Phoenix & Beau Spitfire and RazoRock Lupo get along just fine

Yesterday I received the tub of Phoenix & Beau Spitfire shaving soap that was shipped from the UK on January 17. My Rooney Emilion — which has a very fine silvertip knot with the same hooked tips as the Rooney Victorian I recently enjoyed — easily raised an exceptionally creamy lather. It was unusual enough that I looked at the ingredients:

Potassium Stearate, Glycerin, Potassium Tallowate, Potassium Ricinoleate, Potassium Safflower Seedate, Potassium Lanolate, Sodium Shea Butterate, Cocos Nucifera Fruit Juice, Potassium Cocoate, Aqua, Allantoin, Tocopherol Acetate, Stearic Acid, Adeps Bovis, Ricinus Communis (Castor) Seed Oil, Carthamus Tinctorius (Seed) Oil, Lanolin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Cocos Nucifera Oil, Parfum.

I’ve no idea what the main contributors are, but the lather really is exceptional. I don’t recall this from my other P&B soap. I’ll have to use it tomorrow to compare.

The fragrance is quite pleasant, though lighter than I would prefer. I did get the leather and a hint of the tobacco. Their description:

What does it smell of? Spitfire is a scent I designed around the olfactory memories I have of my Grandfather, who was himself a WW2 Veteran of North Africa and Italy. An avid pipe smoker my “Papa” had an almost tangible air of leather and tobacco that seemed to follow him wherever he went.

For Spitfire I’ve taken the sweet crispness of juniper and blended that with the freshness of bergamot, woodiness of cedarwood and laid all three on to a base of warming leather and rich tobacco.

An old fashioned and grounding scent Spitfire transports me back to my very early years. Please note that in terms of scent strength Spitfire is a moderately bold scent that I place in the middle of our olfactory strength range.

Their olfactory strength range must be relatively muted if this is in the middle. I would place its olfactory strength on my strength range at about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being high.

RazoRock’s Lupo is a razor that, though comfortable, still has a lot of blade feel and is highly efficient. Three passes produced a BBS result easily (and with zero damage). I do like the lather of this shaving soap.

A splash of Floris JF finished the job, and this morning I really liked the fragrance — perhaps my nose was wanting a stronger hit of something. According to Basenotes:

Top Notes: mandarin, orange,  lemon zest
Heart Notes: armoise, cypress, amber
Base Notes: exotic woods, amber

The caffeine this morning is Fantastico’s Sulawesi Toarco Jaya: “Silky, clean, and expressive — Sugar cane, pineapple, nectarine, dried mango, black tea, vanilla.”