Tabac Grande
Sultan Pasha (2016)

Sultan Pasha Tabac Grande. I love this attar.
It ranks among his more popular compositions, and once you smell it, you quickly realize why. I'd say, it's a no-brainer if you are a fan of tobacco perfumes. It plays on the boozy and moist tobacco qualities, to my nose, supported by a good dose of castoreum, resins, and slightly fruity and chocolaty touches.

The cognac accord opens the way. Even for me, who doesn't care for these facets, it is so satisfying. It has a nice fruity undertone, something like cherry or plum liquor, and I believe the tonka bean helps a lot with that. I also get a chocolaty quality in it, although not listed. It might be the interplay of coffee and resins. The former is not as strong as in his Cafe Ambre Noir, only slightly there as a supporting note, hence, I could very well perceive it chocolatier than it wants to be. To this boozy, fruity, and liqueur-like opening, the tobacco joins in, quite raw and full-flavored, as well as a big dose of castoreum. The latter feels chewy, leathery, and smoky, pairing with the tobacco perfectly. I don't necessarily pick up the herbaceous notes listed, nevermind the flowers. This is a dark, sweet, and syrupy attar. In the base, the resins become more assertive. I get Sultan's signature base accord with the benzoin while the castoreum clings to the composition till the end becoming slightly dirtier as the oil dries down. It is a superbly blended composition, like all his creations, smoothly transitioning between stages.
Overall, it reminds me of blends like Tobacco Oud Intense, and Jeke (the original version), both of which play on that boozy-fruity tobacco accord drenched in resins. It is more polished than the Slumberhouse, and less smoky and refined than the Tom Ford, yet more natural smelling.

If you love tobacco perfumes, boozy accords, and thick resinous blends, I highly encourage a sample. I don't talk about performance as it doesn't matter to me much, but for those curious, it is nuclear and you only need a tiny dot to fill the room. It is not just an amazing scent but a great value as well.

IG:@memory.of.scents

There is something to be said for the natural advantage of the attar format, which can be loosely defined as the alchemic magic that occurs when you introduce a handful of superb natural materials to each other and simply let them do their thing. Out of the hundreds of attars I’ve smelled, Tabac Grande perhaps best demonstrates this principle. In this scent, rich tobacco leaf absolute is put in the same room as a deliriously drunken immortelle, a sunbaked hay note (coumarin), and honey, and left to raise hell on their own. Which they promptly do.

Tobacco-based fragrances tend to be loaded up with dried fruit, honey, or sweet ambers to countermand the dryness of the tobacco absolute. But in Tabac Grande, all the supporting materials – the coumarin, labdanum, and immortelle – are told to turn up at the party with only the driest, most weather-beaten versions of themselves.

Thus, immortelle shrugs off its curried pancake syrup, coumarin its nutty talcum powder, and labdanum its unctuous, fatty caramel and sheep fat. What we smell under the tobacco, therefore, is not the dried fruit and cocoa of other renditions, but the sunburnt grasses of the African Savannah. Despite the hit of booze upfront, therefore, know to expect the burnt end of a gingerbread rather than its cakey interior.

What all this winnows down to is the papery toughness of a lone sheaf of tobacco left to cure in the baking sun. Tobacco absolute is incredibly complex in and of itself, and here all the nuances come out to play - prunes, bitter cocoa, dry hay, gingerbread (the burnt edges), and fruit leather. But even these more edible facets present as dry, not gourmand. The small floral touches of osmanthus and heliotrope provide a blurring, softening effect, but are not perceptible in and of themselves.

Tabac Grande is the epitome of tough, manly elegance. Perfect for wearing in the Russian steppes, or anywhere you might wear the following fragrances - 1740 by Histoires de Parfums, Ambre Russe or Tabac Tabou by Parfum d’Empire, and Tabac Aurea by Sonoma Scent Studio. Fantastic work.

A Tonka Absolute blanketing canvas has this reminiscent of Areej and Bortkinoff creations.
It is essential to apply this to the skin as the animalics blend so beautifully to my corpus.
Think opening a humidor that has been lined with an ancient Varnished Oud and Salmonid fed Cedar. Notice the gentle smoking of smoldered Kopi Luwak. A sweet aura that implies richness sans cloy.
Dry down is a natural cleansing breeze from the Sea.
Then I realize that I have been drawn in by the balance between Immortelle and Tonka which comforts me in it's impression of perfect grooming.

Imagine if you will that you are staying at a hotel in Casablanca and the manager has invited you to the Cigar Lounge. On entering the first thing that you see is how rich and decadent the furnishings are. We are talking about dark leather bound chairs, mahogany tables with the walls fitted with dark wooden alcoves. To your left there is a old piano with someone playing a Jazz tune and straight ahead is the bar with a man dressed in a tuxedo serving a customer a whisky drink. You take a sniff of the air and it's filled with cigar smoke and alcohol from the nights festivities.

As you take your seat in one of the leather bound chairs the manager signals to a waiter who brings you a leather bound pouch. As he places this in front of you he mentions this is the finest pipe tobacco laced with a vintage special reserve cognac that is kept in the walk in humidor for when the mayor visits.

You take your Sherlock Holmes pipe out of your pocket in anticipation and then proceed to open the pouch of the finest pipe tobacco. You close your eyes and inhale deeply, the smell of rich aromatic tobacco laced with a fine smelling alcoholic Cognac greets your senses. It's warm and spicy with a slight sweet muskiness coming from the cognac. This smells fantastic as it is blended so no one note overwhelms the other. You take another sniff and you notice a dry woodiness that smells like cedar giving the scent that dry warmth.

This is what I get when I smell this scent, rich tobacco with a beautiful alcoholic Cognac that has a slight sweetness to it. It's aromatic and at the start it almost has a lacquer quality to it with what smells like dark molasses. But I think it's the dark resin with a touch of immortelle which is the signature Sultan Pasha accord that is in a lot of his scents.

The projection is soft and the longevity is good, I've had it on my skin for about six hours and it's still there. So all in all a very rich, decadent smelling aromatic pipe tobacco of the finest quality.

holy smokes!!!! it's like getting slapped in the face with a fresh wet tobacco leaf...rich, dark , animalic tobacco...I pick up on the smell of hay in there...just can't seem to pull my nose away from my hand...it has an addictive and hypnotic effect on me...i've ben sampling quite a bit of the Sultan's mystical alchemical brews and this is definitely one of my favorites...being a huge fan of vintage powerhouse fragrances, this one checks all the boxes...this is what John Wayne would smell like...get a touch of immortelle...i know that a lot of people are not big on immortelle, but I happen to like it a lot , so that adds another bonus to this fragrance for me...also , being a big fan of animalics , i love the animal notes trickling up from the base...projection seems to be real decent...the other noticables to my nose are woods, oud, and a little amber...another wonderful gift from the Sultan...

Damp, rich, chewy, resinous, animalic, and musky. These are the words I would immediately use if I were to tell somewhat what the biggest and loudest tobacco fragrance I have smelled to date smells like (this fragrance of course is the subject of this set of notes: Tobac Grande.) Hyraceum, cognac, and tobacco start this one off with a bang - at once it is musky, alcoholic, and densely filled to the brim with the richest pipe tobacco you have ever smelled in your life.

There is a sweetness that seems to emanate from the cognac, although the tonka is indeed here tucked behind the tobacco as a chewy, sweet, and slightly spicy undertone - there is cade here, which is more often than not used to create a leather tone, but here to me smells more like a semi-sweet woodiness enveloping the very center of the tobacco, and as it grows more and more, you begin to smell the bitter chocolate, and fruity herbal qualities of the osmanthus, which all work together to create a environment for the tobacco, liquor and musk to grow in: it brings to mind those masculine environments where these rich cigars, and dark liquors are smoked and drank, but without the 'burnt' notes at the end of a lit cigar or smoked pipe.

The ambergris is here as quite frequent in the SPA attars I have smelled thus far, but the salty qualities are hard to detect - instead it works as a strong sparkling and heavenly quality to the honey which adds layers of warmth and sweetness to the composition overall - this, you could imagine, acts as the dimly lit lights within the room where these gentlemen are hanging out and as such seem as much the 'lens' through which all these notes are seen through, and as such it isn't so much that the tobacco itself seems sweet (although the benzoin and the tonka are indeed huge factors adding to the chewy and somewhat fruity aspects of the tobacco) but that the overall 'tone' of the composition is warm and comfy.

You can feel the licorice here (as the tolu balsam occasionally transmogrifies into) as a dark unsweet scandanavian variety. Cedar is in the background with the cade producing somewhat smokey and smooth woody effect that last for a great duration of the fragrance (although occasionally, the total effect pairs with the coffee produces a leather effect similar to that in Arquiste's Nanban, of the dark coffeehouse with deep and rich stained wood, and syrupy resins spilling occasionally onto the leather seats.)

There are in fact some notes that come out from hiding (castoreum and heliotrope for sure) every once in a while, but seem to be memories, as if spun by the conversation of these self-same gentlemen.

Overall this one is the richest, tastiest, and best 'pure' tobacco fragrance I have ever tried - with that being said, don't expect that this one is a one-trick pony - stare into the room long enough, and the tobacco will fade, and you will see all of the marvelous things adorning the room.

9/10

YT: Jess AndWesH