Chergui

Today I'm going to be taking at look at Serge Lutens' Chergui. This is another that has been on my list of fragrances to try for quite some time, probably the better part of a year. The note breakdown with honey, tobacco, and hay notes was intriguing to me, and with my natural affinity for tobacco anyway it was something I knew I had to experience for myself. Let's get into it and see if it's as good as I hope it is. Scent: The opening is sweet, spicy, and warm. The primary notes I get are tobacco leaf, sandalwood, incense, and hay. The strongest of the notes are the tobacco leaf and hay. The tobacco leaf starts off the opening with a cozy, sweet, warmth that is powerful but gentle at the same time. It announces itself clearly as the dominant note, but doesn't assault the nose doing so. Following behind the tobacco leaf is the hay note. In this fragrance the hay comes across as dry and grassy with subtle sweet nuances as well. There's a green-ness about it, but not so much that I would call it a green note. More so than that, there's a certain facet of the note that I can best describe as "sun-baked". It's warm and almost solar, but not quite; like a bale of hay on a warm spring day. Up next is the sandalwood and incense. The sandalwood confers a sturdy woodiness tinged with a bit of powder and flecked with just a touch of spice on the back end. Lastly, the incense adds a bit more spice along with some smokiness in the background. The dry down is sweet, warm, and balsamic. The primary notes I get are tobacco leaf, honey, amber, and hay. The strongest of the notes are still the tobacco leaf and hay. Not much has changed with the notes from the dry down; the tobacco leaf is still warm and sweet, and the hay is still dry and grassy. The only notable difference is they feel a little fuller and more rounded out. This is followed by the honey and amber. The honey has emerged in the dry down to provide a gourmand, sticky sweetness to the base of the fragrance. It's not over the top or strong enough to mask the tobacco leaf or hay, it instead helps to bolster and accentuate the sweet elements of those notes and give them a gourmand edge. Lastly, the amber is nestled securely in the background as a deep, rich, resinous sweetness; similar in tone to the Amber Xtreme notes from Prada's Luna Rossa Ocean EDP and Parfum. The dry down reminds me a bit of Tumi's Continuum as well. Performance: Initial projection in the first hour is very strong and can fill a room. Sillage matches that intensity with a dense and heavy scent trail. After about four hours the projection was still about 5-6 feet and the scent trail was a bit lighter but still easily noticeable. After about 7-8 hours the projection had died down to about 3 feet, but the scent trail had remained just as noticeable. The fragrance became a skin scent around the 10-11 hour mark. When to wear: Chergui is a fall/winter fragrance best suited for evening wear. This is not a casual wearing fragrance, but will work great for formal occasions, and even better for special occasions like date nights or anniversaries. Because of the powerful sweetness, this is not something I'd wear to the office. Blind buy: If you like sweet and balsamic fragrances like Luna Rossa Ocean EDP or Continuum, this is a safe blind buy for you. Final verdict: Chergui was a very enjoyable wear. The scent profile is very in line with what I typically enjoy; sweet, warm, spicy with focus on tobacco. The one thing that did surprise me is that it was more "designer" than I imagined it would be. Now there's nothing necessarily wrong with that, I was just a little underwhelmed is all. In terms of performance Chergui did well. Strong projection and scent trails for about 4 hours, and lasting about 10-11 before fading away. Versatility is technically below average but that's to be expected for a fragrance in this category. It's made for cooler weather and works great for formal or special occasions, but that's about it. When it comes to mass-appeal Chergui scored higher than I thought it would due to it's "designer" vibes. It focuses on sweetness and warmth which are very safe and popular accords, and doesn't go too heavy or get challenging in any way. This is one of those fragrances that most people will think smells great and will get lots of compliments. In conclusion, Chergui is a solid sweet tobacco fragrance and will be an easy wear for most people. If I didn't have anything like that in my collection and I was just starting to get into tobacco, Chergui would be a great place to start. But since I already have a strong collection of fragrances in this category and Chergui isn't offering anything unique to the DNA, I'll have to pass on getting a full bottle for now. Still, I'd recommend this to anyone to try because it really does smell great. Scent: 9/10 Longevity: 8/10 Sillage: 8/10

Chergui: If You Know, You Know. Serge Lutens is a niche French house that has been around for a long time, that specialises in really fine perfumery that sits distinct from the mainstream in terms of quality but also in accords. It is unconventional perfumery but not in an over-provocative way. It is more thinky than shouty if that makes sense, and so it should come as no surprise to anyone who follows my reviews that this is a house I very much enjoy. This is my kind of fragrance. I own two from this house: Poivre Noir which is the loveliest study on the many facets of black pepper against sweet, rich woods and a little bit of spice as you could imagine, and Chergui which is the subject of this review today. I love it when a list of fragrance notes has a layer of mystery in terms of what the fragrance will feel like, smell and how it will wear so then you have that little frisson of excitement to discover it yourself when you take that cap off. Chergui is one of those fragrances where the effect when you smell it is a wonderful surprise and you have to then go back and pick out the accords (or not) from the list based on what you can smell. It is note spotting. This is fragrance for people who know and love fragrance. Chergui is a brilliant example of this and I'd contend that it is - delightfully - one of the trickier fragrances to pick out the notes from. But that is the only challenging aspect of this wonderful concoction. It is this rich, floral, sweet and musky blend that glistens in the air. I loved it from the first moment I put my nose on it and I still do; as much because it defies my attempts to define and pigeonhole it to this day, as anything else. Is it a formal fragrance? Yes, but not solely. Is it a floral fragrance? Yes, but not solely. Is it something to wear when I am feeling experimental? Yes, but not solely. Is it something I would wear for myself without leaving the house because it fascinates me to keep sniffing myself and take in the journey? Yes, but not solely. The opening has a slightly boozy quality to it. It is super rich, almost tamarindy with an earthiness and sourness in the edges. The hay isnt fibrous, it is more like the sillage of silage, if that makes sense. There is a moisture from the tobacco leaf accords that hits you from the first sniff: it isnt a bitter or dry tobacco smell but of the fresh leaf itself. The interplay between the tobacco leaf and the iris here is magical. Both do enough to stop the other from dominating. The heavy rose in this (I think rose oil) is an ever-present from beginning to end. As it dries down the sweetness comes more to the fore and it ramps up a lot higher than you think it is going to. It dries down very sweetly indeed. The sweet, rich base over the sandalwood is amber, incense and honey. I cannot see vanilla in the notes but I can smell it here in the base. All these working together should make it cloying and squidgy, over-sweet and a bit sickly but Chergui never truly goes that way. It is sweet but not too much. You'd have to say this is fantastically well blended. The effect as it fades is honey and flowers but not in a very feminine way. It has a quality to it that transcends just how it smells. This is one that you feel as much as smell. Chergui **feels** a bit special. If niche has a feel, this is it. It has moderate sillage and you get a decent 6-7 hours from a fragrance that never truly settles fully into the skin. Is this an intimate thing? Yes, but not solely. I do think it leans slightly feminine and comes into its own in colder weather, but I'm a guy's guy who lives in baking hot Dubai and I absolutely love this one. So many of my reviews are so positive and enthusiastic but I think this is because I only really review fragrances I own and so there will not be many I don't like for obvious reasons. And if there is a slightly hyperbolic tone to the positivity in how I talk about these fragrances, that is just because this is a hobby I love deeply and that comes through in my reviews I hope. Chergui is a fragrance I speak about in these somewhat elevated terms because it typifies the love I have for fragrances. This isn't your bog standard cheap designer crowd pleaser. I get a tremendous amount of enjoyment from things (not just fragrances but with lots of things in life) that are a bit different, a bit niche, a bit advanced and that require a bit of effort and thought to get the best out of, and Chergui is a wonderful example of this. I wear it quite rarely as it a bit of a secret weapon of mine. It doesn't have a specific utility for me, a certain situation where I reach for it. It is more of an instinctive thing. You know when you know. There Word Summary: Rich, Floral, Niche. Scent - 8/10 Drydown - 8/10 Sillage - 7/10 Bottle/packaging - 7/10 Performance - 7/10 37/50

Let's talk about terroir for a moment, and a hobby of mine that unfortunately very few can relate to these days: cigars. (Skip to the second paragraph if you have zero interest in this.) Most people who know the bare minimum about cigars know that Cuban cigars are the most coveted, and usually the benchmark for cigars throughout the world. This is not due to Cuban makers' superb blending abilities or quality control. Any aficionado will be able to tell you that Cuban makers' creativity throughout the cigar making process, from growing to fermenting and aging to blending to selling, is quite low; and Communist government-run entities (which the majority of Cuban cigar makers are to some degree by Habanos, S.A.) have notoriously poor quality control. No, what makes them coveted are the unique terroir of Cuba and the Cuban seed tobacco they hold with vicious defense. The Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and quickly-catching-up Honduras, have hands-down surpassed Cuba in creativity and quality control, but those countries terroirs and tobacco seed aren't like Cuba's, and, therefore, neither are their cigars. The principle is no different from wine, just listen to an argument between a California winemaker and a French winemaker to confirm it. For decades, and even quite a bit now, the French refused to acknowledge that California can make wine that is just as good as French wine simply because California's terroir is not French and therefore the wine cannot be as good. They're wrong, of course. Chergui does this interesting thing of presenting us tobacco, in a perfume, that seems to have come from a unique terroir not able to be replicated anywhere else. Chergui has luminous spiced amber notes, floral sweetness, and a distinct suede leather quality, not dissimilar from Cuban cigars. It is highly complex, with Sheldrake's masterful compositional abilities on full display. There is a hay note that perfectly encapsulates fragrant dried grass, floral, sweet, and gently green earthy. There is a good dose of pink rose, pretty and elegant, that actually pushes Chergui pretty comfortably onto the unisex line - a unique direction for a tobacco perfume of its time period. Amber notes of a gently cured tobacco that's still a touch green, a slightly smokey and medicinal but more so robust incense note, and a creamy sandalwood base create a beautifully elegant foundation. Musk acts as an amplifier for the honey and orris notes, both of which are big players stretching from top to bottom of the perfume, with the orris giving Chergui an overall sense of dry, stately, floral, powderiness, and the honey a translucent and sundrenched yellow pollen sweetness. The two notes have penetrated every corner of the perfume, impossible to separate from the more individual notes, acting as the glue holding everything together. In the better part of two decades ago, Chergui was drier than the new formulations, the newer seeming to lean a bit heavier into the honey and amber notes. But, new or old, it's still Chergui, and it's a masterpiece. There is a principle to culinary arts, particularly Eastern culinary arts, where a dish must be finely balanced between salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and unctuous before it can be considered complete and properly executed. This principle can be applied in varying degrees to a lot of things you smell/taste - including perfume, cigars, wine, etc. This idea of balance - of all parts being in equilibrium to create a cohesive whole - is what Chergui achieves in spades. It is beautifully well-rounded and supple, even as it undulates back and forth to bring one note or a particular set of notes to the forefront while others pull back, and then shortly later they trade places again. Rich, elegant, complex, evocative, always warm and inviting and never pushy or standoffish. Every time I wear it I feel like a million bucks, like I should be in a silk suit, sipping a fine cognac in a high-end cigar bar - that's it! Now I get it, now that I've put thoughts and feelings to paper! Chergui makes me feel bougie af. Well, that's a crass note to end on, isn't it...?

The first time i experienced chergui, i received a 5ml miniature with my bas de soie order. This was back when i believed i only liked realistic florals, so you can imagine how this didn’t really work for me. Over the two years of owning the sample, i kept returning to it. As time passed, my taste as a whole changed. I started accepting that perfumery just cannot capture the true beauty of flowers in real life. So i basically gave up on ‘photorealistic’ florals and went into more vintage amber territory with my tastes, starting with l’heure bleue and eventually shalimar. Chergui kept getting more beautiful as i sampled it on my skin, and after 2 whole years, i caved and got a full bottle. What withheld me the most was how autumnal/late summer this smells. I never buy perfume based on the season, I will wear a resinous amber in 36 degrees i never gaf. But chergui was special. The way it diffuses, the way it feels warm and cozy but not heavy or sweet, the way it smells like so many things at the same time but still manages to be completely unique. it is just so beautiful. I think it is my favorite serge lutens out of all the things I own. Tubereuse criminelle has a beautiful opening, but once the menthol aspect of the tuberose disappears it becomes rather boring. Fleurs d’oranger is rather generic, bas de soie is too metallic, fils de joie is more like a dry red fruit jam with a slight hint of jasmine, iris silver mist is too clovey, de profundis isn’t necessarily fun to wear and more of an experience, la religieuse is too citrusy in a cleaning product way, fumerie turque is nice once u get past the ashtray aspects and five o clock au gingembre is too dry and thin. Chergui is genuinely in its own lane. It is completely wearable yet never too simple. It is layered and all the notes feel ‘full’. It is evocative and emotional, there is nothing photorealistic about this. It is diffusive like previously mentioned without being too much. It balances greenness, spiciness, powderiness and warmth perfectly. It is almost like a baby of vol de nuit and l’heure bleue, yet nothing like the two. It feels like i wasted tons of money on serge lutens perfume that i ended up not liking that much only for the best one to be right in front of me. Now to the notes themselves... actually i dont think fragrantica note pyramids truly mean anything, especially in a scent as abstract as this. I do think that the iris and the hay are very noticeable, the iris especially staying for a full day in the drydown. The hay is warm and almost misty, like a cold yet sunny morning in late august. I find tobacco scents hard to describe because i am a smoker and i am constantly Exposed to tobacco when making my own cigarettes, and the tobacco in perfume never smells like the real deal. Which is a good thing in this case, as i dont want to smell like a bucket of winston blue. There is also a hint of honey, which doesnt smell like caramel or like maple syrup as the note does in many other scents. It also doesnt go dusty animalic as it does in fils de joie. It just adds a golden warmth to the rest of the fragrance. The perfume as a whole wears incensey, but not really a specific type of incense. Maybe opoponax? Chergui does smell a bit medicinal, but I think it might be related to the link between coumarin and cherry cough syrup. I love it however! The ingredient list now shows a few more ACTUAL things in the perfume, like pelargonium (geranium), bergamot, vanillin, bay leaf, spearmint, lavender, camphor and cederwood. And yes, when you really sniff it, there is a hint of something camphor esque. I also think these herbs add to the medicinal experience. But in the end, a note breakdown doesnt work for something like chergui. It is blended so well that all you get is Chergui and maybe iris after 12 hours. I am obsessed. I cant wait to wear this in october. Definitely worth the hype and cult following. May smell masculine leaning on first sniff, but it is definitely one of the most unisex things i have smelled.

Chergui comes from Arabic Sharqi, which is the name given, in Morocco, to the wind that blows from the Sahara desert. In Arabic, it means "from the East" and, in the case of the perfume, has no connection with the island of the same name, located in Tunisia. Serge Lutens is passionate about Morocco and chose the place as his house. Many of his inspirations come from there. In the case of Chergui, Lutens defines as: "a fire fanned by the wind; a desert in flames". The composition brings hay sugar, Iris, rose, honey, incense, tobacco leaves, amber, musk, and sandalwood. For those who don't know, there are some types of hay with high sugar content, like the Hay of sugarcane and the Hay of Greece (fenugreek). In the case of the latter, its seeds have an aroma very similar to the aroma of maple syrup (the one used in pancakes). Again, Christopher Sheldrake managed to interpret the ideas of Serge in an exquisite manner. Chergui, the wind, passes over the Atlas Mountains, going down by the coastal plains heading towards the Atlantic Ocean, completely dry. And the result of Chergui, the perfume, is exactly that: a dry and warm blow on the skin that will only become calm once the dust goes down. Once sprayed on my skin, I thought: "I want a bottle now"! The first impact brings a rose honeydew and an iris that is not powdery as usual, but floral and with nuances of violets. Suddenly, without notice, arises an aroma of honey and a creamy tobacco, warmed by the amber. At this stage, it reminded me a lot of The Dreamer (Versace) and of the reason why this scent is so appreciated, even though being part of a commercial brand. This is a great tobacco! And this was the longest stage of evolution on my skin. From there, about three hours after I applied, Chergui changes again and, as the wind, loses strength and becomes smoother, although dry. The incense and the sandalwood blend and create a nuance that resembles a soft leather. However, I read many comments that show that in addition to evolving a lot, Chergui can also be mutant. The comparisons go from Obsession (Calvin Klein) and Tobacco Vanille (Tom Ford) to Bvlgari Black (Bvlgari) and Eau des Baux (L'Occitane). For some people proved to be very feminine. On my skin, I found it more masculine. Anyway, this beautiful perfume – launched in 2001 (not in 2005, according to Wikipedia) – manages to be elegant, strong, seductive, and different. It's the kind of perfume that people stop you on the streets to ask its name. Just a reminder: Have I already said I want a bottle?