Roja Amber Aoud Parfum

Roja Dove spent close to twenty years at Guerlain before he ever put his own name on a bottle. He joined in 1981, moved from the training department up to Global Ambassador, was the first person from beyond the Guerlain family to take that role, and collected the title Professeur de Parfum on the way. His Haute Parfumerie opened inside Harrods in 2004, up on the sixth floor, and the house carrying his name was established in Mayfair during 2011. Amber Aoud, from 2012, is the fragrance most people mean when they say a Roja.

Roja's own note list is long and specific: lemon, bergamot and lime at the top; Rose de Mai, Jasmin de Grasse, ylang ylang and fig at the heart; and a base of cinnamon, saffron, patchouli, oakmoss, sandalwood, oud, benzoin, orris, birch, ambergris and musk. The house sums it up in four words. Amber, rich, warm, sensual.

It smells expensive in the specific way that high natural content smells expensive. The citrus opening is brief and real rather than synthetic. Rose arrives almost immediately, dense and a little jammy, with fig adding a green milkiness that stops the rose becoming a soliflore. Underneath, everything happens at once. Saffron and cinnamon dry the rose out, birch gives it smoke, and ambergris and musk supply the animalic hum that makes the whole thing feel like an older kind of perfumery. The oud is a supporting player, not the headline, which surprises people who buy it for the name.

It is a parfum concentration and it behaves like one. Twelve hours on skin is normal, several days on wool, and one spray is a decision rather than a habit. Through a Highveld winter it is superb. In February heat it is genuinely too much for most rooms.

Roja sells Amber Aoud inside an Aoud Collection built for layering, alongside Aoud Extraordinaire, Taif Aoud, Sweetie Aoud and Enigma Aoud, with matching candles and diffusers in the same accord.