Naomi Goodsir
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The whisky note arrives first, not sweet or boozy but austere—more the wood of the cask than the spirit itself—immediately joined by tobacco that's bone-dry and slightly acrid. Smoke doesn't waft; it clings, precise and deliberate, whilst a flash of cinnamon bark (not the sweet stuff) adds a fleeting prickle before receding.
The frankincense emerges with its characteristic brightness, that citric-piney quality tempering the tobacco's heaviness whilst labdanum begins its slow amber glow from beneath. The cedar shows its thorny side here, green and slightly medicinal, creating an unexpected freshness within all that smoke and resin that prevents the composition from becoming oppressively dense.
What remains is primarily oakmoss and frankincense on a base of smoked wood, the tobacco now a ghost of its former self, the amber reduced to a barely-there warmth. It's remarkably close to skin, austere to the end, like incense ash on cold stone—quiet, contemplative, and utterly uncompromising in its refusal to shout.
Bois d'Ascèse reads like an olfactory meditation on deprivation and desire, opening with a whisky barrel that's been emptied except for tobacco leaves left to cure in the residual spirit fumes. Julien Rasquinet has created something deliberately austere here—this isn't the cosy pipe tobacco of drawing rooms but rather the ascetic's single vice, smoke curling in stone chambers where frankincense has stained the walls for centuries. The amber and labdanum provide a resinous warmth that feels earned rather than generous, like heat radiating from embers rather than flames. That prickly cedar note is crucial; it has a green, almost medicinal sharpness that prevents the composition from collapsing into sweet woodsmoke clichés. The oakmoss adds a bitter earthiness that anchors everything to cold stone rather than warm leather.
This is for those who find Tom Ford's tobacco offerings too plush, too accommodating. It wears best on someone comfortable with silence, perhaps during long walks in November woods or late evenings in minimalist spaces where every object has been considered and most rejected. The cinnamon remains subdued, more suggestion than statement, whilst the Somalian frankincense—recognisable by its lemonic, almost piney brightness—cuts through the smoke with liturgical precision. There's an intellectual quality to Bois d'Ascèse, a refusal to seduce that paradoxically makes it more compelling. It asks you to lean in, to concentrate, to appreciate restraint as its own form of luxury.
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4.0/5 (175)