Davidoff's second perfume, Zino was released in 1986 and bears the first name of the Geneva cigar merchant who gave the house its name. Michel Almairac and Pierre Bourdon lay a bouquet of lavender and clary sage over a base of patchouli, sandalwood and vanilla, in which critics have recognized the smell of a cigar box.
For Auparfum, Jeanne Doré considers Zino a dark, almost macho masculine, which first affects the air of a fougère before turning to the bitterness of a cigar box. She credits it with an ambitious signature, and warns about the costus, which divides opinion.
Olfastory’s review
Jeanne Doré's review
Auparfum, Nez's magazine, published a review signed by Jeanne Doré in July 2009. It holds in a few lines and it fixed the French reading of the perfume for a long time.
The verdict lies in its title, Cigare allumeur. Zino is described there as dark, dense, classic, very virile, almost macho, and the word is not a criticism under her pen, rather an observation of its era.
What she credits it with
What she grants it is not stopping at the fougère it first imitates. The shift toward the bitterness of the cigar box makes, in her view, the perfume's unique and ambitious signature.
She also notes what divides opinion: the costus, bordering on unpleasant, which gives off a smell of moist skin. Le Mâle would use it too; with Zino, it splits wearers into two camps.
On dating, she is nuanced: Zino is very much stamped with the 1980s, but less so than Kouros. For a 1986 perfume judged more than twenty years later, the remark amounts to granting it a certain resilience.
She closes on the man rather than the bottle: an elegant signature, in the image of the one who introduced Europeans to the pleasures of cigars. This is the one place where the review meets the house's argument.