Sonoma Scent Studio Tabac Aurea

Scents like Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille, Miller Harris Feuilles de Tabac and Hilde Soliani Bell’Antonio all explore different aspects of tobacco from the dried leaf, to the tobacco flower itself, to the smell of a cigarette.

All three of these scents are good examples of what the perfumer was going for but all of them managed to just miss being what I wanted in a tobacco scent.

What I wanted was the smell of the tobacco drying barn I visited on a tobacco farm in my teens. To stand there surrounded by the humid smell of tobacco drying and to smell the sun baked wood of the barn under those leaves was the combination I wanted to find in a tobacco scent.

In 2009 Laurie Erickson under her Sonoma Scent Studio label finally scratched this olfactory itch with her release of Tabac Aurea. Tabac Aurea took me back to that drying barn with the poles of tied off bunches of tobacco leaves drying and the sun shining in around the wooden planks of the barn. Ms. Erickson herself describes Tabac Aurea in one of her blog posts this way:



“To me, it is a woodsy gourmand with a gentle sweetness (not nearly as sweet as something like the scent Collection, but sweeter to me than the dry and woodsy Bell’Antonio). The sweetness in Tabac Aurea comes from several ingredients: the tabac itself, some tonka, a sweet musk, and some amber/vanilla.” (quotation from Sonoma Scent Studio blog)



Like any artist she understands her creation well as she captures the sweet smell of drying tobacco near perfectly. The start of this is that sweet, leafy aroma of tobacco in all of its glory. This is followed by the clean woody lines of cedar which add a contrasting arid quality to the rich tobacco at the top. In previous tobacco scents the perfumer has seemed to either choose to amplify the woodiness or the sweetness inherent in tobacco. Ms. Erickson chooses a different path by employing an almost sun-kissed musk to carry her scent forward from the tobacco. I think it is this choice which makes Tabac Aurea my favorite tobacco scent.

This musk adds an “oomph” to follow the tobacco which allows the transition to the amber and vanilla in the base to be seamless. The amber continues the feel of sunlight present, as it adds warmth, and the vanilla is a slightly sweet presence which is in perfect harmony with the slightly sweet tobacco around which Tabac Aurea has been constructed.

As much as I like Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille, Ms. Erickson does a better job balancing the two sweet components of tobacco leaf and vanilla which makes Tabac Aurea the superior scent for me. 

Tabac Aurea is a long-lasting scent on me and very close-wearing. Every time I wear Tabac Aurea it stays with me until the next morning which unlike cigarette smoke which sticks to my clothes, the lingering company of this tobacco product is something to be desired. 



If you would like to learn more about Laurie Erickson and her Sonoma Scent Studio check out Suzy Nightingale’s Fragrantica interview 
from March of 2009 just prior to her release of Tabac Aurea.

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