Montale
Montale
5.4k votes
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A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The cinnamon strikes hot and almost numbing, like oil of cassia rather than the spice rack variety, immediately folding into a heavy-resinous tobacco that's both sweet and slightly tarry. The spice blend creates an almost medicinal tingle, reminiscent of clove-studded oranges left too long, while the oud lurks underneath like velvet soaked in something combustible.
As the opening's aggressive spice calms, the oud moves to centre stage—Montale's signature syrupy, almost fruity-dark iteration that shares more DNA with aged balsamic vinegar than traditional ouds. The woody notes provide textural complexity rather than dryness, creating a dense forest floor quality where the tobacco now reads as dried leaves composting under resinous trees, all of it sweetened by vanilla that's just beginning its slow emergence.
The final act is a skin-clinging testament to longevity, where tonka and vanilla create a boozy-sweet foundation that's surprisingly moreish despite the intensity. The amber and white musk provide just enough powder and warmth to soften the oud's more challenging edges, leaving a balsamic sweetness that hovers between burnt sugar and antique wood furniture, intimate yet still detectable across a room.
Montale's Oud Tobacco is the olfactory equivalent of a baroque smoking room draped in burgundy velvet—unabashedly opulent, unapologetically dense. The opening volley of cinnamon-spiked tobacco leaf doesn't merely announce itself; it commandeers the room with the confidence of someone who's never doubted their seat at the table. This isn't pipe tobacco's contemplative sweetness, but rather the darker, slightly medicinal facets of cured leaf meeting Pierre Montale's signature oud treatment—that Laotian wood rendered thick as molasses, more resinous balm than barnyard funk.
What makes this composition compelling is how the tobacco and oud don't simply coexist but seem to ferment together, creating an almost edible richness where spice oils gleam on the surface like cognac in a snifter. The vanilla and tonka base—which could easily tip saccharine—instead functions as structural sweetness, the way caramelised sugars in aged spirits provide body rather than confectionery. There's a balsamic quality threading through that speaks to benzoin or perhaps labdanum, giving everything a church-incense solemnity.
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