The Silk Road

Sampling d’Annam The Silk Road, part of the Chapter 3 collection, Majestic China, released toward the end of 2025. It’s a spicy, earthy, woody blend made up of tobacco leaf, ginseng, leather, vetiver, and spices, and is unsurprisingly a bit sharp and dark, with the tobacco/leather blend at the centered, modified by the earthy, ashy aspects of vetiver, raw sharpness of ginseng, and spicy notes that, to me, seem like a vague amalgamation of cumin, coriander, and even a bit of castoreum, perhaps the result of the dry leather/tobacco blend. It’s powerful, and from what I recall, there’s nothing quite like it in the d’Annam catalogue to date. As far as evolution, the opening moments after application lean toward a savory/sweet/spicy mix and the experience becomes drier and more leathery, more resinous over time. Overall, this is a great experience with great performance. As with the rest of the house, this is EDP concentration and priced currently at $160 for 50ml, sold in the US via the house website and great boutiques like Perfumology. I find this pricing reasonable in the current market for niche perfume with clear care and thought put into its conception and execution. I’d say this and Chinese Calligraphy are my two favorites of Chapter 3. 8 out of 10

The Silk Road smells like an ancient Chinese shrine or temple. It has a lot of exotic spices and for me, it’s also almost a bit boozy and smoky/incense like as well. The vetiver is very strong in this, I get hints of the warming tobacco and ginseng too and those three notes together with the spices, give this fragrance an almost Chinese medicinal scent, which is magical and truly reminds me of The Far East and Asia. I would say The Silk Road leans toward a more masculine scent profile, and it is long lasting, especially on clothes compared to other fragrances from d’Annam, which typically has a more mid and moderate longevity. If you have a love for East Asia, or are looking for something that smells exotic or like a temple hidden in the Chinese mountains – get this!

I really love this scent. You get rich, dense, almost chocolaty tobacco mixing with a variety of warming spices. I don’t get much of the leather or vetiver, and I’m not entirely sure what ginseng is supposed to smell like, but the scent rounds out to be very warm and spicy...there’s still complexity here because I’m not entirely sure what spices are being used, and I think there might be honey and a touch of ash lurking somewhere in it. I like to wear this on brisk evenings out, casually, but I suppose it would also work during the day. It lasts a solid 6 hours on my skin and projects at about an arms length within the first two hours. It’s masculine-leaning, but still unisex...I think it would be a bold scent to smell on a woman. 9.1/10

I did not expect to like this at all but it's really good! More spicy than tobacco though just in case you like smelling like cigarettes. It's also quite masculine

IT'S SOUR PLUM DRINK Smoky + sour + plum. Literally smells like suanmeitang.

At first I was like "what's the big deal it smells like men's cologne." I have got to stop making judgements from the first whiff of the vial. On the skin, it is something completely different. Have you ever stuck your hands in a bowl of potpourri just to see what it would smell like? It's like that, but it actually smells like it's supposed to go on the skin. Heavy cardamom, deep wood, literal box of tobacco. When you keep really good shag tobacco in a wooden box, the box smells a certain way for about five years, and if you soaked it in whiskey and cardamom and a hint of incense on the air from the temple a mile away, you have this perfume. If my neighborhood bodega time traveled back thousands of years in the past it would smell like this. This scent is incredibly strong though. Even opening the vial I got maybe a molecule of the perfume under my fingernail and it smells like I fully and intentionally applied it. A woman can wear this but I think it is largely the scent for a man. That being said, if you want to be an attractive man, only wear a little bit and maybe even wash it off or somehow downgrade it so that you can only get a whiff if you are up close. If you fully put this scent on your wrists, neck, etc., I think it would be overpowering and almost kind of threatening. I would be interested to see what this perfume smells like if you layered it with something of milky base notes, though I am hesitant to layer it with anything because it is so strong. There is regrettably a definitive isopropyl alcohol undertone that could be inappropriately enhanced by mixing it with the wrong thing, and I fear it would give me a brain aneurysm if did not choose carefully. Edit: I mixed with L'Eau Papier by Diptyque and also tried mixing with White Rice by D'annam. These both have the "milky base notes." It worked out really well. Feminized the perfume but not girlyfied. Smells like a horchata type of drink. An enticing smell, definitely complicates things, nice for a summer date.

The spices in this are amazing and aromatic. This fragrance is warm and inviting but also masculine. The dry down almost reminds me of dr. pepper, not a bad thing, i would definitely wear this in the fall

I agree with Mr Salazar below (I’m a fan girl iykyk 😆) I also think this is a more masculine and more austere take on spices and tobacco. It smells like a clean smoky samurai in a field of spices.

This one didn’t read China to me at all. Instead, it leans heavily European or even Middle Eastern in style, loud spices, dense leather, and a thick tobacco backbone. I was hoping for something more ginseng-forward or at least recognisably East Asian, but what I get feels closer to an over-spiced Arabic-inspired fragrance. It’s powerful and assertive, just not my taste, and far removed from the imagery the name suggests.

Unlike some of the other fragrances from the collection, this smells exactly like the notes! This isnt sweet to me at all though, just bitter and earthy. The most prominent notes are ginseng and tobacco on me. I think the vetiver and leather add a very dry quality as well.

How interesting. Sweet ginseng and spices. There are no notes that throw me off. This is not something I would wear, however, as it is masculine and I like very feminine perfume.

Smells like Chinese traditional medicine/pharmacies in China

gifted my bf a bunch of samples and just now got around to trying one of them myself. this is like his counterpart to my “creep” by barre, which has a candied citrus and latex note that makes it a little brighter, and has a synthetic scent that i really like. that being said, this is still a really nice scent; the dry down sweeter than i thought it would be, but not overly cloying! i feel it’s more spice forward than the other main notes, especially cardamom. i kind of feel like a nice leather jacket that’s been marinating in a room where incense has bin lit. really nice !

liked this a lot more than i expected to! more spicy than it is reminiscent of leather or tobacco, but i quite liked that—a colleague who smelled it on me said it reminded her of incense (complimentary). a bit too ‘masculine’ (for want of a better word) for my tastes but ill definitely use the sample up this winter.

This to me smells like a better version of tobacco vanille. The spice and warmth is more prominent here in this fragrance.