Reviews of Aoud Vanille by Mancera

I like Mancera fragrances. I've owned, sampled and currently own a few Mancera perfumes, the majority of which I like. I love Amore Caffe but I DID grow a bit tired of it after applying it many many nights at bedtime...

Not much to say about Aoud Vanille. Lots 'n lots 'n lots of strong, spicy, aoud wood with a smidgen of vanilla. Wish I smelled florals but I do not. I'm not one to classify scents, per se. I believe, "Wear what you want, wear what you love." With this said, the fragrance leans extremely masculine. On my skin, it's a 95% aoud wood scent. Some smoky notes in the dry down. Long lasting with moderate silage.

A good value in a sea of niche fragrances flooded with vanilla-wood-aoud perfumes. Just didn't realize it would lean so masculine on my skin.

Way too much of an aoud overdose for my current taste.

This one is heaven! Its definitely a sweet gourmand scent, but a grown up one. You don't smell like a cupcake.

Initially i get a lush combination of rich buttery wood notes (quite oak or teak like to my nose) slathered in creamy caramelly vanilla, and a hefty dollop of cardamom on top. The cardamom is definitely very noticeable but not so in your face that it takes over. My OH really likes cardamom but even he said this fragrance is really nice.

On drydown the cardamom mellows & fades/blends into the overall warm woody oud notes. The vanilla remains on the forefront of the fragrance but matures & almost intensifies when the wood & spice notes mellow & blend together. The result is a warm super cozy vanilla with rich golden caramel hints to it, resting on lush Creamy wood notes.

Its a very sexy, sultry grown up vanilla. Absolutely lush!

Hands down my best blind buy!

The opening is a blast of burnt vanilla, medicinal oud, and pepper. The wIfe said it smelled smokey. It's there but I don't get too much of that. In the drydown, as the name implies, this is a vanilla and oud focused scent, with vanilla being 60% of that combo. That focus on the vanilla makes this pleasant to wear and smell.

Aoud Vanille feels like a cooler weather scent that could be good for date nights. Unisex for sure.

Performance is really good with noticeable projection and all-day longevity.

A pleasant vanilla with added floral, sandalwood & oud notes.

Nothing amazing and in a way quite generic although still smells decent.

Longevity & sillage are both good.

If you own Montale/Mancera fragrances, you know all about this awful opening: pure alcohol for the first few minutes. The oud is synthetic and like all of their other oud scents: no difference there. The vanilla is also very heavy, synthetic and smells cheap. The balance between the two is better than expected: the spice and oud keeps the vanilla from being cloyingly sweet, as does the woody base.

Projection is pretty strong, don't overapply. Longevity is 4-5 hours, average for the line. The drydown mellows everything out: it becomes much better during the second phase. The vanilla and oud mellow out to a much more pleasant combination, sweet and sensual. It just takes too long for it to get to that point for me to recommend, and the opening is so strong and powerfully abrasive the much improved yet very linear second stage of the scent still inclines me to give this a thumbs down.

5/10

This is an ok oud scent. It's not groundbreaking or anything special, and the oud in this is so mainstream/Westernized that it seems almost muted. In fact I don't even get any chocolate type aroma that I usually get with ouds. It just smells sort of muted. On the drydown the vanilla starts to become more apparent. But instead of smelling like natural or boozy vanilla as in for example Replica's Jazz Club, this oddly smells almost exactly like the Pakistani ice cream known as kulfi on my skin. It's uncannily similar. Sillage is moderate while longevity is pretty good (but it's no beast). It's a nice scent but not something I would buy a full bottle of to be honest.

4/5

Just received this today after a blind buy and I must say I'm enjoying this fragrance. Wood and vanilla is all I get (initial reaction) and that's good because that is what I was expecting. Will definitely keep trying. Plus, strong juice.

It layers great with Jo Malone's Oud & Bergamot

Update: so today's my second day wearing this and I'm enjoying it more and more. Got two compliments today...so that's cool

Lovely vanilla scent.
Smooth and soft Aoud, and Soft Vanilla.
I don't pick up much, or any floral tho.
Total unisex frag.
Defo worth checking out.
I don't think it is too strong, as some other Mancera. Another thumbs up here.

Another very pleasant Aoud offering from Mancera. I immediately detect the oud note and the vanilla from the very beginning. The vanilla has an extract or bakery quality to it balanced out by the richness of oud. The floral notes emerge later in the development and really only support the oud and vanilla, perhaps keeping the composition fresh. I like this one a lot, but still probably prefer Sand Aoud for the more traditional derivative, but Aoud Vanille is a quite good modern design. I also think Sand Aoud is more versatile, while Aoud Vanille begs to be worn in cool weather. Excellent performance, and high quality ingredients, typical of Mancera. A thumbs up for me.

A rich, woody, high performing borderline gourmand that strikes a nice balance between a vanilla cookie and a pile of lumber. The wood has a dry, almost-dusty natural smell, a mix of oud and other varieties like guaiac, sandalwood, and cashmeran. The vanilla is well-proportioned, not of the cotton-candy, sugary variety but a little darker and drier, and it helps to maintain a relatively mature feeling Aoud Vanille. This one projects and lasts extremely well--I use 2 sprays on my chest and it still gets well out there for hours. At one point I owned about 8 or 9 Mancera fragrances. This is the only one that I still own. I consider it among Mancera's best and one of the more impressive releases in general in recent years. I would rate this a solid 8 to 8.5 out of 10.

Mancera Aoud Vanille sounds like something I might like, a mix of sweet and bitter, and in this respect it succeeds in that pairing, as the vanilla tempers the oud and vice versa. These are certainly the main two players, eponymously emphasized, but pepper and cardamom jazz up the opening while sandalwood and guaiac wood anchor the base.

The performance is outstanding, characteristic of some of Mancera and Montale's better offerings in terms of both projection and longevity, and so its value is strong, at the standard $160 for 120ml retail (i.e. Luckyscent) and a bit lower at $100 or so on Notino.

There's a slight redundancy with the lighter vanilla mainstays (i.e. Guerlain SDV, Perry Ellis Oud Black Vanilla Absolute, Tauerville Vanilla Flash) but it's hard to dispute that Aoud Vanille is a step removed from the vanilla dominance of those perfumes.

8 out of 10

This fragrance is amazing, with a caveat.

Vanilla, oud or some sort of oud-ish scent, and a woodsy spiciness combine to form a rather complex fragrance that wears well on me and my wife, interchangeably (truly a unisex fragrance, imho). Longevity and projection are off the rails. I can still pick up the scent 24 hours after one spray, and pretty much no amount of showering or scrubbing can get rid of it, so be sure you really want it on you before you spray it. I have used very, very few fragrances that are as immediately picked up by the people around me as Aoud Vanille. 1 spray is all it takes to surround yourself in this scent, and more would be dangerous unless the environment really calls for it.

So, the caveat. The vanilla in Aoud Vanille is very nice, smells natural, and at first is extremely pleasing. However, over time, it can become cloying. The sweetness and, later on, powderiness do give one a bit of a feeling of being stuck in a poorly ventilated candy factory, in particular the section that is making vanilla powder for malteds or something. This is especially true if more than one spray is applied. It's true that the oud and spicy notes blend with the vanilla and prevent it from becoming a vanilla bomb, but it's also true that the vanilla is very prominent and demands your (and everyone around you) attention. After it has well and truly dried down, the vanilla recedes a bit and it gets more woody/spicy, which is nice and not nearly as cloying as the 30 to 90 minutes mark.

I like it as an occasional wear. When I used it for a few contiguous days, I suddenly found myself fatigued with vanilla and couldn't go near it for a couple of weeks. This is a great cologne when applied in moderation and occasionally, but not heavily or continuously. I have a 120 ml bottle, which I suspect will last me the rest of my life.

Longevity: 10
Sillage: 10
Scent: eh, 7 or 8, maybe 9 if I haven't used it for a week or two.

Overall: 8

If I could give this more thumbs up I would:

This fragrance is absolutely A-MMMMAAAAZING!!!
Where do I start; there is a sharp but soft Oud (Aoud) followed by the vanilla that hits you and it is wonderful. This brand his become the new 'Creed' for me. Now don't get me wrong I love my Creed, however there might be a new sheriff in town-Mancera.

Here is the notes breakdown for Aoud Vanille:

Agarwood (Oud), Spices (Saffron, Cardamom, Black Pepper)Florals, Woodsy, Sandalwood, Intense (Madagascar) vanilla

Right away I get Cardamom, Black Pepper, and Saffron; this is mixed with the Vanilla, (Agarwood)Oud, and Sandalwood that gives off this sweet yet, woodsy fragrant that's very intriguing. Wow....not too sweet, not too woodsy, not to gourmand. There is the correct amount of balance in this fragrance. Its as if Pierre combined, The Aoud with Aoud Café and Roses Vanille and out comes Aoud Vanille.

Just wonderful; Projection is phenomenal!! So, I sprayed a small spritz on my hand, dabbed the two together and entered the kitchen. When my wife came up from downstairs she says, (only about 3 feet away from me)" do you like, because I do-it smells good!"

Again, projection is a 10; Performance is an 8.5; Longevity is a 9. Overall, this is a 10! You don't need much of this to project, even for others to know you are in the room!

I absolutely love this fragrance, and can't wait to wear this!!!

This starts off with a blast of oud and "dark" woody notes followed soon after by a very nice vanilla. The vanilla settles in beautifully and the oud, spices and woods step more to the forefront after about 30 minutes. They keep the vanilla from being overly sweet or gourmand and darken the scent significantally. I don't notice a lot of evolution with Aoud Vanille, but I'm ok with that as this is one of the nicest vanilla fragrances that I've ever smelled. Longevity and sillage are both fantastic and overall I give this one a 9.5 out of 10. Definitely one of my current favorites from a house that has quickly taken a spot on my top 3 fragrance houses list.

Longevity = 10-12 hours
Sillage = excellent
Projection = excellent