Santal 33 Review

The mountain held the town as in a shadow / I saw no sign of active life see after see, Except the smoke of an occasional chimney. / … / It’s a great shape, as high as we could think, / Even if we didn’t climb it.

-Robert Frost, “The Mountain”

More than most fragrances Santal 33 owned the late 2010s. Le Labo’s follow up to the more space-oriented Santal 26 (is follow up the right word? they’re both still around and available as personal perfumes) has been seemingly ever present for over a decade. Which is interestingly just long enough to get you a small cabal of dedicated detractors, but not quite long enough to get you icon status. And while it’s omnipresence should make it easy to hate, it’s honestly, tragically quite good.

In the grand scheme of thing Santal is really quite linear, but insofar as it has top notes they’re likely the ones that make some people smell pickles. I am not among them, and frankly it seems likely a very small, very vocal minority, but I do get something just a little bit green from the top. You’re walking through a forest before the full sandalwood cavalry arrives.

The long, woody, spicy heart continues for an incredibly long time; absolutely killer performance. Sandalwood, paper, leather, and cedar dominate. While there’s not a clear heart/base transition, there is a gentle fade into resin ambery dryness.

“Populare for a reason” is basically the headline here, and while I’m interested to see if Santal goes the route of long-lived icon, or if the magnitude of its rise in popularity means it will be inevitably associated with a particular time and therefore damned to the whims of changing fashion, it’s not going to stop me from including it in my daily driver rotation in the meantime.