Jo's Scent Notes: Guerlain L'Art & La Matière Tobacco Honey

Tobacco is something of a ‘hot’ ingredient in perfumery, right now. But I’m not talking fag-ash tobacco, here. As a raw ingredient, tobacco has a dry woodiness, almost a hay-like quality (if you’ve ever buried your nose in a haystack). And (like the real thing) can be really rather addictive.

This smoochy number – which I reckon to be one of the best fragrances riding perfume’s tobacco fashion wave – was unveiled on an incongruously hot summer day a few months ago, at The Connaught, where Guerlain Perfumer Thierry Wasser had popped over on the Eurostar to show it to journalists in person. (Sigh, swoon. Handsomest ‘nose’ in the business, and the subject of many a perfume writer’s crush.)

But Tobacco Honey was always destined to be something to wear when days are short and nights are long and you fancy sliding into a banquette with a cocktail. (Or two, that definitely being my limit.) It’s rich, opulent, glamorous. If it was a fabric, it would be chestnut-coloured velvet. If it was a metal, it would be molten gold. If it was a place… well, it would be The Connaught Bar itself. Can’t think of anywhere more perfectly glamorous to wear this.

But what also makes Tobacco Honey really interesting is – yes – the honey note. Proper honey, like it’s been drizzled and swizzled into the bottle: sweet and seductive, the perfect counterpoint to the tobacco’s dryness. There’s an ambery warmth, too, and not a little vanilla, softening the whole.

But mostly, I love the more-than-a-touch of cigar smoke drifting through Tobacco Honey. That firmly pushes my olfactory buttons; I have been known to sit near The Connaught in Mount Street Gardens, as it happens, downwind of men who are smoking cigars and reading their papers . As far as these cigar aficionados are concerned, I’m checking my phone; in reality, I’m closing my eyes and breathing in the aromatic, mysterious swirl of cigar smoke carrying through the air. (And it’s deeply ironic that I like this, since I run a mile from the merest whiff of cigarette smoke).

What also makes Tobacco Honey remarkable, meanwhile, is its tenacity. It absolutely clings for dear life to the skin. Spray it on a wrist and it’ll be there 24 hours later (and weirdly, even if you lightly shower). I’ve no idea which particular notes make it quite so long-lasting, but it’s properly impressive, a Duracell bunny of a perfume.

Indeed, I have long maintained that the stronger the concentration of a fragrance, actually, the better value it is. Colognes, for instance, smell brightly and divinely fresh – but blink and they’re gone. And while this is an arm, two wrists and a leg in price, you get a LOT of skin-life for your buck from this eau de parfum. (Any Guerlain stockist of the brand’s spiffy L’Art & La Matière collection, meanwhile, will be happy to let you have a spritz and try it for yourself.)

Meanwhile, I can get my cigar fix without stalking strange men in public places.

£290 for 100ml eau de parfum – buy here