Quick answers
History
Bortnikoff is a one-man workshop rather than a brand. Dmitry Bortnikoff, an architect by training, co-founded the agarwood and sandalwood distillery Feel-Oud in 2013, then set up his own perfume house in Thailand in 2018. He composes alone, distills part of his raw materials himself, and states a naturalness of 95 to 100 percent depending on the formula. Output goes out in limited runs, sold direct.
Cuir de Cerise went online on 15 July 2026, filed under the official Summer 2026 Release category. The timestamp on the house public API puts it three seconds away from Sambac Rouge: both summer 2026 perfumes were published in a single move and both open on cherry. What they do with that cherry afterward is the opposite.
The catalog was built on oud, from Mysterious Oud and Oud Maximus in 2018 through Oud Hindi in 2024. Cuir de Cerise inverts the arrangement. Agarwood is no longer the subject, it is the floor. A sharp fruit and a leather accord hold the foreground, and the wood is left to the last stage. For a house identified with oud, that is a visible shift.
Olfactory pyramid
Bortnikoff publishes a conventional three-tier pyramid on its product page. These are the materials as the house lists them.
Three of the seven listed materials carry leather on their own before any blending: saffron, osmanthus and nagarmotha. The pyramid does not build a contrast, it repeats a single claim at every level.
Olfactory profile
Perfumery almost always handles cherry as confectionery, near bitter almond and syrup. Saffron arrives here immediately and strips the sugar out, contributing the metallic, faintly tanned bitterness that tips the fruit somewhere else. The opening reads acidic and dry, closer to the pit than to the pulp.
The heart is where the composition commits. Osmanthus works as the hinge, since the flower naturally carries apricot and a leathery facet: the house surrounds it with a declared apricot that doubles it and a green, oily olive that adds a salted bitterness rarely found in fruity writing. The fruit does not vanish, it changes texture and turns fatty rather than juicy.
The base returns the perfume to home ground. Agarwood supplies resinous density, while nagarmotha, a smoky root long used as a plant-derived leather, extends the heart material without a seam. At the naturalness level the house claims, evolution stays slow and the tiers overlap for hours.
Key characteristics
Sillage, longevity and projection
When and where to wear
Cuir de Cerise is a dense extract, and its acidic fruit does not really lighten the woody load. It needs cool air to stay legible, and a light hand: two sprays cover a full evening.
Wear references
Seasonal fit
| Season | Fit | Critical notes |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | ★★★☆ | The cherry carries, the base stays heavy. |
| Summer | ★★☆☆ | Agarwood and nagarmotha turn thick fast. |
| Fall | ★★★★ | Leather and dried fruit meet their temperature. |
| Winter | ★★★★ | The base holds without scattering. |
Context fit
| Context | Fit | Wear recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Evening | ★★★★ | The register it was written for. |
| Dinner | ★★★★ | Dense but clean, it behaves at a table. |
| Office | ★☆☆☆ | Too present for a shared room. |
| Everyday | ★★☆☆ | Workable in winter, at minimum dosage. |
| Collecting | ★★★★ | A limited run from a small workshop. |
Similar perfumes
The osmanthus and leather pairing, followed by the move to oud, places Cuir de Cerise between niche fruity leathers and agarwood woody leathers.
| Perfume | House · year | Why it is close |
|---|---|---|
| Suède Osmanthe 5.1 | Pierre Guillaume Paris · 2017 | The same osmanthus and leather pairing, softer and without the woody floor. |
| Oud velvet mood Extrait de parfum | Maison Francis Kurkdjian · 2026 | Another joint between leather and oud, more velvety and far less acidic on top. |
| Sueño Latino | Aedes de Venustas · 2025 | A comparable fruity leather in which the fruit keeps talking for longer. |