Chergui (2001)
by Serge Lutens Les Salons du Palais Royal Shiseido

Chergui pays hommage to some of the greats of the past, especially to Habanita, and is more classical in structure than most of the other Lutens orientals. It starts out a spicey sweet jam and finishes a wonderful tobacco amber. "The Guide" claims that the bottom notes are due to hay absolute, and if this is true, I LOVE hay absolute. Florals are present, but they are blended so well that it is difficult to point out any particular floral scent. This fragrance is expensive, but it smells expensive. It is tradition with a beautiful twist. Sillage and longevity are great, as one would expect. I cannot wait to own a bottle of this juice. It plays a familiar tune, but it marches to a different drummer.

This one is really different—dry, resinous, and semi-sweet—an intriguing beginning. Then the beautiful spices and the delicate florals begin rising up into the accord while the resinous aromatics waft in and out. These second movements happen quite quickly and what remains is, not concreteness, but a string of wispy memory impressions. What is left is the smell of hay freshly cut in the field—drying but not lifeless... still warm with the waning life-force, decaying and sweetening in the Saharan sun...

Chergui attacks from all directions—it happens all at once, everywhere. It is a dance of a thousand wind devils—dust and odors and passing beauty twirl in the sun. Chergui has such a radiantly sunlit transparency. Most scents of mystery are dark — Chergui's mystery is eye-blinding. Here the enigma doesn’t lie in the shadows and closed air of a crypt; Here the mystery dances in the desiccating winds and the brilliant sunlight. (Edit of 12 May 2006 review.)

For the first hour there is just so much going on in Chergui, it’s so well blended that breaking it down is hard going. Slightly spicy, brown sugar, with tobacco, burnt grass, maple syrup and most importantly ambergris.

Gradually Chergui becomes more sticky sweet as the top notes leave revealing the ambergris more and more. Some of the spiciness remains throughout but ultimately it’s the ambergris that governs until the end, which incidentally is sometime during my sleep.

There’s no disputing that Chergui smells good, in my opinion the first hour is best. I’m just not really sure if I want to smell of Chergui, sweet fragrances just aren’t my thing and ambergris is sickening for me. If you like Bulgari Black or Burberry Brit for Women this is for you. And me, well if you put a dessert in front of me called Chergui and I’d gobble it up before you could say “Jack Rabbit” and before it goes off.

I get wet pavement big time with this. The pavement that's been sitting out in the sun, baking and collecting the dirt, grime, dust and soil of the weeks since the last rain. Then dump some incense and syrup in the mix.

Something in the opening of Chergui kills my sense of smell. Shortly after taking a whiff of this I can't smell it again until several minutes later.

The dry-down is a generic-smelling vanillic gourmand. Not unpleasant but certainly nothing worthy of all the praise. It seems this fragrance has acquired the me-too bandwagon syndrome where one well-respected reviewer has created a following regardless of the quality of said fragrance.

Bois Blond by Parfumerie Generale does the hay thing much better.

Chergui oh..chergui..im in love with this...imagine a 1000 tea leaves placed over each other with lime skin placed in between every 200 of these leaves..throw in a good measure of hay and slightly dry tobacco leaves...now place a wheathered genuine leather saddle on each side like sandwich, it may be worn out in the sun, but it's authentic leather...now place all this in between steel weights a ton each and crush em up...what do you get? juice first, but then oil..every last drop of life, every last drop of life left poured into a bottle.

this one will never try to please, its there to give the user an ethreal experience. an experience of another place..a place one has never been. smoky green at first with a sultry leather/tobaco mids & with one of most divine amber and animalic musk notes ever.

CHERGUI. First impression: amazing but somewhat mainstream. It certainly smells luxurious like an expensive perfume for a gentleman. The development is complex and the drydown may be a little honey-laden for some though it retains an aura of masculinity with a deft touch of smoky tobacco. Overall this is a heady scent women could easily love on their guy; in fact a young female passenger was leaning ever closer towards me on the train ride home. An unequivocal BUY.