8 Perfumes That Smell Like Tobacco

Tobacco in perfume isn’t ashtray. It’s the smell of a pipe tin or a fresh cigar: honeyed, hay-like and slightly fruity, closer to dried apricots than to smoke. These eight run from sweet to dark. Start with Tobacco Vanille for the sweet classic, Jazz Club for rum and smoke on a budget, and Herod if you want tobacco with cinnamon.

What Does Tobacco Smell Like in Perfume?

Cured tobacco leaf, not burning cigarettes. As the green leaf dries and ages, the yellow carotenoid pigments in it break down into a family of molecules called megastigmatrienones, sold to perfumers as tabanone. Tabanone smells warm, dry and honeyed, and it’s the main reason aged tobacco smells sweet. The same molecules turn up in oak-aged cognac and rum, which is why tobacco and spirits sit so naturally together in a perfume.

Pipe tobacco has long been flavoured with tonka bean, so coumarin, tonka’s hay-and-almond molecule, is the other half of most tobacco accords. Add vanilla and you’re in a library; add rum and leather and you’re in a bar; add oud and incense and you’re somewhere darker.

Perfume	Kind of tobacco	What’s with it
Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille	Sweet pipe tobacco	Vanilla, cocoa, tonka, dried fruit
Maison Margiela Jazz Club	Bar	Rum, pink pepper, vetiver, vanilla
Mancera Red Tobacco	Spiced	Cinnamon, saffron, fruit, oud
Parfums de Marly Herod	Spiced and milky	Cinnamon, pepper, osmanthus, vanilla
Initio Side Effect	Boozy	Rum, cinnamon, saffron, sandalwood
Viktor&Rolf Spicebomb Extreme	Bourbon and spice	Bourbon, vanilla, pepper
Tom Ford Tobacco Oud	Dark and smoky	Whisky, oud, incense
Dolce&Gabbana The One EDP	Fresh	Grapefruit, basil, ginger, amber

8 Tobacco Perfumes

Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille

Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille puts tobacco with tonka, vanilla, cocoa, dried fruit, sweet wood sap, ginger and spice. It’s the reference tobacco perfume: a pipe tin in an old library, with a plate of dates on the desk. The vanilla and cocoa make it rich and sweet, and the dried fruit plays up tabanone’s apricot side.

One wearer loves the spicy opening and the powdery vanilla and cocoa that follow; another finds it too sweet and sticky. It is a sweet perfume, and a heavy one, best in winter.

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Maison Margiela Replica Jazz Club

Jazz Club opens with pink pepper, lemon and neroli, puts rum, clary sage and vetiver in the heart and finishes on styrax, tobacco leaf and vanilla. It’s a cocktail bar at midnight: rum, a leather booth, cigar smoke in the curtains. Lighter and drier than Tobacco Vanille, and a fraction of the price, it’s the easiest tobacco on this list to wear often.

One wearer likes the boozy, smoky opening becoming warmer and slightly sweet close to the skin.

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Mancera Red Tobacco

Mancera’s Red Tobacco has a long opening: saffron, cinnamon, incense, nutmeg, white peach, green apple and oud. Patchouli and jasmine follow, then tobacco, amber, woods, vetiver, vanilla and white musk. The fruit and spice make it smell like a spiced apple cake beside the tobacco, and the oud gives it a dark edge. It’s a dense, busy composition. Go lightly.

Intense Red Tobacco is a separate perfume.

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Parfums de Marly Herod

Herod (2012) opens with cinnamon and pepper, then tobacco leaf, incense, cistus and osmanthus, over vanilla, musk, patchouli and woods. Osmanthus is the clever part: it smells of apricot and suede, so it picks up tabanone’s fruitiness and makes the tobacco smell soft and almost milky. It’s the most polished tobacco here.

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Initio Side Effect

Initio lists cinnamon, rum, tobacco, saffron, sandalwood and hedione. Rum and tobacco share some of the same tabanone molecules, so they blend into one warm, boozy accord, and the cinnamon and saffron spice it up. Hedione, the airy jasmine molecule, gives the whole thing more lift than its notes suggest. It’s Jazz Club’s dense, expensive cousin.

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Viktor&Rolf Spicebomb Extreme

Spicebomb Extreme (2015) puts tobacco and bourbon over warm vanilla, with black pepper, cinnamon and saffron above. It’s the designer version of the boozy tobacco idea: sweeter and smoother than Side Effect, and much easier to find. It’s also on our whiskey cologne list.

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Tom Ford Tobacco Oud

Olivier Gillotin’s Tobacco Oud (2013) is the dark one. Retailers list whisky and spice, then tobacco leaf, cinnamon and coriander, over oud, sandalwood, patchouli, incense and cedar. Oud is smoky, leathery and medicinal, and with incense it turns the tobacco from a pipe into a fire. It’s heavier and drier than Tobacco Vanille, for people who find vanilla too sweet.

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Dolce&Gabbana The One Eau de Parfum

Olivier Polge’s EDP (2015) has grapefruit, coriander and basil on top, cardamom, ginger and orange blossom in the heart, and amber, tobacco and cedar at the base. The tobacco is a warm base, not the headline, and the citrus and basil keep it fresh enough for the office. It’s the tobacco perfume for someone who doesn’t want to smell of tobacco.

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Which Tobacco Should You Pick?

• Sweet and rich: Tobacco Vanille.
• Smoky bar, good value: Jazz Club.
• Spiced: Herod, or Red Tobacco if you want it loud.
• Boozy: Side Effect, or Spicebomb Extreme for less.
• Dark: Tobacco Oud.
• Office: The One EDP.

If the vanilla is the part you like, our vanilla list has more. The leather colognes take the bar idea in another direction, and the oud list goes darker than Tobacco Oud.