Liqueur Charnelle
Pierre Guillaume (2014)

I expected a heavy smell of liquor and tobacco from this fragrance, but what I got was just spices (predominantly pepper) with an ordinary woody note. Its sweet and sour spices (and the overall smell of this fragrance) are copied from Spicebomb by Viktor&Rolf and we feel like we are using Spicebomb, so why do we need to buy this? I think Mr. Guillaume is very fond of copying hyped fragrances. But I am more upset about the trivial marketing trick that he has used in choosing the name of his fragrance; Using the name of "Liqueur" while the least trace of liqueur is not found in it.

Crass woody-peppery masculine with marzipan.
If you liked Bang you'll probably like this too.

Liqueur Charnelle opens with a soft pink pepper and honeyed lemon resinous elemi before gradually transitioning to its heart. As the composition enters its early heart the honeyed lemon elemi is still detectable, as a vague, moderately sweet red fruit laced boozy accord joins it in support of soft powdered blonde tobacco and vague synthetic woods that take the fore. During the late dry-down the perfume turns more dry and less sweet, as the boozy aspect vacates, leaving remnants of the now less synthetic smelling vague woods to meld with unveiled supporting black pepper and slightly creamy, tobacco and vanilla-like tonka bean in the base through the finish. Projection is below average and longevity excellent at over 12 hours on skin.

Liqueur Charnelle is just about the perfect model of what an "average" level of success smells like in a perfume. It has all the attributes of a winner, but the whole in this case is far less appealing than the individual parts. Supposedly the perfume is trying to emulate the general smell and appeal of Cognac liqueur (I guess with the drinker smoking a pipe), but while the perfume smells boozy and certainly the tobacco is there, it never really quite captures the spirit of the liqueur, or the tobacco for that matter. The primary spoiler is one that plagues so many other efforts... vague synthetic woods, in this case derived from norlimbanol. When done right, the stuff can be used to great effect, but alas here it is too strong, and gets in the way of the tobacco and the booze, ruining the illusion for the wearer and making them instead wonder why they wasted their money. The bottom line is the approximately $180 per 100ml bottle Liqueur Charnelle has some appealing notes in its published list, but the whole is much less than the sum of its parts in this "average" 2.5 stars out of 5 rated shoulder shrug, earning a disinterested avoid recommendation to all.

Opens well enough, but like so much of modern perfumery this is a top that begins to wobble soon after starting to spin. So, that opening – a fanfare of warm spice, tobacco and macerated fruit suspended in a boozy accord. Nice, if you like that kind of thing but it also smells straight off the designer men's racks. The wobble is in the ‘powdery woods' as declared in the notes – this is powderiness not of the sheer and smooth variety but leaning more towards the sweetly matronly and soapy. It reacts particularly badly with the booziness to produce an unflattering cosmetics past their ‘use by' date effect. Eventually this becomes a cloud of formless sweetness with a sprinkling of spice, leaving a better impression in a room than it does on my skin.

opens with promise...aromatic tobacco with a fresh spicy fruity touch...goes downhill after that...a mellow aromatic fresh tobacco accented with a fruit essence of peppery raspberry...feels somewhat woody...is a nice and pleasant fragrance...the pepper gives it a zingy mint feeling at times...a better alternative to this is PDM Herod...bottom line - a basic slightly sweet - slightly spicy - slightly woody tobacco...the icing on the cake is that this has horrendous projection and longevity...move along...get something else...nothing to see here...

I wore it yesterday and I only remember something vaguely pleasant, sweet, flowery and woody.