After a few months of marinating in Self-Pity and Work and Responsibility, I’m really happy to finally smell something that ruminates in my mind so much that I really wanted to write about it.

Photo from Sephora

I had this one hyped up to the heavens for me on Sniffapalooza Fall Ball Sunday in 2017. (Yeah I actually started this review last year. Whoops.) I usually hate things that are hyped up so pre-sniff. My mind was already countering every single bit of praise being heaped upon this fragrance.

Someone said it was wonderful for coffee lovers? I decided it was probably sickly sweet like a lot of coffee fragrances can be, because for some reason a lot of people really like that.

Someone said the tuberose was super balanced and didn’t take over? I decided that meant that the florals took a back seat after the initial sniff.

Someone said that I’d really like it? Uh, okay you don’t know me like that.

But as it happens they did know me like that. 

Let’s be frank here: Cafe Tuberosa is DOPE.

The first spray is unripe plum and a little tobacco and coffee grinds, dark and slightly wine-y and intense. It was syrupy, kind of fruity the way coffee and chocolate can be. It was very reminiscent of the first sip of a coffee liqueur I had at the New York Coffee Festival earlier that year called Mr. Black. I highly recommend checking it out if you like coffee liqueur a lot, or if you like making coffee cocktails or ice cream! We almost bought it right there at the festival, but we’re not huge alcohol people so we decided against it. The difference main difference between the liqueur and Cafe Tuberosa is that Mr. Black didn’t bring me any flowers.

The plum blooms into the promised tuberose and that’s when the base gets really chocolatey. That finished brew gets poured into an unglazed ceramic bowl to cool and its dusty clay neutrality grounds the otherwise ultra rich fragrance.

It’s a little too rich for everyday wear, but it pairs really nicely with a cooler night and actually wears quite masculine. I find that a lot of the popular masculine fragrances veer towards the sweet end as it is and Cafe Tuberosa fits in nicely with Gaultier Le Male or Paco Rabanne 1 Million while being uniquely rich and interesting.