What does an 8.0 really mean?

Many rating systems give a “good” fragrance a 9, while a great fragrance gets a 10. In a way, that can seem logical, but then a truly exceptional fragrance also gets a 10, and the difference between great and exceptional becomes much less clear. To avoid that confusion and make the ratings easier to understand, I’ve always preferred to score fragrances quite strictly. My rating system is shown in the table below, and whenever you look at a fragrance score on this site, I want you to keep that scale in mind.

The overall scores on my site are not based only on my own taste. They also reflect the quality, uniqueness and performance of the fragrance, so each one is a score I give across all of these criteria. I may not like a fragrance, or it may simply not suit me, but I don’t think it makes much sense to give a low score to a beautiful, high quality fragrance just for that reason.

You can be sure of one thing: a fragrance I rate 7/10 would, in a more typical rating system, probably be closer to an 8–8.5/10.