Café Tabac

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History

Café Tabac is an eau de parfum by Aedes de Venustas, composed in 2023 by Bertrand Duchaufour. It opened for pre-order on 4 December 2023, shipping from 8 December. The Aedes perfumery, opened in 1995 in the West Village, has been at 16A Orchard Street, on New York’s Lower East Side (United States), since 2018.

Café Tabac was composed in 2023 by Bertrand Duchaufour for Aedes de Venustas. Before it existed as a scent it existed as a name, drawn from the iconic 1990s bar in New York’s East Village, an unselfconscious, pre-cell-phone room where the truly glamorous could be truly off-duty.

"It’s the deep mood of a place to be, creating its own legend," Duchaufour says of the brief. The composition also draws on a trip he took with co-founder Robert Gerstner to the Dominican Republic for another project. Standing in a cigar factory, Gerstner recounts asking the perfumer a single question: "Can you put this in a bottle?"

The result is an homage to tobacco in many forms. It opens on sparkling bergamot with unexpected apple and tamarind, then moves through dry leaves and humid flowers rendered with clary sage and davana, a tint of mango with dried fig and date. It then takes on the rough smokiness of tobacco absolute, tar, cade and cedar. An amber accord of cistus-labdanum, ambergris, oakmoss, vanilla, cacao and Peru balm sets a darkly resinous base, with burnt sugar, clove and cardamom keeping the whole multilayered rather than perfectly round.

Café Tabac is blended at a twenty percent concentration in the old-school haute parfumerie style, including a month-long maceration in France. It is presented in the current Aedes flacon, fluted glass with peacock blue accents and a matte black insignia-stamped cap.

Fragrance notes

Café Tabac is a dense, layered tobacco rather than a smooth sweet one. Sparkling fruit opens it, a dried-fruit heart carries the tobacco, and a smoky resinous base of amber, tar, cade and cedar gives it weight.

On skin the development is rich and gradual. The fruity, spiced opening burns off within the first half hour to reveal the tobacco and dried-fruit heart, which holds for several hours. The smoky, resinous base then takes over and persists strongly, helped by the twenty percent concentration, with notable longevity on skin and well beyond a day on textile.

Scent profile

The olfactory profile of Café Tabac is hedonistic and layered. It reads as tobacco in several registers at once, dry leaf, humid flower and lit smoke, wrapped in amber, dried fruit and a thread of burnt sugar. The house deliberately keeps it multilayered rather than perfectly round, so it never collapses into a simple sweet tobacco.

The distinctive signature is the smoky tar and cade facet set against the warmth of the amber accord, and the old-school construction, a twenty percent concentration with a long maceration, that gives the composition its density and reach. It is the most opulent and statement-driven of the recent Aedes releases.

Smoke meets flower and spice settles in for the next inhale: the deep blue mood of a room creating its own legend.

Key characteristics

When and where to wear

Café Tabac is an opulent cold-weather tobacco. Its density and smoky amber depth call for contexts that can carry it, evenings and winter outings, rather than heat or shared professional spaces.

How to wear it

Seasonal fit

Context fit

Similar perfumes

Nine compositions share kinship with Café Tabac, through the tobacco family or the smoky, amber-resinous signature that defines it.

Frequently asked questions

See also