Cuban Cigar

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Cuban Cigar is the smell of an unlit hand-rolled cigar. It is fermented tobacco leaf, the Spanish cedar box it aged in, and a leather-suede edge, with a faint cocoa sweetness underneath. It is dry. There is no ash in it.

Scent Profile

Tobacco_hay leads and both sources put it first. Premiere Peau opens with 'dry, fermented tobacco'; Hermitage's tasting note for a cigar-like tobacco absolute reads 'hay, woody, virginian cedarwood, cigar rich'. This is cured leaf, not burnt leaf. Dry_woody is the Spanish cedar box the leaf ages in, and it is the one facet both sources reach independently - Hermitage names 'virginian cedarwood' without being prompted by the cigar framing, and separately calls the material 'extraordinarily dry'. Leather is stated outright as a 'leather-suede quality' and is corroborated by the build, which names birch tar and isobutyl quinoline. Coffee_cacao is the 'faint cocoa sweetness' that Premiere Peau attributes to theobromine developing during fermentation; it is called faint twice, so it stays low. Below the naming line: animalic for the 'wisp of ammonia' from curing, powdery and sweet_vanillic for the 'tonka bean powdery sweetness' Hermitage finds on drydown and the cocoa/vanillin in the build, earthy and mossy_chypre for the 'heavy musty cotton smell' Hermitage compares to an old army kitbag, amber_resinous and honeyed for the general warmth, and smoky only. Smoky is deliberately near the floor: the source is explicit that this is 'the unlit cigar: all leaf and wood, no ash'. Its spread is the widest in the vector at 0.20, because a perfumer building a cigar accord may well smoke it up and no source rules that out.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~28h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Woody & Earthy

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

Origin

An accord, not a distilled material. It references premium hand-rolled tobacco from Vuelta Abajo in Cuba: fermented Nicotiana tabacum leaf cured over months, boxed in Spanish cedar (Cedrela odorata). Perfumers build it from tobacco absolute, cedryl acetate or Virginia cedarwood oil, birch tar and isobutyl quinoline for the leather, and a touch of cocoa or vanillin. The ammonia trace and the cocoa both come from fermentation.

Usage in Perfumery

A base note and an anchor. It gives dry warmth without the honey-and-dried-fruit sweetness that plain tobacco brings. It pairs with rum, honey, dried fruit and dark spices.