Tabac Sahara

Guerlain describes Tabac Sahara as a mysterious tobacco with gourmand accents. Three accords carry it: tobacco, raspberry, and ambergris, which warms its base and suggests the pink halo of the dunes at nightfall.

Tobacco, raspberry, and ambergris

Tobacco unfurls its wreaths and reveals its smokiest facets. The raspberry accord cuts through the enveloping warmth of tobacco with its tangy freshness, and the berry is covered in a syrupy veil that the house calls addictive.

In the French version of her text, Delphine Jelk speaks of a rose and raspberry note. The notes are arranged here as follows: raspberry in the top; tobacco and rose in the heart; ambergris in the base.

What stays out

Longer lists attribute citrus and red fruits to the fragrance in the top, and amber, woody notes, and vanilla in the base. Guerlain names none of them: these materials stay out of the classification, vanilla appearing only as vanillin in the ingredient list.

What the label declares

Guerlain publishes the ingredient list under code 21852. After alcohol, fragrance, and water come isoeugenyl acetate, soft and spicy, and coumarin, with its scent of freshly cut hay, often used in tobacco accords.

Rose oil is indeed on the list, echoing the rose mentioned by the perfumer, as are vanillin and benzaldehyde, with its bitter almond scent. A UV filter, avobenzone, protects the juice; two colorants, a violet and a red, tint it.

The list contains neither lilial nor lyral, two ingredients banned in the European Union. Eugenol, isoeugenol, geraniol, and linalool are among the declared allergens, as regulations require for fragrances.