That is awesome! Thank you for the great PIF and congrats to the other winners!
I selected the Venture Shave Balm as my prize. I was one of the original testers of the new mystery AS done by Captain a while back which eventually became the Venture. I really liked the scent, but did not like the alcohol content of the AS. Since it was my choice (and since I already had a ton of soaps), I chose the Shave Balm which arrived today. First thing I noticed was that the bottle was huge. You lose perspective when an item is shown singly on the web site, but put in perspective, this is very tall and slender.
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The balm came just in time for tonight's shave, and I just happened to have one of my more aggressive slants up for rotation. I made sure I did almost everything I could to give myself an extremely harsh shave (mostly by applying some pressure ATG, doing a full XTG, and going over sensitive spots more than twice).
I squirted a couple of shots of the balm in my palms and rubbed it to warm it up before applying it to my face. It was very soothing, similar to Nivea, but not as thick and that familiar Venture scent came out immediately. The scent was not as strong as the AS that I tested, but then again I wasn't expecting a balm to be. As I write this, one thing I noticed and was reminded of is that there is a very subtle scent that cannot be detected by anyone but yourself that last long after the shave. In this case, I can still smell it nearly two hours later.
Many have described the scent to be a ringer for Creed Adventus, and not having used Adventus, I cannot confirm or deny that. It is a very relaxing and pleasant scent, and the balm works very well. In general, soaps, creams and AS get all the attention these days, but a good balm is a great finisher to a shave. One thing I like about this balm is that it does not contain menthol and works just on the ingredients alone. I highly recommend this.