Penhaligon's - AlUla Review

AlUla, a 2024 release, is the latest entry in the Penhaligon’s Trade Routes series. This review was posted to Reddit by myself upon release and it is now here for your reading pleasure!

The Trade Routes Collection

Before discussing AlUla itself, it's probably worth just taking the time to talk about the concept behind the Trade Routes portfolio more generally. It is, at its heart, an opportunity for Penhaligon's to release perfumes that move away from its more traditional oeuvre (for example, Lily of the Valley, Gardenia and Bluebell, Sartorial and Orange Blossom) and towards more current perfume trends. Broadly (but not always!), this has meant creating fragrances incorporating oud and cypriol. Penhaligon's have been fairly crafty with their marketing to ensure these differing approaches fit under the same brand umbrella, and they do so by invoking the ghost of the British Empire.

I'm sure I'm doing the company a disservice by presenting the marketing concept in this way but here goes...when gentleman of England were exploring new lands, Penhaligon's like to think that they were wearing Hammam Bouquet and that the locals, appreciating their fondness for high quality perfume, were keen to enter in to mutually beneficial trade relationships with them, with the result that rare ingredients reached British shores to be then used in the Trade Routes collection. I'm absolutely certain there is nothing problematic about this interpretation of history.

Anyway, it's not like Puig decided to create these perfumes for purely artistic reasons, and some of the Trade Routes have been terrifically successful for the brand. In fact, before you even see the sign for a Penhaligon's store, your nostrils will have already been assaulted by their 2015 release, Halfeti, which, to my knowledge, remains the company's best seller. This being said, a number of the releases have also disappeared (perhaps the trade route was attacked by Houthis?). Fortunately, most of these were ten-a-penny faux-ouds (for example, As Sawira, Levantium and Oud de Nil) although some, like Alizarin and Agarbathi, deserved better treatment.

If it sounds like I'm being negative about the Trade Routes range, however, the good news is that a lot of these releases are actually, at the very least, decent. Indeed, the Trade Routes are often Penhaligon's at their most adventurous as the fragrances tend to be more complex than both the traditional range and the new Portraits releases. I would strongly recommend readers checking out last year's Legacy of Petra (a wonderful fennel-based tea scent), Babylon (a smoky cypriol-vanilla) and Cairo (a rose and cypriol woody amber).

AlUla

What then of AlUla? And whilst we're on it, why the hell is it spelt AlUla and not Alula or al-Ula. Well, apparently Al-Ula is 'an ancient Arabic oasis city located in Medina Province, Saudi Arabia' and 'the form AlUla is the proposed (trademarked) communication style by the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) as a tool in their tourism development strategy' (thanks Wikipedia).

I think this is a brilliant move from Puig - they've recognised that the Trade Routes concept could be seen by middle class left-leaning British apologists as sugar-coating our imperialist history and have made the purposeful decision to sell out to the infinite wealth of the Saudi tourist board so as to provide a living example of how fortune, wealth, and power can transfer between countries. For the avoidance of doubt, I have no evidence that any such mutually beneficial trade relationship exists, but I do hope it encourages Hull's tourist board (or should that be HULl?) to get in touch and see if Penhaligon's are game to team up next year to show what the other side of a trade route smells like.

The brand describe AlUla thusly:

The wind whispers like A l-Ula-by [oh god...],

Across swathes of desert and distant lands

To an oasis, born under sky and walls of sand

Warm plum, ripened in the rising heat,

Calls out to incense and vanilla.

Spice sings on sun-kissed skin,

Such sanctuary after a lifetime journeying

I do like to think that the person who came up with this was either taking the PISs, or was drunk at the time of writing. Why would you make 'lands' plural if you were then going to rhyme it with 'sand'? Why are the plums calling out? Why are you putting spice on your skin when you've just reached an oasis? I have images of someone in the late stages of dehydration, driven to madness and shoving their head in to a bag of cumin seeds in front of worried merchants.

Still, this does at least given indication of notes, which Fragrantica details further as:

Top Notes: Black Pepper, Guatemalan Cardamom [Er?], Frankincense.

Middle Notes: Plum, Saffron, Tobacco.

Base Notes: Turmeric, Vanilla.

Vehicle for a tourist board or not, AlUla is not a bad scent. It almost feels like a reworking of a number of other trade routes releases - we have plum and cardamom which feature in 2020's flanker release, Halfeti Leather, the refined body of Legacy of Petra with most of the liquorice removed (but with some sort of frankincense and myrrh accord remaining) and a good shot of saffron which brings to mind Cairo and Halfeti Cedar. There's also something a bit smoky and woody lying in the base. Initially I thought that was a synthetic oud of some description, but I'm now leaning towards cypriol. It could be both. If turmeric is also in the mix, it's possibly what's providing an earthy accord which I can detect faintly with my nose pressed against my arm.

As soon I think about plum in a perfume, my brain automatically thinks about Tom Ford's discontinued, but apparently much loved, Plum Japonais. This is unfortunate for me though, as I've not actually smelt it! What I can say is that Plum Japonais also includes saffron, oud, incense and vanilla and that makes me wonder if Penhaligon's have tried to recreate something in its ballpark. I'd love for someone who has smelt it to let me know.

More helpfully though, the other perfume plum notes make me think of is Serge Luten's Féminité du Bois and that is one that I'm familiar with. In comparing those two, whilst Uncle Serge's release is definitely more like a sticky plum wine, both perfumes give me the impression of something being poured over wood. The Penhaligon's sits closer to the skin but it also feels a bit more complex, and less wan (my understanding is that the current version of FdB isn't what it could be). At the same time though, the base does seem to veer towards a modern 'woody amber' approach that will likely horrify readers who are sick of this particular trend.

Overall, I'm left in two minds - if the perfume hadn't have descended into a fairly generic base so quickly I'd have been inclined to say I love it. As it is, it shifts towards its conclusion a little too quickly and quietly and I, consequently, feel a touch underwhelmed by the end. It's a shame it's Al-Ulva so quickly (sign me up to write for you, Penhaligon's!) as the tobacco, saffron, and plum play really well together.

I'll continue to wear my sample though as I do, at the very least, enjoy the components that have gone in to the composition.