Aedes de Venustas Café Tabac image courtesy of the brand

Back in the day, the East Village was a mishmash of cultures and subcultures – first gen transplants Ukraine, Cuba, and Korea alongside lesbian bars, street vendors who sold leather jackets and second-hand vinyl. On the street you could buy knishes or kimchi, and there were scores of indie designers, vintage clothing and head shops. The queen of 90s East Village zeitgeist was arguably Café Tabac, a restaurant-bar with a cheeky menu and celebrity roster LA’s Knitting Factory would kill for. On weekends, if you were anybody, you’d be here. On a typical Friday Johnny and Kate are canoodling in a corner, Madonna’s handling the coats , supermodels shout over the hustle, and there’s a rapper who’s gonna be famous ten days from days now. Everyone is hyped, buzzed, or chill, take your pick. There are no cell phones – they haven’t hit the market yet – and blow gets passed around like hors d’ oeuvres. Even if you missed it all (hey, even moi was living in London then), pull up a bar stool and play some Suede or Wu-Tang Clan; I’ve got just the tonic for you.

Bertrand Duchaufour in The Dominican Republic courtesy of Robert Gerstner and Karl Bradl of Aedes Perfumery©

Aedes de Venustas Café Tabac, created by master perfumer Bertrand Duchaufour working again with Aedes Perfumery co-owners Robert Gerstner and Karl Bradl (Duchaufour is the nose behind two of my favourite Aedes de Venustas perfumes, Signature and Encens Japonais), is mood music in a bottle. This smoky, tangy cigar-meets-fruit potion is sophisticated, sensual and full of delicious goodies that is equally good as a partner for thinking back on those good ol’, bad ol’ days or simply for savouring while wrapped up against the cold.

Bertrand Duchaufour, Raylin Diaz Suarez of Dominican Republic’s home fragrance brand Marchanta and Robert Gerstner

Duchaufour could have gone the route of leather jackets and booze as other downtown evocations have done but chose a more oblique interpretation that merges an uncannily accurate high-end cigar with vibrant, tangy fruit and then mixes it up with cacao, burnt sugar and smoky cade. It ties its initial inspiration’s East Village eclecticism and with the results of unrelated, if serendipitous, visit by Duchaufour and Gerstner to the Dominican Republic for another fragrance project. According to Robert Gerstner, that trip brought “ an explosion of vibrant and chic people from Mexico, France, Rio, New York; different cultures and conversations and ideas and opinions”. “We went from a tropical forest to the coast together, but it wasn’t until we were standing in a cigar factory that I looked at Bertrand and said, ‘Can you put this in a bottle?’” And so he did, mixing in a host of fruit, spice and resins that keep Café Tabac from smelling too literal.

Cigar factory photo courtesy of Aedes de Venustas©

While Café Tabac’s dominant note from outset through dry-down is cigar – the precise aroma you get when you take a Corona out of its cedar box for the first time and roll the dry wrapped leaves between your fingers – it is juiced up by tangy bergamot, mango and tamarind. The blend is exceptionally smooth; the zingy notes don’t call attention to themselves except the creamsicle smell of mango, which comes out quite quickly and, alongside the other fresh fruits, animates Café Tabac and, with the help of a generous bit of davana, gives it vibrancy. In contrast, the cedarwood of the cigar box turns up early and with the tobacco absolute gives the sensation of being in an expensive cigar lounge.

As the fruit bounces along, denser, sweeter notes start to peek through: dashes of cardamom and dried date, with the latter’s cinnamon-like sweetness shadowing an emerging whiff of burnt sugar. All these notes are muted, though, staying close to each other and acting as supports to the cigar-wood centerpiece while adding some punchy brio. The combination is both hedonistic and restrained: there’s a lot of bounce to all that fruit but Duchaufour knows just when to pull back and when to use them to add spark. Vanilla and the raisin sweetness of tonka bean come in near the finish line. I’ve read other reviews that call this a sweet, vanillic tobacco, but I don’t get that much. While these dessert notes stay put, they are quiet, and the fruit and wood notes are, to my nose, more prominent all the way through.

Café Tabac artwork via the brand

As you might expect for a perfume named for a late-night hotspot, Aedes de Venustas Café Tabac wears well into the early hours and will linger on your pillowcase if you sleep in it. (I am rather surprised that I didn’t have rumba music in my head upon waking.) As I look at photos of Café Tabac in its heyday, it occurs to me this perfume is a perfect complement for classic tailored menswear – it has something of that upscale Jermyn Street vibe – but also would work just as well with a leather jacket and jeans, thanks to its zingy modernity. That Duchaufour was able to pull off both at once speaks to his immense skill. And makes Café Tabac to wear while reminiscing about the insanely hip East Village that was, even if you weren’t there.

Notes: Tobacco absolute, Peru balm, cardamom, clove, bergamot, tamarind, tar, dried date, dried fig, cacao accord, burnt sugar, mango, beeswax absolute, apple, davana, clary sage, vanilla, oak moss, cistum-labdanum absolute, tonka bean, cedar wood, ambergris, cade.

Disclaimer: Sample of Café Tabac graciously supplied by Aedes de Venustas. My opinions, as always, are my own.

Lauryn Beer, Senior Editor

Editor’s Note:  Robert and Karl, we really appreciate that you shared your personal photos from the trip for this review (which cannot be reproduced without their permission©)-Michelyn

Aedes de Venustas Café Tabac

Thanks to the generosity of Aedes de Venustas, we have a bottle of Café Tabac for one registered reader in the U.S. To be eligible, please leave a comment about what strikes you about Aedes de Venustas Café Tabac based on Lauryn’s review. Do you have a favorite Aedes de Venustas fragrance? Draw closes 1/26/2024.

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