Nino Cerruti
Cerruti (1979)

Be still my beating heart. There is something about Nino Cerruti Pour Homme that charges me up with emotion. It smells like both radiance and depth, like a ray of light entering a dark room. It has that clean/dirty duality for which I can never get enough, but also has an urbane/rustic duality: cultured and earthy, erudite yet street smart. Its opening verdant vigor of galbanum and lentisque oils with juniper and herbal melange is like a tonic aperitif. This sets the stage for what I can best describe as an "outdoorsy" jasmine, as if growing adjacent to a swath of mugwort. It's a jasmine with light indole, a certain grassiness and wet wildness warmed by the sun. There is also the sensation of bright, golden pine sap and mimosa lightness mingling with this jasmine sillage.

When it eases, NCPH has a bittersweet resinous tone, still highlighted with lemon-peppery elemi, and as it moves closer to the skin, labdanum, vetiver and musk grow more dominant. Contrary to what others claim is a notable oakmoss presence, while I do detect it, I don't regard it as a real driver of the composition here. I also find humor in this having become fetishized by vintage fragheads for what I feel are all the wrong reasons. NCPH shows restraint, it's more of measured beauty, almost bastardized by the bombast made unobtainable due to internet hype. Consequently, it took quite some time to find an affordable bottle. If fragrances like Aliage or Devin put a spring in your step, you'd really enjoy this, but, by all means, find a 7ml mini first.

I still have a bottle I bought in 1982. Nino Cerruti is a classy and distinctive fragrance with an outstanding longevity for an average-priced product. At first, I thought it was rather powdery and feminine for a masculine EDT but like any other fragrance, it depends on who wears it. On me, NC smells very dry, almost like church incense but it is warm and rich nonetheless. A designer I knew wore it with very different results. On him, it was much fresher and sweeter with just a hint of incense.

Nino Cerruti by Cerruti (1979) is an odd little fragrance for the time period in which it was originally released, considering what it was up against. Having little bits of the intense green galbanum-led era in which it saw itself at the tail-end of, combined with some sportier elements that were coming into vogue thanks to brands like Lacoste, then topped off with musky white floral chypre bits which were shimmering into the norm as the 1980's approached, this outlier of a perfume perhaps never found a big audience by anyone buying fragrances in the days it was new. Of course, the usual "the King is dead, long live the King" types are busy soiling their underwear in writhing orgasmic worship of this, saying things like "this is what real men smell like" et al; but they very sorely miss the point methinks. That point, is Cerruti was going for a lighter, less-hirsute fragrance mode before it was cool, and before such accords would be deemed "unisex" by modern noses. The early bird here didn't get the worm.

If you can manage not to moan or speak in tongues after smelling this stuff, you'll see that it really isn't all that world-shattering, just perhaps a bit early on a trope that would emerge in earnest within a decade's time, being mostly about mint and green notes or white florals over a smooth but subtle oakmoss base. Cerruti themselves would repeat this exercise with 1881 pour Homme (1990), just adding more white florals, ditching the mint, and the resins. The galbanum opening reminds me most of Aramis Devin (1978), although it is quickly sublimated into a fancier floral style with jasmine, carnation, myrtle, and artemisia. Herbs like thyme, rosemary, and tarragon add a sort of masculine heft to the flowers, until it is all "creamed" by resins, oakmoss, patchouli, and musk. I don't get any real animalic notions here, but I do get oriental nuances that extend seasonal use beyond hot climes; the artemisia and jasmine combo in particular reminds me of cK One Scene (2005). Performance is tenacious, but not particularly loud on skin.

Nino Cerruti buried its eponymous masculine offering pretty early on, and it never made production past when Unilever owned the license. In fact, bottles languished for so long after production, the house had to slap a sticker on the short-list boxes showing an updated long list of allergen materials, and likely then shipped all they had outside the EU where the stiff SCCS regulations prevented continued sale. For a while, life must have been good in the US where most of this likely ended up for sale, with tons of cheap bottles in small perfume stores and eventually online. That dried up pretty quickly however, and then the usual "Church of Oakmoss" BS started up with the popularization of online social groups for fragrance enthusiasts. Mostly I see this as a precursor to sportier things in the 80's right before aquatics became the norm for this type of fragrance, making it a pleasant wearing footnote in men's designer fragrance history, but a footnote nonetheless. If you score a bottle without paying your left eye, you'll see what I mean. Thumbs up

Remember me a little insense ,this is more oriental smell. Great ,one of top ten men.

If you want this sensationeel fragrance back......try Aliage ! Exactly the same !

The parallel bewteen Nino Cerruti and Insensè is quite clear in my opinion. They're both aldehyde-prominent green / aromatic fougeres with a remarkable floral pattern but whereas Insensè communicates via hints, looks and smiles, Cerruti curses and rarely washes his armpits.

Fantastic.