I no longer drink coffee on a regular basis and when I do have a latte or cappuccino it’s decaf. Yes, shock, horror!
I do love the smell of ground coffee and in a list of top 10 smells this would probably feature. I know a number of fragrances feature a coffee note but until Portia commented on Café Cabanel during last year’s monthly New Idea feature I didn’t feel compelled to seek anything out.
After discovering Maison Margiela via From the Garden and then reading Musette’s comments on Lazy Sunday Morning I got some more Replica samples and ended up with a LSM plus a couple of others, including Coffee Break.
I really do like Replica. It’s not quite cheap and cheerful but maybe the next tier up. (LookFantastic here has 30ml of Coffee Break for £54, which doesn’t break the bank – and doesn’t make my head spin.)
Just briefly on Lazy Sunday Morning, on me this is simply a nice soft lily of the valley. I don’t get much else and I don’t care. Gentle green floral and quite true to the flower smell. Quite lovely.
So, on to Coffee Break. First go-round I was a bit perplexed by this because I was expecting heavy duty coffee and that’s not what it is. It’s a great concept fragrance, nice and evocative of an event. Notes include coffee, apple, lemon, lavender, spearmint, orange flower, milky mousse accord (meant to mimic steamed milk), sandalwood and cedarwood. The nose is Jacques Cavallier and the fragrance was released in 2019. Remember: concept. This is instead getting that really nice latte and sitting in the garden on a warm summer morning when you’re on holiday. On me it opens coffee beans (not ground coffee) and apple. That sounds weird and it is – like a corner market with the big bags of beans next to the fruit section. As it opens up we’re more in the concept I noted above territory and it gets green, like more damp garden smell with a whisper of ground coffee underneath that – maybe a compost heap? The drydown is back to coffee, but sweet milky – the dregs of a very good latte, with a bit of vanilla which is maybe the sandalwood. I’m not so keen on the intro but the drydown is great.
Café Cabanel. This is much more orthodox coffee and this is a modification of an entry I wrote when I looked at the Cabanel sample offer a bit ago. Per the company website this an oriental gourmand. Notes: tangerine, coffee, cinnamon, rose, heliotrope, milky and buttered notes, vanilla, tonka bean, caramel, sandalwood and musk. The opening is coffee, as in really really good ground coffee beans. There is some tangerine but all it does is keep those ground beans from going in a sour direction. This is what you want your coffee beans that you grind yourself etc, etc, to smell – and potentially taste – like. Then, we’re into brewed coffee, with some great spice notes, maybe even those florals and surprising butter and milk notes. It smooths into that totally great cup of coffee with floral, spice and sweet notes. Eventually, this is more milky coffee with a big dose of vanilla and sandalwood. It has that soft sweet drydown you get with some ambers but with coffee. Longevity is decent on me. I had planned to buy this but didn’t. It sits on the ‘want’ list but I’ve gotten distracted by other things.
So, do you like coffee – and how much do you drink, and in what form? Any suggestions for other perfumes with a coffee note? What’s your lazy Sunday morning ritual?
Pics: Pexels
I’m a tea drinker, no coffee. I liked Sonia Rykiel’s Belle en Rykiel which had coffee and lavender notes. But generally gourmands aren’t my cup of tea, wink wink.
I guess most of the coffee fragrances I’ve tried have veered gourmand. You need to do something to modify the sour note you sometimes get with coffee, so vanilla or milky does the trick. I’m still trying to find a really dark, true tea perfume.
Love coffee, I remain caffeinated all day, it’s an addiction enough that I have “emergency” instant on hand so I don’t get a migraine if I don’t have another source… bought a coffee maker for the Maine crew so I could brew it there (they are tea drinkers, mostly herbal.) I do like it with cream, though. If there’s leftover I’ll have it iced in the afternoon. I remember loving Cafe Cabanel but didn’t “need” it. Clearly I need to try Coffee Break.
‘Emergency’ instant… I’m with you that I didn’t in the end feel I ‘needed’ Cafe Cabanel.
I love the ritual of morning coffee – usually drink the first cup, then half the second… but wander off to do matwork (yoga) and then forget about it. I do a pourover, very strong because milk/sugar.. and I like the whole ritual of the pourover.
I am not a fan of coffee in perfume, though.
I do miss that morning milky coffee. It’s just not on the cards anymore. As it’s actually trying to be summer here all I really want is cool water, though if someone were to make me an iced latte and deliver it I wouldn’t say no.
I don’t drink coffee, but have always loved the aroma. Many coffee scents have that scorched impression or are too woody for my tastes, I prefer true gourmand. My overall favorite coffee-themed fragrance is Theodoros Kalotinis Coffee Addict.
Alityke mentions this further down the comments. Will really have to have a go. Agree on that scorched impression/aspect. A milky note helps modify that — ie, I’m with you on gourmand.
I drink coffee all day long. I’m lucky in that caffein doesn’t bother me though every now and then I switch to decaf for a while. lol.
My favorite coffee scent is Perris Monte Carlo Arancia Di Sicilia. It opens with the most realistic blood orange and eventually becomes a cafe with coffee and pastries. Best of all, the blood orange stays throughout.
That fragrance sounds well worth trying. Will have a look. Even when I drank caffeinated coffee it was one cup in the morning. Anything more than that and bad things happened.
I love a goid cappucino but rarely have them because of the acidity on my stomach, so I’m really a black tea person. But in perfumes, I like Musc Maori, Cafe Cabanel and Cafe Tuberosa best.
Yup, a lot more tea now — but that’s decaf too. I sometimes have a hot decaf latte but it’s too variable whether it’s well made and doesn’t bother my stomach. I guess the higher milk content in an iced latte sits better. Cafe Tuberose… Now that sounds interesting.
Hey Cinnamon,
I love coffee but stick to instant mainly. The real deal makes me jittery if I have more than one.
I do like a couple of the coffee perfumes. Particularly Cafe Cabanel.
Portia xx
The farm shop here has a really fancy decaf instant I use in iced coffee sometimes. It’s surprisingly smooth and tasty.
As much as I enjoy drinking coffee in the morning and coffee smells wonderful, I don’t want to smell like coffee. Wonderful there are so many options available for those that adore the coffee note in perfume.
My mother, who was a high school teacher, lived on coffee. She taught science and by the end of a school day her lab had a dozen little half finished cold cups of school coffee sitting around. I adored my mother but she smelled of old coffee in a way that sometimes wasn’t attractive.
Snap
I do like coffee in the abstract- I used to drink gallons of it but can’t anymore. I like coffee in the abstract in perfume as well, like in PG Musc Maori or Montale Ristretto Intense Cafe.
My lazy Sunday ritual is get up, eat breakfast, drink my tea, shower, then at 11AM take the car out for it’s weekly run- I don’t drive to work and it’s not good to let them sit too long, so an hours run over and back via Mulholland with charge the cars batteries and recharge mine.
I’d still love to have a nice drip coffee with real cream- every once in a while I’d have one at dinner out instead of dessert. Heaven.
Isn’t that the kind of car that wants a lot of exercise? Every once in a while here you’ll see a Ferrari or a souped up Porsche driving sedately up the 30 mph zone like a leashed greyhound, looking sad. The farm shop makes outstanding coffee ice cream. It’s one of their best flavours.
All cars like a bit of exercise. It’s really not good letting them sit for too long. The gas gets old and can clog things.
But yes, sporty cars especially need to be wrung out every once in a while. but I can do that with driving on the freeway and just not shifting out of fourth.
Coffee smells so, so alluring. Even opening DH’s instant jar smells wonderful. Drinking coffee. No so much. Not the flavour but the fact I smell of coffee for days!
As for coffee scents, I found a photorealistic black coffee fragrance in Coffee Addict by Theodoros Kalonitis. He delivers to most places & at 50ml for €45 it’s the same as many travel sizes.
He does a lot of gourmands if that’s your thing. There is a Discovery Set but it’s currently sold out. I’m not affiliated or anything
Will have to do a search for that brand.
I just think just ground coffee is one of those outstanding smells — in general much better than it tastes brewed.
I love coffee, but have also cut back and am more likely to have a mid afternoon cup than a morning one (where tea reigns supreme right now). I love the smell of coffee, and I love places that smell like coffee, but I don’t especially want to smell like coffee myself. Does that make sense at all?
It makes perfect sense. I think it’s hard to get a coffee perfume that simply smells good on. Cafe Cabanel does that.
I love black coffee, two cups every morning. Occasionally I will treat myself to an iced coffee with cream but no sweetener.
I have been curious about Replica Coffee Break so thanks for the review. My favorite coffee scent was Bond 9 New Haarlem but it’s long discontinued, so I’m on the hunt. Recently got to sample Montale Intense Cafe which is rose, then coffee. I promptly bought a decant, then read about Intense Cafe Ristretto, which is supposed to have stronger coffee notes. A partial bottle is on its way.
I was never a black coffee drinker. In the US, I had half and half. That doesn’t appear to exist here. Will have to look out for Cafe Ristretto.