Burley Tobacco

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Burley is the air-cured tobacco and the darkest of the three cures. It smells of cured leaf carrying caramel and tonka bean rather than of fruit or smoke. Under that sit dry chocolate, cedar and an earthy, agrestic dry-out. It is the heaviest reading of tobacco absolute and it lasts.

Scent Profile

Tobacco_hay leads and is the identity. Premiere Peau states that all cures 'share a coumarinic backbone -- that sweet, hay-like warmth', and Hermitage closes its description on 'earthy, agrestic and just unmistakably, distinctively gorgeous,...tobacco'. It sits below the plain tobacco note at 0.95 and just under pipe-tobacco at 0.88, because in Hermitage's own sentence order the leaf character arrives in the dry-out and the caramel arrives first. It sits above virginia-tobacco 0.78 and blond-tobacco 0.75 because both sources call Burley the darkest and richest cure. Sweet_vanillic is the facet that makes this a separate note rather than a synonym. Two sources independently name the same two things, caramel and tonka bean, and Premiere Peau names them first in its Burley clause. That puts it above pipe-tobacco 0.55, virginia-tobacco and white-tobacco. Dry_woody is 'cedar humidor', stated by Premiere Peau, and matches pipe-tobacco at the same value. Coffee_cacao is 'dry, chocolate shavings' from the Hermitage page. That is one customer line rather than the supplier's own copy, so the spread on it, the widest in this vector. Earthy is quoted directly, 'Dry out is earthy, agrestic', and runs above virginia-tobacco. Fruity is the 'dried fruits' in Premiere Peau's Burley clause. It is held far below virginia-tobacco 0.65 on purpose, because the whole point of that source's three-way comparison is that fruit is what Virginia has and Burley does not lead with. Below: leather rests on 'cigar-like' and on cured-leaf phenolics, and is well under the plain tobacco note's because no source says leather for Burley; amber_resinous is the tonka and caramel warmth; honeyed is set low, against blond-tobacco 0.45 and pipe-tobacco 0.60, because both sources reach for caramel and tonka and neither says honey; smoky because air-curing uses no fire.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~36h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Sweet & Gourmand

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Burley tobacco absolute is made by solvent extraction of dried Nicotiana tabacum leaves of the Burley variety. Burley is air-cured in a barn rather than flue-cured over heat like Virginia or sun-cured like Turkish, and that cure is what the odour difference is attributed to. The extract is a viscous liquid, dark greenish brown to black brown. Hermitage Oils gives Bulgaria as the origin of its stock, though Burley is grown mainly in the United States, Malawi and Italy.

Usage in Perfumery

Burley absolute is a base note used where a tobacco needs weight rather than sweetness on top. It goes into leather, amber and gourmand tobacco compositions, and pairs with tonka, cacao, dried fruit and cedar, all of which its own description already contains. A little carries a long way. Hermitage reports the material still readable on a smelling strip after five days.