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The Best Winter Colognes Will Warm Your Spirits
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The best winter colognes will make you look forward to colder weather. Even if you’ve got that trusty signature scent, it might need swapping out for certain occasions or seasons. In winter, you can reach for something that spices things up—even literally—with notes like coriander, ginger, and cinnamon. Or perhaps a woody medley, a vanilla-tinged and rum-soaked number, or a sultry smoky scent. Each of these wears well in the colder months, when we all need a little extra warmth.
We’re not saying you should ditch the signature scent. Hey, maybe you’ll find a great woody scent that wears year round, even if it’s wintry by nature. But it is also fun to have a few different colognes to rotate through each year, and one of them certainly needs to lean towards the colder half of the year. As a bonus, these are also the scents that often work well at night in shoulder season, or on dates year round.
Below are our picks for the best winter colognes for men. Find one (or more!) to add to your rotation this season.
The Best New Winter Fragrance
Aesop’s 2022 launch is the wintry rookie of the year for its crowd-pleasing combination of black pepper, sandalwood, and frankincense. Eidesis is definitely designated for colder days because of these ambrous, spicy, and woody notes, but they wear subtly and invitingly both day and night, both buttoned up and down. It doesn’t call too much attention to itself, which is exactly what many people want in a fragrance.
The Best Indie Winter Fragrance
New kid on the block Gabar is one of the fragrance industry’s rising stars, with a trio of scents that celebrate and share the founders’ Myanma roots. “Don’t make us pick a favorite,” we’d beg before ultimately choosing No. II Ground as the winner. Its flawless recipe is inspired by Myanmar’s traditional and famous Thanaka cream; the scent builds around wood bark, with embellishments of fig, saffron, and sandalwood.
The Most Head-Turning Winter Fragrance
With Nanban (and with all of Arquiste’s scents), people will ask you which scent you’re wearing, and then they’ll jot it down. This masterpiece introduces itself with Malabar black pepper and Persian saffron, gives way to coffee, sandalwood, myrrh, and Spanish leather, and embraces you all day with a blanket of frankincense, balsam, and cade juniper. No embellishment there: Nanban is liquid gold.
The Best Winter Fragrance for Perennial Wear
Black Gold is indisputably a winter fragrance, with all the fixings: leather, patchouli, musk, vetiver, amber, cinnamon, nutmeg. And yet, the result is remarkably level in terms of its seasonality. Paired with the right personality, it would also play perfectly on a beach in July.
The Best Patchouli Winter Fragrance
Tempo harmonizes with an earthy-woody essence, and a spritz of violet leaf to punch things up. It is the perfect execution on patchouli—an ingredient that stirs the senses while it warms the spirit. (The once-disdained note is having its much deserved renaissance, too.)
The Best Leather Winter Fragrance
One of our favorite leather fragrances, this one combines the suave hero note with sandalwood, pepper, and frankincense. The heavenly medley envelops you like one of the brands’ own cowhide jackets.
The Best Vanilla Winter Fragrance
If only there were a cocktail as flavorful as this vanilla-ambrous-coriander medley. “I’ll have a Dirty Vanilla!” has such a ring to it. Luckily, you can whisper that to yourself as you hover over “Add to Cart” this season, in one of the less polarizing vanilla potions out there. Instead, this one invites company with its vanilla heart, and lets the other notes do all the talking. Those notes include bold cedar and sandalwood, stirring patchouli, and the aforementioned sweet amber and spicy coriander.
The Best Vetiver Winter Fragrance
Hermès has blessed us with a wintry version of the original Terre D’Hermès scent. With Eau Intense Vétiver, you’ll note fewer orange notes in favor of the pronounced woody and subtle spicy ones (vetiver and sichuan pepper, to be precise).
The Best Winter Fragrance for Date Night
There’s a time and place for something as rich with incense, pine tar, guaiac wood, and black tea as this one: That time is date night (the first or five hundredth), in which Indigo Smoke casts a magnetic, stirring haze around its wearer. You could get away with wearing it year round—but it’s best for low-lit situations where you want to drum up a little extra heat.
The Best Non-Winter Fragrance for Winter
In many ways, this scent is the antithesis of winter, since it imagines a sunny walk through blooming Roman gardens. But many of the best scents for cold-weather wear are those that remind us of the spring ahead, and keep us optimistic through January drudgery. We Met in Roma also manages to warm its wearer with broody frankincense and uplifting, powdery orris, so an argument can be made that it is, in fact, a winter scent but with a sweet, floral opening.
The Best Solid Cologne for Winter
Solid cologne is supremely underrated; it is so easy to target onto your pulse points (rather than lose half of the product to errant spritzing). That’s exactly what you’ll do with a rapturous scent like Calle Ocho—rich in cinnamon, rum, tobacco, and sandalwood—it warms the senses instantly, and on top of that, the tin travels spill free, even discreetly in your pocket if you need a top-up after work.
The Best Luxury Winter Cologne
Good Fir gives great fir in this Coloradan ode, which runs laps around other woody scents. It’s a biome of beautiful notes, from pink pepper and moss to vetiver and white musk—there’s even fresh and sappy banana leaf, spicy ginger, as well as sweet tuberose. Many woody fragrances lose the forest for the trees by over decorating the recipe, but this one juggles all of those notes with scientific perfection. (And, go figure, it will suit year-round evergreen wear, too.)
The Best Winter Fragrance for First Time Wearers
A longstanding staple in the Boss family, Boss Bottled blends crisp apple, cinnamon, mahogany, vetiver, cedar, sandalwood, and vanilla. It’s a great contender for perennial wear, but you’ll probably want to save it for October-thru-April for its sheer coziness. First-time fragrance wearers will love the scent too, given its universal appeal, accessible price point, and ability to elicit compliments.
The Best Winter Fragrance for Nights and Weekends
Cashmere wood and tonka beans anchor Byredo’s winter standout, which opens with crisp bergamot and Nepalese pepper (called ban timmur). At its heart is a curious combination of carrot seeds, rum, and fig. The spicy-woody mélange has an after-hours air about it, making it a terrific perennial player when worn on cold winter nights.
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Adam Hurly
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