Vanilla is such a compelling perfume note for me. I’m not talking about the sickly-sweet scents that young girls are lemming for. No, I’m talking about the darker, complex, earthy, boozy, treacly, vanilla. Created by Jean-Paul Guerlain in 2007, as a special edition, fans of the EDP spoke and Guerlain listened, making it a permanent part of the L'Art et la Matière collection. This is good news for perfumophiles everywhere. The Guerlain website says that in Spiritueuse Double Vanille “each raw material recalls the journey, the long crossings by boat, in which the wood of the hull melds with that of the rum barrels and spice boxes.” One of the qualities of Spiritueuse Double Vanille that I especially enjoy is that the notes are true. Spiritueuse Double Vanille opens with a burst of bitter, tart bergamot balanced with a note of heady, rich, Bulgarian rose, boosted by rose-scented pink pepper. As it warms on my skin, a wisp of incense starts to curl through the fruity/floral opening. There’s vanilla is here too, boozy and dark, hinting at what’s to come. As it develops, jasmine and ylang-ylang appear and surround the rose as the booziness becomes more pronounced from a note of rum. Soon, the florals step back and allow a sweet smooth note of incense to add its smokiness to the rich vanilla. The beautiful scent of dry, woody cedarwood closes the deal. The drydown is rich, smoky, boozy and woody. Spiritueuse Double Vanille is sophisticated vanilla fragrance that takes classic vanilla and updates it with smoke and wood, so that it works beautifully on a man or a woman (note: we don’t test fragrances on animals here at the niche, just husbands). ‘Spiritueuse’ translates into English as ‘liquor’ or ‘spirits’, making Spiritueuse Double Vanille mean rum with a double shot of vanilla and the vanilla runs through this fragrance, so that its different aspects - rich, creamy and boozy – are deftly displayed. Only Guerlain could make a stunning vanilla fragrance like this. Notes: bergamot, frankincense, pink pepper, Bulgarian rose, jasmine, ylang-ylang, vanilla, benzoin, rum.
