Sunday, February 16
- Pre shave - shower
- Captain's Choice stoneware lather bowl
- Dorco Prime #1 (Viet Nam)
- Yaqi highmountain badger aqua handle (China)
- Sir Henry's Kentucky Rain (USA)
- Thayer's WH (USA)
- English Leather (USA)
It's springtime in Kentucky, the morning rain has passed. The aroma of roses comes to your nose. Present but not overly feminine. You get a whiff of the horse's saddle leather just as horse, jockey, and trainer pass by. Next up, Kentucky Bourbon steps up in it's role of boozy sweetness as it harmonizes with the sweet woods and note of citrus in your Old Fashioned cocktail. You sip your drink, smile, catch a wisp of vanilla, and know it'll be a great evening of enjoying the whole symphony of the scent we call Kentucky Rain.
Ingredients:
Sodium & Potassium Stearate (Stearic Acid), Sodium & Potassium Cocoate (Coconut Oil), Sodium & Potassium Tallowate (Tallow), Sodium & Potassium Ricinoleate (Castor Oil), Sodium & Potassium Indica Seed Butterate (Kokum Butter), Water, Fragrance, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter), Chinesis Seed Oil (Jojoba Oil), Persea Gratissima Oil (Avocado Oil), Ricinus Communis Seed Oil (Castor Oil), Sodium Lactate, Glycerin
Very nice, slick lather from this tallow soap. I'm a tallow/veggie agnostic, I could not care less what's in the ingredient list, but I expect a lot from my soaps, and this one did not disappoint. I owe this one to my friend, Mike, @Dtownvino. He tried it and the scent was a bit longer lasting that he prefers, but he knows my scent preferences and has me very well dialed-in, and I LOVED this soap!
Along with @Marco Mike is one of my two best (worst?) enablers, but neither has ever steered toward something I did not love. In fact, Mike recently turned me on to the Dorco Prime blades from Viet Nam, and they just may be my favorite modern blade. Plenty sharp, but not overly so, extremely comfortable, and they go a full week without breaking a sweat. I have quite a number of vintage Gillette Spoilers and Schick Plus Platinums from the 1970s and this blade may just be their equal. It is my favorite modern blade for sure.
I find the scent hard to describe, but I absolutely loved it right away. I did not know what to pair it with, but I had some English Leather in my den, which I have not used alone, but purchased as an ingredient in the Bootleggers El Dorado. I was an English Leather fan in the 1970s, when I started to shave, but the new stuff is very different from what I remember--even the color is different. But it works well with this soap. Tomorrow I'm going to do shave #2 with it, and I think I'll use El Dorado after it.
The lather was creamy and slick, very easy to whip up, I'd say you'd be an expert with it in 2-3 shaves, it is not finicky at all. I have not played with its hydration window, so I don't know how forgiving it is, but you can whip up a world-class lather first time out with it, it's very easy to use. I hesitate to opine on post-shave feel because I have zero skin issues and don't want to steer anyone who does have problem skin to a product which might not work for them. Mike is a bit more sensitive than I am, however, and he told me he feels this is just a smidgeon below his favorite shaving soap, Ethos Grooming Essentials, as far as post shave comfort and moisturizing goes. I cannot disagree with that at all.
I'm surprised this has not gotten much attention here, I've only found a couple of posts on it, but it is clearly a tier-1 artisan shave soap. Maybe the fact that it flies under the radar is an indication that the explosion of artisan shaving soaps over the last decade has produced an embarrassment of riches, but this is a truly great soap. I try not to have two scents from one soap maker in my den (I know, that's almost blasphemous around here, but I'm weird that way), but I liked this so much I am tempted to try their Santal Vanille, a sandalwood vanilla scent combo. They have about 18 different shave soaps, if anyone is moved to try it based on this writeup, I'd love to know what you think about that scent.
Their website:
