TONKA BOHNE ABSOLUTE TONKA 0010

Great but not as sweet as I thought it would be

Let’s face it. When we want to do a fragrance that has that special aspect that a vanilla-like (or actual vanilla) fragrance would have, it’s not easy to sit back and say, “alright, that’s enough vanilla,” and at a good enough cost, for that matter.

Tonka Bean is the somewhat obscure cousin of true vanilla - a well-enough rendering of what we know and recognize, as vanilla, with a bit of roughage, perhaps we’d say of it, if we were South African British, or something like that. Ha. It has a bit of good old hay, sort of, smell to it. It’s sweet, but not quite caramellic.

I’ve purchased various Tonka Bean Absolute products, from more than just a few suppliers (sometimes just coumarin), and it’s a variable thing - it might be quite solid and crystalline, in one case, whereas the fragrance doesn’t quite jump out of the bottle, like this one does. There’s other ones that are just plain costly, and decent, per se, but I was taken by the price about Creating Perfume(s)’ offer on this product, this time around. That being said, it is not quite all that viscous, but I won’t complain, or try to dry it out to see if it crystallizes, I guess. It’s good as it is, as I received it. Is it the best of the bunch, comparatively? I’d say that the smell stands out, for me, as perhaps the most fragrant and diffuse sample (supply), out of the various Tonka Bean Absolute (or other rendering version of) products that I’ve purchased, and for the price, it probably couldn’t be beat.