Bull's Blood

“A man who has killed is a man who knows passion.”
-Devante Valéreo

Devante Valéreo was raised in a dusty Spanish village on the Balearic Sea. He fondly recalled going to the bullfights with his father, an ex-picador, and credited those early experiences with inspiring his most popular novella, Bull’s Blood. The book’s lurid tale of seduction garnered obscenity charges against the author. Though the charges were rejected by the court, a ban on the sale of his works persisted for a number of years.

A fixture in Barcelona, smoking cigarillos and writing in the cafés and bars into the night, Valéreo disappeared as a fugitive in 1967 after a highly publicized bar scuffle with American sailors, one of whom later died from his injuries. “A man who has killed, ” he wrote in Bull’s Blood, “is a man who knows passion.” No exaggeration here, this is a highly animalic scent not for the faint of heart.

Update: The much-beloved, occasionally feared Bull's Blood is coming back for 2023 with a new interpretation of a still ferocious concept: a little rose, a little geranium, a lot of patchouli. It’s still very animalic, a brutal perfume not for the faint of heart. It’s polarizing- and it's meant to be. But the tobacco accord is exquisite and, just as before, for the right person, Bull's Blood is not just beastly, but remarkably elegant.