I could drink it. And therein lies the problem.

 

It smells like I've totally been boozing it up, and I'm not sure how often I want to smell like that. Other boozy scents work really well for me. they hint at booziness without overpowering, but this... this smell just like liqueur. I keep imagining myself parked on the side of the road, "No officer I haven't been drinking. Thats just my BPAL, Fortunado".

 

"Your pal, Fortunado, you say? But there's no one with you ma'am. Step out of the car please."

 

And yet surely there are occasions when such a fragrance would be appropriate. I can think of a few. This one deserves more testing.

[LadyCrow]

Wet: Red, red wine! Fine wine, with far more throw than I would have expected. This is the first "boozy" scent I've tried that's worked as designed on me. A beautiful mellow sherry, orangey-spicy.

 

Next, I get the deep, dark notes: the oak, stone, and patchouli.

 

Successive stages? It's eerie. You can distinctly track how, on me, the wine gets cheaper over the lifetime of the scent, just the way Montresor fed Fortunato the real thing at first, then increasingly bad wine once he got too drunk to tell the difference. I mean, as a perfume, this is a beautiful, long-lasting perfume on me, and I'll probably seek out more... but if you know the story, it's kind of creepy.

[Naamah_Darling]

Light orange and berry are lively in the bottle, and livelier on my skin. I like this immediately; it's foodier than it is citric, if that makes sense, so it's not a screaming bathroom-cleaner kind of smell. More candylike than anything.

 

The patchouli in this is just really interesting. It doesn't appear until after I've moved away from the scent, then it's an afterodor in my nose, like the smell of turned earth. That's a little disturbing, to say the least.

 

This blend has an aura of . . . haplessness. I don't know how else to put it. I can smell the happy, cheerful orange and berry, but underneath is a lurking horror.

 

Very, very well-done.

[gwynethr]

I got hold of a decant of this and Montressor, and wasn't expecting to like either of them (wine smelling things just aren't my thing, usually). But this one really jumped out for me, much more pleasant aged port smell with that hint of orange Cointreau in the background, than the deep red Cab or sherry smell of its winey cousins.

 

It really does remind me of sipping a very expensive, spicey, aged port, enough so that I went out and found a bottle right away, surprising myself a lot because I wasn't expecting to buy another older bottle of something I missed the first time around.

 

I think that patchouli and hint of aged oak really give it some more depth than most wine scents. I usually hate anything that has old or dusty or aged in the descriptions, but this one works out just fine for me.

[brownbear]

It starts out as bright, sparkly, orange. It is orange dessert wine. yummmm It mellows down a lot on my skin after a while. I wish it stayed as bright as when I first put it on, but I still like it.

[ravenfeathers]

in the bottle berries!... and cough syrup. berry flavoured cough syrup. but that medicinal tang isn't overt or unpleasant. it took a big whiffff to get the tingle in the back of the nose that said "cough syrup".

wet on skin oranges and berries and... cough syrup. it's still not icky, but i'm waiting for someone to walk in my office and ask if i'm sick. it's that lurking, cloying sweetness of someone with a chest cold.

dry on skin halloo, mini-morpher! it goes from thick, rotten-ripe berries to bright, though dusty orange, and is now going to wood and incense with just a hint of the fruits. and the berries? have become sharp and sour.

 

throw is decent and now i'm just waiting for the inevitable comment from a coworker. if i hear "robitussin" or "orange liqueur"....

unique and interesting and i like it a lot.

Edited March 13, 2008 by ravenfeathers

[carrickfergus]

Holy fruity booze, Batman!

 

At first I smelled like I just took a swim in a pool of some VERY unpleasant mixed drink no one outside a frathouse would ever willingly ingest. It faded to something that might almost be tolerable in very small doses, but remains horrid fruity booze that someone has tried to hide by rubbing tobacco leaves directly onto one's body.

 

It is quite revolting.

[dawndie]

In bottle: barely-there red wine

 

On skin: mmm, the red wine blooms, sweet and viscous

 

Half-hour later: the wine has turned bitter from the orange peel, with patchouli adding a bit of black dirt

 

In conclusion: I received a decant of Fortunato when this series was initially released way back when, thinking I'd love it. I didn't like how it ended, however, and gave the decant to my husband. He liked this one the most out of the imps/decants I've asked him to try over the years, so I recently bought him a bottle. It really does smell great on him!

[CreamyJade]

In the bottle: Sweet booze, fruits.

Wet on skin: Dried apricots and fruits, orange.

Dry on skin: Sweetness of the berries, patchouli.

Final thoughts: Beautiful fruity scent with dark undertones! I'm not one for fruity scents usually but this one strikes a favorable chord Yay Fortunato!

[zankoku_zen]

This is a sweet berry, boozy scent with dark, woody undertones and swirls of patchouli.

 

If you like Merlot, you should wear this.

[fairnymph]

In the bottle: Light amber coloured oil. Sharp! Bitter berry and citrus with dirty, rooty patchouli. Lots of patchouli. Kinda masculine.

 

Wet: Magically softer! Much less sharp and earthy. The orange peel is sweeter, and I can pick out a bit of rose hip. The berry's less bitter, reminds me of Baneberry.

 

Dry: Astringent tobacco and something else green and slightly bitter. The orange is long gone, though the citrusy rose hip is holding. A berryish-grapey wine note. Patchouli has emerged again.

 

Later: This has gone really dusty. Not powdery, but dusty, and it mixes with some warm, dry oak. This is amazingly woody in drydown.

 

Summary: Dust, dirty patchouli, rich oak, tobacco and bitter ivy with grapey wine. Oddly mentholic and earthy and fruity all at once. Low throw.

 

[Lamia]

My husband actually volunteered that I smelled like cherry pie, and that he liked it (!)

 

The roses and berries combine deliciously with the patchouli to make a dusty fruity bliss.

[Invidiana]

This is one of those where you really need to wait for the full drydown to experience all the layers. It starts out deceptively dusty and woody, much like the cellar Montresor and Fortunato found themselves in, but gradually deepens from that dusty brown scent to a rich deep reddish-brown that encompasses the sweet sherry and berries and orange peel with just a touch of dread from the patchouli at the end. A masterful way of capturing that character and scene!

Edited December 1, 2009 by Invidiana

[mxtine]

I generally don't do well with boozy notes, especially wine and champagne because they turn into GRAPES, which I loathe as perfume. This has a teeny bit of grapiness in the imp, so I have reservations...

 

On my skin, I smell a thick, rich, golden sherry. It's fruity but I can't pin anything specific down. Maybe candied orange peel? The oak and patchouli are very faint, but I can smell it in there, giving this otherwise sweet blend a nice woody-earthiness.

 

It's not knocking my socks off, but is interesting enough to hold onto for the cooler months.

Edited April 30, 2011 by mxtine