Fatih Sultan Mehmed
Fort and Manlé (2016)

Right off the bat we get apple and a bit of bergamot but instead of a juicy apple, we're presented with a thin facsimile. Damask Rose soon joins with vanilla. Like the apple, the rose is thin. More a garnish along with the vanilla. The rose, though anemic, is however detectable through the drydown with the apple.
Ambergris also appears in the middle and provides a lift to the fruit and flowers as well as a bit of that slightly salty and animalic facet it's known for. The base is earthy, with a tiny dot of oud, plus patchouli and musk and also incense. The fragrance remains sweet throughout. Overall it feels weaker than I'd have hoped.
It ends up with that familiar vanilla/amber that many orientals close with, though with the substantial benefit of the briney, sensual effect from authentic ambergris.
For $250/50ml I would hope for better performance and richer notes. Apparently, there are commonly available designer fragrances that are similar to this with lower pricing. The "ambergris effect" would likely be missing though. Ultimately, this isn't something I'd wish to smell like but I know that there are many who go ga-ga over these things.

This one is going to be hard to describe. At first, it smells like tea to me. Not really tea, but something like osmanthus, which smells like tea when used in a perfume. It's very sweet and fruity, but more like a mix of jasmine and vanilla than actual fruit. Then, there's also something sharp and terpinic in there, like bleach or a cleaning agent, keeping this from smelling like candy or overly sugared tea.

Given time, the sweet fruity, flowery tea smell is joined by pie spices, while a bit of cedar appears underneath.

There's a very popular style of "oriental" perfume based on Hermes' Ambre Naguile, which is a vanilla amber topped with fruit, cedar, and honey, giving the illusion of pipe tobacco. It strikes me that this is what you'd get if you largely removed the amber base from that recipe - a complex mix of fruit, flowers, resins, and cedar.

I'm enjoying this. I agree that it feels a bit thin - I have to smell my arm closely to follow its twists and turns. That being said, if it were richly concentrated, it could come across as a bit gross with clashing undertones of so many resins and ingredients. I could also imagine it getting muddy, like a bad essential oil perfume with too many ingredients. As such, I appreciate that it's at a concentration where everything works, even if it requires a bit of close sniffing to be fully appreciated.

Sweet brandy, jasmine, mandarin amber, vanilla, benzoin. Settles dry and a touch salty. Exotic and a little aloof. The introverted sister scent to Amber Absolutely.

Un-oomphed oriental. This close to the skin scent would be fascinating if it projected a bit more. A mixture of sweet rosy notes partnered with ambery vanilla emerging through a veil of ambergris-iris interpreted in the unguent manner, it is just delicious to sniff. But that would necessitate walking about with my nose stuck under the neckline of my t-shirt.

Fatih Sultan Mehmed is the second entry I've tried in the house that distinctly strikes me as something that should be worn in the colder weather strictly, and mainly seems suited for men, though I imagine people of all sorts could enjoy this.

It's starts with a burst of citrus but quickly becomes a mix of amber, oud, iris, patchouli, cedar, and vanilla. Sweet, woody, and every so slightly dirty, this is a blend that would work for most men and many others. An agreeable wintry mix, it could satisfy fans of many genres, of various tolerance. It's difficult to think that this would be disliked.

On the other hand, I'm not smitten by it really since it's not all that daring in any one area. Perhaps accentuation of one of the notes would give it an edge.

Still, it's a very good performer (probably not quite as good as Amber Absolutely), yet with the standard pricing (230 AUD, 178 USD for 50ml) it's not cheap enough to hastily buy just for the heck of it, but it merits some trying for sure. I could see it fitting the bill well for many.

7 out of 10