Oud Minérale (2023 version)
Eau de Parfum, Tom Ford (2023)

Unisex, men, women, I don't care. This one seems to be more manly, but I personally like it a lot. It's another heavy one, more for the evening in my opinion. The amber, wood, balsem and pepper notes are really nice. The longer I wear it, the more I like it. It gets more refined after a while.

Tom Ford's Oud Minérale (2023 version) blends the richness of oud with the fresh, oceanic notes, creating a unique contrast. The fragrance opens with a salty marine breeze, which gradually deepens into smoky, woody oud. It’s an intriguing balance between earthy and aquatic, making it both refreshing and warm. Ideal for those who appreciate bold, unconventional scents that stand out with a subtle complexity. Perfect for evening wear, especially in cooler weather.

It's a thumbs up because I like it, I liked the original and I like the new release. My only criticism is that it's misleading to name it Oud Minerale when there's no hint of Oud. Maybe L'eau Minerale would've been more appropriate, it's just an ambergris bomb.

Oud Minérale by Tom Ford (2023) is the wide-release of the original Private Blend version that came out back in 2017, and is the third such fragrance "promoted" from those ranks to the Signature line, since many of the original Signature Line fragrances on the men's side of the line were all discontinued. Not having smelled the original 2017 version, I don't have much to say by way of comparison, but I do like what I find here; a rare thing for me to say since I am notably not a lover of Tom Ford's exaggerated pricing and gimmicky front-loaded fragrances that tend to smell only one way from start to finish.

The basic spiel of this scent is to mix the by-now-expected woody-amber material Tom Ford has masqueraded as "oud" for about 20 years, with a salty marine and mineral note to create the accord applied by the name. To this effect, Oud Minérale is successful, and smells appropriately woody, salty, fresh, and mineralic. There isn't much by the way of citrus or florals here, as this uses aldehydes, hedione, and ionones to fill in the blank spaces between aromatic notes, starting off with a peppery-woody structure that follows into the bleached-out mineral accord, then bedded in amber, styrax, and a faux ambergris built with ambroxan.

Performance is outstanding, although one comes to assume it will be with a Tom Ford fragrance, regardless of the line or price point it inhabits. I'd own this, and that is a rare thing to claim for a Tom Ford scent, with Oud Minérale joining the club of Tom Ford for Men (2007), Grey Vetiver by Tom Ford (2009), Tom Ford Noir (2012), Fougère d'Argent (2018), and Beau de Jour by Tom Ford (2020), as a fragrance of his I wouldn't mind owning. The problem here is they're all so damned expensive, and trying to seek discounted bottles is a minefield of counterfeits and stolen merchandise fenced on marketplace sites, so I just place them out of sight since there are alternatives, and there likely will be for this too. Thumbs up