Sweet & Gourmand Samples

Gourmand is the register Arabian perfumery does better than anyone, and it is the largest family in our range for a reason - eighteen of our fifty-two fragrances live here.

The category covers more ground than "smells like pudding". At one end sit the dessert gourmands: vanilla, caramel, praline, tonka, the sweetness stacked and unapologetic. Then there are the boozy ones, where rum or cognac notes cut the sugar and stop it cloying. Coffee gourmands bring bitterness and a dry edge. Smoky gourmands run incense or burnt sugar underneath. Honey and tobacco go somewhere warmer and more animalic again.

Those are five genuinely different experiences, and the labels do not help you distinguish them. Two fragrances can both be called sweet, share four of six listed notes, and smell nothing alike on skin - which is where most expensive mistakes in this category get made.

Sweetness is also the thing skin chemistry changes most. A blend that reads as rich caramel on one person turns sharp and syrupy on another. There is no reading your way around that.

Every fragrance here comes in 2ml, 5ml and 10ml, decanted in the UK from sealed bottles. Take three or four and wear them across a week - gourmands are worth judging in cold air, not in a shop.