Cafe V is a spicy fragrance inspired by one of Seattle’s many cozy neighborhood cafes with its dark décor, warm fireplace, leather chairs and espresso bar. It’s not quite gourmand, and not quite a fragrance of place, but something in between with the expected coffee, chai, biscotti and pastries, against a background of old woods and traces of all of the rain-drenched artists and actors who have over the years congregated in this little café in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Created by Ellen Covey and released in 2013, it features notes of espresso-roast coffee, dark cacao, vanilla, cream, spicy chai, cardamom, leather, and well-worn wood. Cafe V is a parfum.
OLYMPIC ORCHIDS CAFE V REVIEWS
Fragrantica: "Coffee breath in a dusty leather booth."
Fragrantica: "Based on the notes, I was expecting a sweet gourmand. Luckily, I was wrong. Cafe V smells like drinking a dark cardamom coffee on a leather chair near a burning fireplace. The opening is warm spicy coffee. Then, smokiness and quality leather takes over. The woodiness comes out on the drydown. The fragrance is perfectly unisex. I don't find it sweet or particularly edible. It truly does smell like lounging in an upscale cafe. Projection is moderate. Wear time on skin was 4-6 hours."
Fragrantica: "On a paper blotter, this is very one dimensional and wood-centric. One skin, it blossoms into something quite special indeed, with the whipped cream waltzing with wood and coffee."
Fragrantica: "I just got this sample in the mail and I am both intrigued and very happy! It reminds me of a beautiful shop I used to visit, almost a baroque place full of stationery and bits and bobs and especially for Christmas Decorations, as if you were INSIDE THE TREE talking to the elves and the goblins! It reminds me of the smell of tapestries and ink wells and mysterious books and tea in linen bags and coffee in Italian espresso machines and biscotti-cookies in parchments, with the rain falling steadily outside the window panes. My husband said at first that he thought it was not feminine AT ALL but as it dried he changed his mind and said it was starting to convince him."
Fragrantica: "Coffee and cardamom with a big burst of a dark woodsy cacao. This is an ancient library with a local coffee shop nearby. It’s the gleaming wood shelves and vanillic binding of old books and the perfect spiced cocoa in your hand while your partner has his black coffee. You both settle into leather chairs and settle in for a cozy read. Comforting and delicious."
Fragrantica: "Unventilated wood café at a national park. The inside is incredibly dark and musty. They've been serving black coffee, hot chocolate and rum for the past 50 years, though now they're out of commission. The fumes and spills of those liquids have embedded themselves into the wood and you can only smell a feint ghost of them, combining all 3 into an aromatically beautiful and bitter blend."
Fragrantica: "Opening: a coffee scented leather chair. Dry down: cardamom and other spices, similar to chai tea. Base: hot chocolate with whipped cream. Cafe V has three distinct phases. I picked up all of those notes over the span of a few hours. I’m sampling from a dauber discovery set, and think it’s important to note that a spray would probably make the performance better. I always enjoy testing Olympic Orchids scents. I liked the dry down and base better than the opening, a solid like for an easy to wear leather/gourmand."
Fragrantica: "It's been 4 years since I purchased this and it’s been a couple years since I've worn it. This gets better and stronger with age! I keep all my perfumes in a dark wooden cabinet and Cafe V got stronger and darker and thicker oh, I didn't think it was possible to get any stronger and it did. It smells even better now that is aged than it did when I first got it. I wore this today and got compliments from everybody about how good I smell. It starts with strong burst of cardamom and cinnamon and then some leather in dark coffee come out along with whipped cream and some dark woods. It smells like a cafe. Absolutely delicious. Great to wear in the fall and winter. It smells like you could eat it. Cafe V will stick to your skin and clothes until you wash it off. So it starts strong and stays strong and a scent Trail follows you until you shower it all off. This is the only perfume that has stayed as strong as it was from first spray that I've ever tried. Definitely worth the money if you like gourmet coffee smells, smoky leathery woody smells, spicy perfumes, then you'll love this. It reminds me of chai tea and coffee while sitting in an old cafe."
Fragrantica: "This starts off very rich. You made the mistake of breaking up with someone at a Starbucks, and they've dumped their entire venti mocha frap with cream all over you. It gets more palatable with time, but that start is sickly sweet. Growing up, my mother was a chocolatier, and I spent lots of time in the back rooms of the shop, surrounded by the strong, penetrating scent of sugar. Humans are attuned to sniffing out sugar as a valuable source of calories, but the experience of being surrounded by a sheer quantity of pure sugar far beyond anything you would experience in nature overwhelms the senses. To this day, I can only eat the darkest, most bitter chocolate. Anything else makes me feel a little sick. So this could be a personal association (trauma?) but I get the same punch here, and in particular the whipped cream note almost makes me dizzy. As the cream melts away the wood and leather and spice comes out which is very welcome, and after an hour or two, it's closing time at the cafe, which is a much more comfortable volume of sugar for me. Despite being so rich at the start, this really doesn't have as much "body" as a gourmand perfume, so don't go in expecting that, it likely won't make you salivate. Overall, really impressive and unique, and even though I wouldn't wear this, it brought forth a lot of interesting personal memories. This isn't something that is missing the mark, it knows what it wants, it's just not for me. Worth a sniff, I reckon."
