Thread: Sandalwood at work?

Originally Posted by tedh75

I mentioned the AOS sandalwood EDT and Floris Sandalwood(no longer produced but available on eBay unless I'm mistaken). I know Floris makes a sandalwood blend called Santal. The AOS sandalwood after shave gel seems to last for mere seconds but i assume the EDT would last longer. I believe the AOS sandalwood products use fragrance oil so I am not necessarily opposed to products with FO. Maybe that is one reason the scent doesn't last. Interesting that proraso can use the real thing and charge so much less. Any comments on these or suggestions for other sandalwood fragrances?

I would love to try the QED sandalwood shave soap, but I don't think he makes it anymore. Does anyone know different or can anyone suggest other "authentic" sandalwood smelling products?

I'm pretty sure you can't find the QED soap. May be SRD would reissue the tobacco&sandalwood SRP special they did some years ago - the sandalwood in there is the real thing and it works quite well with the tobacco.

Floris Sandalwood is indeed discontinued and if you get lucky you could find old stock on places like ebay. It is a blend though - heavy on the sandalwood but still a blend. Tam Dao is probably closer to the pure sandalwood scent but it's also a well made blend. Unlike Floris, it is however currently available.
You can look up past sandalwood threads - there are many good suggestions in those.

The essential oil is expensive, though, so the resulting products tend to not be cheap either.

Personally I've settled on 4 or 5 sandalwood fragrances (I mean predominantly sandalwood as it is a pretty common ingredient and you could detect the note in the drydown in tons of others), each of them is fairly different from the rest, so together they cover the spectrum that I like and I pick whatever seems more suitable at the time. The most refined of those is hands down Floris, but Tam Dao isn't too bad either. For a sharper one I use I Profumi Di Firenze (not sure if they import it in US, it's called Sandalo Indiano and I haven't seen it in Bigelow's who stock that house, I got mine in Florence), and for herbal Santa Maria Novella. I guess I am missing the woodsy/smoky expression because in those I like Sandalwood to be secondary to other woods.