Eau des Baux - A Review: Forget Spicebomb, this is the King of Vanilla Spice

So I swooped into my local L'Occitane a few weeks ago, sprayed some Eau des Baux, initially unimpressed but on drydown this thing was pure heaven. I got a solid 8-10 hours on it and was delighted by it. I bought a bottle and after some wear am ready to give some impressions.

Full disclosure, I'm a big Spicebomb fan, but like others, found the sweetness a bit cloying, not nauseatingly so, but enough to be too put-off to wear it daily. For those that, like me, did find Spicebomb too sweet, here is your solution. Eau des Baux has vanilla, but none of the bubblegum sugar that defines alot of Spicebomb's scent, but still retains the Tobacco Vanilla spice you love in Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille. The scent is mesmerizingly good and you'll probably find yourself wondering "what smells so good" only to realize it's you more than a few times upon initial wearing.

It goes on with a lot of Vanilla and spice at the top, very peppery but smooth and dry. After about an hour or so dries down into a nice pine-vanilla-spice mix. The scent is enhanced by some well done vetyver and amber in the base that's just lovely. Do I get tobacco in this? Nope, but I can see how it might give some the impression of a tobacco scent, the Vetyver, amber and pine do give off a tobacco-leafy vibe. If you want an impression, take the pepper from Mark Jacob's Bang, add Spicebomb sans the sweetness but with the vanilla and amber and the leafy smell of Tobacco Vanille, that's what I get.

While sometimes portrayed as unisex, this is a far dryer and more masculine scent than either Spicebomb or Tobacco Vanille and doesn't become a sweet and sickly after prolonged wear. As I mentioned, Longevity is great, and I've gone as long as 10 hours with it lingering as a skin scent. The cost ($50-60 for 100mL) makes it an absolute steal. This doesn't smell at all synthetic and the scent itself is niche quality. It definitely deserves all the hype it gets and more. Sadly, it doesn't have the marketing budget of a Viktor & Rolf, but if you're scent savvy, and had to choose, you'd pick this up in a heartbeat and leave Spicebomb on the shelf. All said, I do like Spicebomb, but Eau des Baux bests it in almost every category, scent, longevity, versatility and silliage.

Try this one out if you're a fan of spice and vanilla scents. Definitely worth a blind buy if you're not in a city with an Occitane franchise and you like Spicebomb or Tobacco Vanille!

Pipsta and silentrich, I do take your points, but one always needs to take the manufacturers' note breakdown with a grain of salt. In fact I've read a lot of high end frags exclude certain notes since they come off as cheap, like excluding lavender. Further on this point, take for example Cool Water and GIT, they smell quite similar despite different note listings. Ditto for Millesime Imperiale and Sean John's Unforgivable and Multi-Platinum. As for Spicebomb, my nose gives me a strong vanilla, could be a combination of chemicals, nonetheless, I always trust my nose which tells me there's a strong family resemblance between Spicebomb and Eau des Baux.

dollars&scents: never tried tonka Imperiale, I'll definitely have to put it on the list as I'm a sucker for well executed gourmands, even the harsh anti-social ones like A*Men lol. I have sniffed Spiritueuse Double Vanille, and if it's anything like that then no, Eau des Baux has no booziness to it at all.

Bigsly: nothing like Jaipur homme, that stuff does have the vanilla note, but it's wrapped in what reminds me of an 80's patchoulli-bomb power frag.