Rum-Soaked French Tonka

[suki]

RUM-SOAKED FRENCH TONKA
I love the hell out of tonka, but using the absolute in perfumery is not a particularly great idea: tonka beans possess a high concentration of coumarin, an anticoagulant that is toxic to both the liver and kidneys, and might be carcinogenic to boot. Not fun stuff! Our tonka accord is a sweet, warmly sensual fragrance redolent of a vaguely clove-touched deep, dark vanilla balsam that has been lightly sweetened with almond and rum.

In The Bottle: Very, very light. A light, almost-vanilla resin. I'm surprised by how light this is in the bottle. I get no rum at this stage.

Wet On Skin: This blooms nearly on contact into what I was hoping for: a beautiful, warm, inviting resin. Still no rum on me.

Dry Down: This is just as gorgeous as I was praying for! Deep, resinous and sweet, without being at all foodie.

In All: Medium throw, and, as is generally the Way of the Single Note, stays pretty true from start to finish. I amp Rum like crazy, but if any rum is showing up on me, it's only adding a backdrop to make this beautiful Tonka even more rounded and dead, dead sexy.

Hoard! :wub:

[pinkstardust420]

Sweet, light, resiny powdery vanilla. Very very light clove. I'm not getting much rum or almond. This absolutely gorgeous!!

[Dark Alice]

Wet: Lightly scent almond rum cake.

 

The almond is very light but it does smell delicious...and now I want almond rum cake.

 

Dry: The tonka comes out and blends, and swirls, and twirls with the rum and is just gorgeous.

 

Final drydown: Tonka, sweet, light tonka with a light rummy note. Simply Delicious!

 

I need to buy multiples of this!

Edited November 4, 2012 by Dark Alice

[ladymeag]

I wanted to love this so much - some of my favorite blends contain tonka and I was hoping that the single note would be everything I love about all of those scents.

 

In the bottle: To me, this smelled like rum-raisin ice cream. Super sweet, very rummy. But rummy's good, so I'll carry on. My spouse was not so sure - he said it smelled like a stale almond pastry.

 

On Me: As soon as I put it on, I kept having a scent memory dredged up but it took me a while to place it - do you remember The Body Shop's single-note oils that you could mix with carrier lotions and sprays? This one smells a lot like the vanilla one to me, which wasn't a good thing. There was a lot of plastic scent here as well. The rum is nice and sharp as it dries, which is definitely nice but I really wish it were less sweet. No clove or almond to be found.

[Alethia]

I absolutely love the way this smells in the bottle and I love the way it smells when wet. But after 10 minutes it's completely gone from my skin. No delicious tonka smell, nothing.

[Lethran]

In bottle: Oh god, yes. Vanilla dominant with rum as excellent support. Clove gives it a spicy edge. The almond is understated and ties it all together. This is wonderful and everything I imagined. Wet: The vanilla balsam is softer and more ethereal than normal vanilla. It is a touch more balsamy than in the bottle. The rum is still lovely with the vanilla. The clove is softer but still present. The almond is very understated. Honestly, I liked it in the bottle better, but it’s still lovely. Dry: Mostly almond and vanilla with a touch of balsam.

[dawndie]

In bottle: delicious rum extract

 

On skin: boozy rum, not too sweet

 

Half-hour later: warm vanilla wood

 

In conclusion: this one seems complex for a "single" note. The ending is what I liked about Hony Mone, dark creamy vanilla that's good enough to eat. No strong clove or almond on me.

[joyfulgirl]

oh NUM. strongly boozy and sweet. butter schnapps, anyone??

 

on my skin it quiets down a bit after a few minutes to a warm, mild, almond-y butterscotch. this is so delightful! i kind of want to eat my hand.

 

very quiet, light scent. like most of the SNs, i'm not sure if this is something i'd wear on its own, but i'm really glad i got to try it!

[Mellifluous]

I cant believe I just got around to trying the Tonka SN. Works been crazy, with crazy travel schedule, so I brought it in my overnight bag, and kind-of forgot about it.. but found it this am, and.. wow. I am totally underwhelmed. I usually dont have a problem with almond (I love Eden, and Eclipse) but whoa, all I get from this is a cherry-tinged booze.

My favorite part of Tonka, is the husk-y dry sweetness, and on my skin it gets completely overwhelmed by the almost artificial smelling rum and cherry/almond. I'm probably just being incredibly over-picky/sensitive, because pure tonka is one of my favorite smells... ever, but either way.. its just sad. My nose and wrists are sad. My bank account however, is very very happy! Again, I probably am just being a bit too particular because Tonka is my precious, and I wanted a bpal-ified single note of my precious.. and this wasnt the perfect type of my precious I was looking for. As long as you dont mind some almond/cherry extract, this will probably be just fine for you.

[TheMistWalking]

The 'rum' part of this scent almost scared me off, but luckily, I get no rum from it at all.

 

This is nutty, slightly sweet, a bit almondy, and slightly vanilla-ish. Unfortunately, it's pretty light, and it has almost no throw.

 

If this had more of an impact, I'd get a backup (or two), but, as it is, one bottle is probably enough.

[Gale]

This is just beautiful.

 

Wet, it's sweet and boozy and smells strongly of almonds. Dry, it turns into a sweet, very clean-smelling skin scent. I adore it. It's warm and sweet but never cloying. I keep getting wafts of it as I move around, so the throw is better than I first thought.

 

So happy I got a bottle. This is my favorite SN yet!

 

 

[zankoku_zen]

So on wet, there's this sweet caramel scent with a shot of rum in it. It dries to a soft, almond/vanilla with just a splash of rum.

 

Sweet, slightly foodie, slightly boozy.

[Blood onmy hands]

Tonka, clove and dark vanilla balsam sounds dreamy to me, but my dreams fell apart by the time I got to the almond and rum portion. I hoped that the almond and rum would be pretty much nonexistent, but those are the only two listed notes that I can actually pick out with this blend. I would never guess that this is supposed to be tonka. It starts off with the cheap, cherry/almond extract smell on me and dries down to a faint, boozy, kinda bitter, caramel-ish rum note. After five minutes, it's like a whiff of butterscotch and baby powder on me, and disappears entirely before it's even been on for a full hour. Overall, it's pretty underwhelming for me...

[jolarocknrolla]

yep, vanilla and slightly boozy resin - less vanilla on drydown but still absolutely gorgeous.

[milo]

I was all ready to write this one off, as all I'm getting from the bottle is brown sugar and rum, lightly baked so that there is a slight cooked brown sugar aka caramel vibe. I really dislike caramel in all forms, and on the skin, this is much the same. At this stage, probably a foody lovers dream, but my nightmare. An hour later, something magical happens, and we're left with a lovely vanilla skin scent, similar to Dana O'Shea, but softer, and much more akin to your natural smell, only better. There's a bit of a lotion vibe, similar to baby oil, so it's like vanilla-tinged baby oil, but it adds a lovely dimension to the scent. I really don't like the early stages, but the end result is rather worth it. I'm wondering if aging will strengthen the caramel stage or weaken it. I'm hoping not, as I REALLY like this, though it must be slathered to appreciate it.

[Mechanical Death]

Omg. It smells like butterscotch in the bottle! *drool*

 

It turns more rummy on the skin, but not overpoweringly so. It's Light with a hint of smooth rum and sweet buttery vanilic character. Beautiful on the dry down with crystalline throw. It wafts about you with strength though the scent is not super strong. It's less goody on the dry down as well. Just light and definitely sexy. Glad I jumped on this! Divine!

[zombiewench]

On me this is very much almond, with a bit of rum, and a bit of something powdery. It's lovely!

[Caper]

This was so weird for me. I got this dry, bitter, powder that wasn't like anything in the notes. In the bottle it smelled like rum and a touch of almond and was quite pleasant.

 

Once dry it was like the bottom of an old wooden coconut husk crate that had been abandoned to the desert air and covered in bitter powder.

 

I rehomed my bottle to someone who loves it though.

[malibusunny]

I love tonka. So, when I saw that the single note was tonka, I had to have it, even though the description frightened me a little -- I didn't want clove (I hate it AND I amp it!) and I was afraid of being boozy. Not to mention, I'm allergic to almonds.

 

Still, I jumped in, and I am so so so glad I did. When I opened the bottle, I fell in love. It's not often that I like something so much in the bottle. It's warm and sweet and has none of that chemically aftertaste that normally comes with similarly warm and sweet commercial scents.

 

I skin tested boldly, and even on my skin, there is nothing clovish about this. Honestly, it barely changed at all on my skin, which is odd for me. My only complaint is that it's not a long lasting scent; after a couple of hours, no one was noticing it anymore. I'm with different people all day, so it's not a matter of olfactory exhaustion, it just disappeared.

 

Overall, I'd give this high marks, like a 8/10. Bonus: it's perfect for layering with something I need to fem up a bit.

[Gin]

In the bottle, this smelled a lot like Anne Beany to me. On my skin, it's pretty light: a little rum, a little vanilla-y, a little perfumey (like vanilla flower or something). It's not as loud as I usually like, but it's OK--I work in a small office with 3 other people so I'm trying to not wear scents with huge throw. Rum-Soaked French Tonka will make me smell good but not overwhelm my coworkers.

[ajansuz]

In the bottle, it's quite boozy. Sort of a cherry almond booze with a little bitterness. I was concerned about the cherry part in particular since that can be a note of doom on my skin.

 

I shouldn't have worried. Wet, it's more soft vanilla with just a splash of booze. A little powdery but not in a little old lady way.

 

Once it's dry, it's a very close skin scent, warm and relaxing, soft and vanilla touched. It's almost a fuzzy kind of scent. My biggest disappointment is that this doesn't last on me long. After around two hours, my skin has eaten it whole.

[Viridian]

Ordered this because I've been trying to isolate what I love so much about some of the vanilla-like bpals that aren't explicitly vanilla. I don't mind tonka as a listed note in blend, but something about this does not work for me at all.

 

In the bottle it's like vanilla root beer spiked with rum.

 

On my skin, the root beer aspect is stronger, and I get something almost floral out of it. It's not what I was hoping for, and though I do get hints of the cherry-vanilla-almond descriptions others are getting, it's mostly weird floral root beer on me.

[brilliantcat]

Bottle: Butter rum and it already smells so good I want to eat it.

 

Wet: Not as boozy as I expected, gorgeous vanilla with clove and a hint of almond. This is good stuff!

 

Dry: Rich, buttery, almondy, amazing vanilla. And yet it's not super-foody. It's cozy and sexy and yummy and I am so glad I have a bottle of this beauty!

[Evilynn]

in the bottle: Buttery sweetness, very similar to the bottle smell of Love's Philosophy and Lovers with Rutting Cats

wet on the skin: Buttery sweetness, just like LP or LwRC. I know this stage burns off within 5 minutes on me though, so I'll wait patiently...Ok, this is a freaking dead ringer for Lovers with Rutting Cats on me so far. Without the moss.

drydown: Foodier than I expected, but very well blended. I can't really make out the rum and the almond is very faint (no cherries, thank gods!), although I tend to amp nuts. I get the vanilla balsam and a touch of clove though.

 

Foodier than I expected, but pretty much no noticeable almond. If the drydown is nice it gets to stay. I traded away LWRC because it got overwhelmingly Spanish moss on me in the drydown stage.

Edited December 27, 2012 by Excetra

[gingiemay]

A warm, boozy, soft vanilla smell in the bottle that becomes more of a soft vanilla on the skin. It's not a strong scent, but I like it very much. Perfect for days when I don't want something wawaweewa strong!