I’m not one to care about the gender of my perfume. I am happy to wear something with “femme” or “for her” on the label but that is not a general sentiment. As a result most of the most interesting fragrance houses tend to work with a woman as their target audience, which makes sense from a business standpoint. This is why I am such a big fan of the fragrance line from Odin New York. They seem to be creating their fragrances with a man as their target audience. They also seem to be very methodical in the rhythm of their releases and allow each to have some time on the market to themselves. The first five fragrances released comprise one of the best masculine fragrance collections available. In particular 04 Petrana is, in my opinion, the best masculine iris fragrance on the market today as it has supplanted Dior Homme on my dresser.  This is why I was looking forward to trying the latest release 07 Tanoke.

Corinne Cachen, of Drom, is the perfumer behind 07 Tanoke and her task was to create a typical Northern California woods fragrance. In other words try and conceptualize Big Sur and bottle it. Mme Cachen succeeds at doing this in spectacular fashion and has created another top-notch fragrance for Odin. I felt like I was surrounded by redwoods as a fine mist was falling. 07 Tanoke is a fine example of a masculine woody fragrance.

07 Tanoke begins with a gentle bite as a pucker inducing bitter orange is on top. It is joined by black pepper and ginger which add a little more force to the bite. Mme Cachen uses nutmeg as an interstitial note from the spiciness of the top to the sweet light woodiness of gaiac in the heart. As the spiciness fades away a beautiful incense note arrives. This combination of gaiac and incense has been used many times but in 07 Tanoke it as good as it gets. If the heart is familiar, Mme Cachne saves her best for the base as the woodiness intensifies as the redwood note begins to take over. Patchouli and musk finish the trio of notes in the base. For those of you who are a bit tired of that clean white musk, so prevalent elsewhere, the musk in 07 Tanoke is not that. Mme Cachen uses a fuller deeper musk and it is the right choice. Many masculine scents would have gone for that cleaner feel but 07 Tanoke is much the better for Mme Cachen choosing not to.

07 Tanoke has excellent longevity and above average sillage.

My hat is off to Eddy Chai and Paul Birardi, owners of Odin New York, for curating a creative fragrance line for men, primarily. Their vision is slowly but surely producing a fragrance collection made for a man but one which can easily be worn by a woman. 07 Tanoke is one of the best of the entire collection and that is saying something.

Disclosure: This review was based on samples purchased from Luckyscent.

–Mark Behnke, Managing Editor

Odin 6  Amanu is one of the five finalists for Best Indie Fragrance 2011. The winner will be announced at a special ceremony at the Elements Showcase New York January 30, 2011