Do yourself a favour one day and go to the Basenotes website and visit the male fragrance discussion under Forum. I can guarantee you that some of the most popular threads will usually involve Amen, particularly Pure Malt and Pure Coffee. Together with anything to do with Creed, you'd be forgiven thinking that the average male fume head was obsessed with these houses.
Granted, A*men is very distinctive and successful, and not miles away from its feminine counterpart, the classic Angel. I've got a sample of Pure Malt and initially I was a bit dismissive of trying it. After all, I had tried Pure Coffee and Pure Malt once or twice before, in a department store somewhere, and neither had struck me at the time as particularly distinctive or enough of a variation of the original to be of much value. Having worn Pure Malt a few times now, I have been forced to eat my words (or thoughts really) as it really is a very decent fragrance.
Look, I'm not going to lie to you - if you don't like Angel or A*men, and aren't a particular fan of patchouli, chocolate and caramel in combination, then I'm not convinced that you will be blown away by Pure Malt. But I may be wrong. Anyway, to cut a long story short, Pure Malt is obviously a riff on the A*men theme, but what makes it particularly appealing to me is that the peat/malt whisky note prevents this perfume from becoming too gourmand and sweet. Particularly in the dry down, the patchouli really comes to the fore and combines wonderfully with the peat note to present an accord that smells earthy, yet very human at the same time.
I don't think that Pure Malt is a masterpiece, but it is a very decent fragrance and as far as flankers of a sort go, in my opinion an improvement on the original.
