Penhaligon's
A unique visual signature based on accords, character, and seasonality
The rum crashes in immediately, boozy and almost spirituous in its intensity, with ginger spice crackling around the edges like the burn of alcohol vapour. It's startlingly sweet from the first spray, that molasses-dark sweetness that coats the back of your throat even when you're only smelling it.
Tobacco leaves unfurl slowly, honeyed and slightly leathery, mingling with the rum to create an accord that's part gentleman's club, part Caribbean distillery. The gingerbread begins its emergence here, treacly and spiced, tempering the booze with something almost edible whilst the woody notes provide necessary ballast against all that gourmand opulence.
What remains is a skin-close veil of sweet, smoky woods and gingerbread crumbs, the tobacco reduced to a ghost and the rum finally mellowed to a warm, abstract sweetness. It's softer now, almost cosy, like standing in a kitchen the morning after a party, the scent of spilled drinks and cold ash still lingering in the air.
Roaring Radcliff is Penhaligon's love letter to Prohibition-era excess, all dark wood panelling and contraband spirits smuggled through London's foggy streets. Daphné Bugey has conjured something genuinely arresting here: a rum note so authentic you can practically taste the molasses-thick spirit, all sticky sweetness and that distinctive fermented-sugarcane bite. This isn't polite drawing-room perfumery—it's the scent of a speakeasy at midnight, tobacco smoke curling beneath the door whilst someone plays jazz badly in the corner.
The tobacco accord sits exactly where it should in the heart, rich and slightly honeyed, interacting with the rum to create something that smells like pipe tobacco soaked in naval rum. But it's the gingerbread base that makes this composition sing—not the biscuit-tin Christmas variety, but something darker, more treacly, with proper molasses depth and warming spices that read almost medicinal in their intensity. The sweetness throughout is substantial, bordering on cloying for some palates, but it's anchored by a woody dryness and phantom wisps of smoke that prevent it tipping into tooth-aching territory.
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4.3/5 (363)