La Habana

First, I'll say I believe this is built on the foundation of 19-69 Kasbah which smells like an opium den and Persian carpets. This reminds me of many fragrances. Atelier De Ors Crepescuile and Opium Pour Homme. A much, much spicier, Initio Oud For Greatness mixed with Red Tobacco. Drydown reminds me a these frags sprayed into a cigar lounge. I can also see the comparisons to interlude and some facets of Herod and Tobacco Vanille. Good projection and crazy longevity. Will last for a week on clothing and through a shower. If you're thinking about getting any of the ones I've mentioned, give this a try especially if you like SPICY🌶. This is supposed to smell like Cuba but to me, it's Cuban and Morocco. Scent 9/10 Performance 9/10

#1196 in my "Tour de Fragrance" This is absolutely a great scent. The incense note really dominates and overpowers the other notes, as it does in Amouage "Interlude", so I get why people are smelling a similarity as I do. Less so as it dries down. I actually prefer this to the woodier Interlude, as I'm more a churchy incense fan, don't like the synthetic bergamot they use in interlude, and they are the same price. So at some point when the Interlude runs dry, if this is still out there, I may get this instead. I think you can get away with this in the office, though it's more of a date night fragrance. Solid longevity. Projects a few hours then its a skin scent that lasts through the day.

I'll go ahead and say this isn't going to be for everyone. But it's absolutely for me. This is the essence of 1969 to me - it smells like vintage clothing stores, old records, and burning incense. It's smoky at first and turns sweet and resinous in the dry down. Very peppery, woody and tobacco-ish. Like listening to your favorite rock band play a tiny club in the late 60's before they were *really* famous. If you like MM's Jazz Club, you would enjoy this as well.

A pleasant, sweet incense smell with only a smidge of cigar lounge mixed in. This is the place you go to after the party has died down. Don’t be turned off by the listed notes. From my 19-69 discovery sample box, I saved this one for last because I thought La Habana would be hard for me to wear. Some of my least favorite notes are here; including saffron, ambroxan, Oud (a note I like but when it’s bad it can act like an angry child and ruin the party), aldehydes and hyrax (Eek!) ... looked like my personal recipe for disaster. Instead, I found a wonderful surprise. La Habana is an incense perfume turning more sweet and amber-like in the dry down, no rough edges. A woman could definitely pull this off. With a large collection and lots of wonderful amber perfumes, I like La Habana but would need more time with it to figure out if I love it.

A refreshing opening, saffron bring some notes of spice. The middle note comes to a smoky and resinous scent, with some amber or rum-like sweetness bubbling up, and some woody and animalic notes in the background. It's very much like walking from the outdoors by the sea into a dimly lit bar with heavy wooden doors in Cuba. Compared to Kasbah, both have a very pronounced amber woody sweetness and spice notes, but La Habana is much more astringent in spice and tends towards a rum-like sweetness, and is much lighter overall. ------ 开头是很清爽的味道,搭配藏红花带来一些香料感。中调来到烟熏和树脂香味,隐约冒出一些琥珀或朗姆酒似的甜味,背景里也有一些木质香和动物香。 很像从海边户外走进一家昏暗的木质门很厚重的古巴酒吧的过程。 和Kasbah相比,虽然都有很明显的琥珀的木质香甜和一些辛香料,但La Habana在辛香料上收敛很多且倾向于朗姆酒似的香甜,总体清爽很多。

Despite the note table the resin and Amber together with caramel and saffron give an initial sweet dry slightly urinic cigar feel which after 30 minutes evolves slightly for a few hours turning into what really smells more like cedar and damp fresh cut woodchip topped with cigar leaves. In essence this presents dramatically like a predomimantly woody cigar and tobacco. Perhaps a lovely freshly hewn amd constructed wood cigar box witH one or two cigars left. Nice, somewhat unusual scent. Not fantastically strong but decent. Together with Chinese Tobacco they make a distinctly unique offer in the world of tobacco scents. Pleasant blind buy.

Upon first spray, this was far more smoky than I was expecting. I knew to expect the tobacco, but there were moments over the course of the day where I thought I was catching the faint whiffs of a campfire, which isn't a bad thing. Kind of has Jazz Club/By the Fireplace vibes to it, but it's definitely drier and far more spicy. Don't get much sweetness from the caramel or vanilla, but it is there occasionally. It's not my favorite, but I can appreciate it.

A great, intriguing tobacco. It has a real sharpness which reminds me of the sichuan peppercorn zing in Amouage Journey Man, though it similarly starts to wear on me after a full day (both being quite tenacious). Here however that sharpness resembles cigar smoke over rum, incense and gunpowder. Welcome to Havana! A bit hard to line up the scent with the official notes (hyrax!?). But like pretty much all the 19-69s, unique and definitely worth a try.

Very peppery and woody, with a good balance of vanilla. Definitely an incense fragrance -- the incense and wood notes are very strong here, yet subtle and mysterious. I usually don't like saffron or notes of spice, but I do like it here. It reminds me of the one Catholic mass I attended, or maybe walking into a heavily incensed crystal shop.

This is the first thing with oud in it that I've ever liked. I would not have even tried it if I had not blind tested it as part of a traveling box. Is it only this one perfume, or do I only like Laotian oud? Well perhaps I will find out. But it's 1969 so clearly it's for me.

Love this scent. For some reason i get strong assotiation with bitter patchouli and nargamotta. Even though they are not listed in the notes. I don't get any oud or animalic notes. Long lasting, around 8 hrs.

More spicy than gournand in the drydown but if you're into spicy smells with a sweet aroma then you'll probably like this! Get the discovery set if you can

Very incense-y, but I love the way it dries down! The resins are the best part.

Geez. I don't even know what to say about this fragrance. Expecting something tobacco adjacent, I'm instead wearing a very strong cinnamon, saffron, amber, vanilla, oud, caramel. It smells like something you would sprinkle on vanilla ice cream. I traded Jicky and Mistouko for this, and not sure I would do it again, but at least I didn't pay full price for it.

Oud and hyrax are very much present in this, making it a lot more kinky than your regular churchy incense frag. It's a good combination of notes, but it's just not for me.

Given the listed notes, this had great potential. Some nuance and light-handedness would have done wonders here. I experienced very little subtlety or interplay of notes. Harsh burnt incense, amplified by Aldehydes, and not much else. Disappointing, given all the beautiful facets and layers that can (and do) exist in smokey and incense scents. (Especially when burning) incense, for all its harshness, pungency, and acridness, also can have a hazy, nuanced, watercolor-like quality to it. Beauty missed here, and quite frankly, in much/most of the 19-69 line I've tried thus far.

Wow this is a strange one. The opening blast is very potent, smelling of leather almost. This is very resinous and rich. I was really excited to smell it up close on my skin because it smelled so sensual and then BAM! My skin apparently turned this into BBQ potato chips. It smells exactly like spicy ruffle lays chips! I don't know what the deal is with my skin chemistry but it does something very bizarre to this fragrance. Hard no for me but it smells so good on paper that I'm sure I would love it on someone else.

Well...it’s certainly an interesting scent. For me (as a lapsed Catholic, mind you), this is just too Church incense-like for me without the sweetness to temper the smoke. It’s got some great depth but I find it too linear in a “confess-your-sins-smokiness” vein. But a great fragrance to wear to midnight mass at the Vatican, I suppose.

RAT SHIT. La Habana contains hyrax, which Fragrantica **LITERALLY** describes as rat shit ("Essence from the small rodent hyrax's dried up crystalline fecal matter."). I'm trying to imagine how someone could have discovered that scent source, but something tells me I don't want to know. I also have a feeling hyrax crap doesn't quite have the same luxurious connotation as those uber-expensive monkey-poo coffee beans. Yes, it's church incense, but when you add in that animalic smell to it, it smells like body odor. It reminds me of Masque Milano Terralba, one of the worst fragrances I've ever smelled -- it wreaks of curry powder and b.o. La Habana is, in the first half of its life cycle, a milder version of Terralba. Fortunately, the incense does come out more on the back end, and the animalic aspect tames down as it enters the dry down, together smelling more like a musk, then becoming almost herbal. Unfortunately, moments of that animalic, body-odor scent still come through in the mid. Not my thing. And not blind buy safe. Unless you like to wear rodent poo. Then maybe.........

Smells great, but while I've never been to Cuba, I have a hard time seeing how the name matches the scent here... this is very much an incense fragrance. Not something I really associate with Havana in my mind. Either way, it's a decently performing resinous incense with an interesting peppery/woody nuance in the opening - also something in the opening that reminds me of cumin in that "smells like a person" sense (does not actually smell like cumin) but in a nice way. Once it makes it past the opening and dries down, which happens pretty quickly, it becomes probably a little redundant with Interlude Man. Very much the same sweet, resinous incense and vanilla with a hint of a sharp twang over the top of it. The saffron/aldehyde combo here is probably doing the same thing the oregano does in Interlude Man.

Got this and some other high quality tobacco spray samples (Tobak, Hoja de Cuba) from Ministry of Scent after a really fun (+ free) consultation. Honestly I love it. Surprised it doesn't have more attention here on Fragrantica Of the three tobacco-centered samples, this had the most appeal for me. In the drydown this is actually an amber fragrance, with tobacco as its primary counterpart. It's the resins and the clever combo of caramel, tobacco and oud that make the drydown on this scent feel practically delectable without crossing into gourmand territory. Drydown kind of has the sweet warmth of (the celebrated) Au Coeur du Desert but with a kick of tobacco leaf and saffron that make it unique in its complexity and actually memorable.

It's not bad, it's just not my style. This has a vegetal/Horseradish/Wasabi astringency that will remind you of dining at a sushi bar. This doesn't necessarily smell sushi-esque, but we know what wasabi likes to do on stiff nights. There is a smoky-ness paired with the caramel to give it some airy sweetness. This has nothing to do with Herod and red tobacco. Actually, La Habana is not even a good tobacco scent. I haven't smelled interlude so I don't know. This will work better for someone else, just not me. I'm looking to swap this so feel free to message me.

I am a such a fan of 19-69. The stories they tell with their fragrances are captivating. This one is no exception. And it is a powerful story evoking the strength of 1950 Havana....dark, sexy, dirty ! Strong, long-lasting and engaging incense and resins. The vanilla evens the power of the scent only slightly. You are definitely entering a massive 14th century church steeped in centuries of lighted candles, incense and well worn wood. Reminds me of Montale's Full Incense. Be prepared.

This smells like piss, and I never wear it. However, I layered it with scent with pistachios and vanilla and that pairs perfectly. It needs something sweet to blend with for the incent to emerge and develop nicely.

I loved this in the bottle, but I sprayed it on my boyfriend and it was like sleeping next to the incensor at Catholic mass in my middle school gym. I'll give it another try because it's definitely interesting.

A less sweet version of Maison Margiela’s Jazz Club. Must admit, it’s a really attractive mens fragrance. Smoke, leather and something mysterious.