re: Axe body spray

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When we did our post about 15 manly smells a few months ago, several of you chimed in that bay rum should have made the list. For the uninitiated, bay rum is a fragrance that’s often used in aftershave lotion and shaving soaps. West Indies bay leaf, spices, and Jamaican rum, combine to give the bay rum fragrance its distinctive woody, sweet, and spicy scent. Because of its island flavor, bay rum is a great summertime scent, but it’s a fine fragrance to sport year round.

The history of bay rum is as manly as it smells.  Sailors in the 16th century discovered that the West Indies bay leaf made a great perfume to freshen up and mask the stink they acquired while being stuck on a ship for months. To apply the scent to themselves, the sailors would rub the dry leaves on their body, thus leaving the fragrant oil on their skin. While sailors were rubbing leaves on themselves, farmers were cultivating boat loads of sugar to be shipped back to Europe. A few enterprising plantation slaves discovered that molasses, a by-product of sugar, could be fermented into a sweet alcoholic beverage. Brewers on the islands took the slaves’ crude  recipe, distilled it, and made it 10 times stronger, thus creating the rum we know today.

Tired of having to rub bay leaves on himself like a weirdo, some sailor got the idea that rum would make a great liquid to steep the bay leaves in to extract their essential oils and make an easy-to-apply cologne. And with that, bay rum was born.

Islanders took this basic recipe and began adding their own olfactory flourishes by mixing in cloves, citrus rind, and cinnamon.

From the West Indies the scent spread to the rest of the world and became popular among men as an aftershave scent. Barbershops in America developed their own unique version of bay rum aftershave to slather on their patrons so they walked out smelling awesomely manly after getting theirstraight razor shaves. And if you check the medicine cabinets of men born before 1950, there’s a good chance you’ll find a bottle of bay rum in it.

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