Amouage Tribute Attar

Amouage's Tribute Attar perfume oil bursts out of its tiny bottle with a slightly astringent, almost lemony (is that just an incredible, nonbitter saffron? that's what the notes say) and silvery frankincense, like a combination of the rarest silver-tip Assam tea leaves and velvety fir tree needles.

As the frankincense mellows, it transforms into an unbelievably beautiful forest scent, one so vivid I can almost hear the creaking of the ancient trees around me, and the earth under my feet is padded with a thick, loamy bedding of leaves and fir needles of past seasons. Rose and jasmine pop in for a little while to keep everything from getting too unrelentingly masculine. They feel not like florals so much as shafts of light penetrating the depths, and then gradually they get nudged away by rich tobacco and animalic, leathery, dark beauty.

This is the most powerful perfume I've ever smelled. Seriously, I at first had only a tiny sample, and I just barely scraaaaaape the barest smidgen from the plastic applicator onto my wrist, and it just blooms for hours. Other bloggers have talked about a drop lasting for hours, so I feel the need to specify that one drop would probably kill me and everyone else in a three-block radius. This stuff costs 350 dollars for 12 ml, and that amount would last several lifetimes on me. It'll probably take me a couple of months to get through the 0.25 ml sample, and I keep applying it in microscopic amounts compulsively, since I'm addicted to the path it takes me on each and every time. I put Amouage's Ubar on my best of 2009 list, but Tribute Attar may be on the way to a best-of-all-time level, along with my vintage L'Heure Bleue, Dzing, Cuir de Russie, Muscs Koublai Khan, and Apres L'Ondee. I now own a treasured 3 mls in a tiny bottle.