Moonshine : A Gentleman's Cologne
EastWest Bottlers (2011)

This is a beautiful fragrance with a unique juniper berry note that I have never come across before. However, it has NO lasting power. It is gone withing an hour so which is so disappointing. There is a reserve version that I hear is more resilient but it's twice the price of the EDC

A somewhat boozy gin, at times with a transient freshish undertone of an unusual bergamot/citronellol mix, soon gives way to a tobacco/wood leather impression.

The drydown adds a pleasant patchouli, which is more on the brighter side. Occasion spicy touches are noted.

I get moderate sillage, adequate projection and four hours of longevity on my skin.

Quite an agreeable autumn scent for warmer days, not bad but lacking depth and originality a bit. 2.75/5.

This reminds me of the fragrances from the Commodity house, on which I am also mostly neutral. Moonshine was interesting on initial spray, but within 20 minutes it settled into a slightly cloying synthetic smell.

BLUF: Okay fragrance-wise, but even loading it on by hand leaves nothing but a barely detectable skin scent after about 30 seconds. No spray option, just splash. Juice degraded quickly under ideal storage conditions.

Found out about this via Gearmoose.com, then hunted it down via Orvis by way of Amazon. Obscure, American-made, supposedly very masculine, interesting packaging (wooden box and burlap bag), deeply discounted…I was all in! Opened my 100ml and it did smell quite good. A sort of boozy-gin/piney/tobacco scent. Unfortunately, it evaporated into thin air after about 10 minutes. I don't mean turned into a nice skin scent, I mean it was practically gone. It's not just my nose, I asked a friend to sniff and she replied, “Is this a trick?” Nothing, nada.

Perhaps if a house with better resources and more experience took over for East West, this could be a winner. It's not a groundbreaking accord, but I liked enough at first and it's unmistakably masculine.

Fast forward a few months to when I gave it another shot…pull it out of the back of my closet, now the liquid is almost totally clear (before it was slightly yellow) and it just smells like stale tobacco and something like Iso E, and just barely. Even dumping a handful onto my arm yielded very little in the way of scent.

Very disappointing, I'm considering contacting the company directly. My experience leads me to believe that perhaps my bottle was not stored properly before it got to my doorstep. Bummer.

Despite the gimmicky name and packaging, this is a surprisingly well made scent--the pepper, tobacco, leather , gin and patchouli are all there, together with a cedar note that I suspect is ISO E Super. This has more than a little Poivre Samarcande about it, but I think it actually smells better. I found it at Orvis, which surprised me because, while they go in for classic scents like the Royall line--and even have a few scents of their own, this seems too gimmicky for them, but as I say, it smells good!