Penhaligon's Castile

I also picked up a tube from the January sale for $20USD. However, my price rating reflects full MSRP. At $20, it's a pretty good buy. $30 is a lot to spend for a tube of shaving cream and I'd be hesitant to shell that much out.

As for quality? AAA. Top-shelf, no doubt. A really superb cream through and through.

The scent is amazing, neroli and bergamot are dominant as ouch mentioned. I wish it had some rose in there like the cologne, but I don't detect any. I nearly want to go around with a face full of lather, not wanting to wash it off.

Latherability, efficacy are second to very few. I've been using it about a week now and it may very well hit my Top 3. Not saying you can't get just as good of a shave with a much less expensive product, but if you're looking to pamper yourself, Penhaligon's is a great way to go about it.

I wasn´t really in the market for a Penhaligon´s SC, but I got this along with some other stuff during Penhaligon´s January sale.

I´m convinced that there´s a psychological effect when people buy expensive products. I believe they overestimate the quality of products that they´ve spent a bundle on to justify the added expense. So, even though I´ve heard good thing about Penhaligon´s creams, I wasn´t really expecting that much from this. Luckily, I was wrong.

I only paid £10 for the rather large tube so the cost certainly wasn´t excessive. To my nose the scent is dominated by neroli, which I´m normally not that fond of, but in this case I found it to be quite pleasant. An old-school scent that I like.

The tube is plastic but quite nice. It has a narrow nozzle and the cream is liquid enough that it´s easy to squeeze out an appropriate amount. Unfortunately the seam on the tube broke open on one end as I lifted it from the box. Seems (pun intended) Penhaligon´s have had a bit of a quality control problem with their tubes.

I own quite a few creams (TOBS, Trumper, Speick, Musgo Real etc), but this is the easiest cream to lather of any I´ve tried. Good performance, no complaints. My skin is rather sensitive so I was expecting a reaction to the strong scent, but I´ve had no problems whatsoever. I always need an ASB after shaving in wintertime, and this cream was no exception. But I didn´t notice any obvious drying effect from using it.

Didn´t pay full price for this, but in my opinion it would probably be worth doing. Very nice.

When the horde of visigoths plunder my shave stash, this is the first one I'll be replacing. It shaves like a dream, and the scent is one of the best I've encountered in a cream. Hard to find any fault at all with this, save the plastic tube. See below.

Price- $30? Oofah, but at least you get a healthy sized 150g tube. You didn't think Penhaligon's would be giving it away, didya? That price puts it in the very highest tier, but not as bad as CF or some others. Hard to call it a bargain.

Quality- No shortcuts here. Everything about it reeks of quality.

Scent- 10 is not high enough. Dominated by neroli/bergamot, and captivating.

Latherability- No issue. As good as it gets.

Efficacy- I thought I would be paying for mystique and scent, but the strong performace was a pleasant surprise. Top notch any way you look at it.

Moisturizing- For the spring through fall periods when its use will be most appropriate, no additional moisturizing may be needed. Leaves the face feeling very nice.

Packaging- So it's not in the silver topped tub, as in the case of Blenhein Bouquet. A chintzy plastic tube is all you get, albeit one with some gorgeous graphics on it. NB: My tube of Douro failed the very first time I used it. The seem at the bottom split- not very encouraging for a $30 product.


An all around delight. Expensive, but worth it.