You are not necessarily a chocoholic if you want to occasionally gorge. It is one of the most affordable pleasures and drugs available to us. With chocolate, I personally go in waves: I can take it or leave it for a while, and then suddenly the urge for that particular delicious mouthfeel and bodily sensation – the deep texture; the warmth, and sugary, eye rolling ecstasy – is just so huge (particularly if it contains crushed hazelnuts) that I can act like a pig in a trough – and even feel not an ounce of regret.
With chocolate in perfumery, you usually have to go through layers and layers of palaver to get to the fix you are looking for. Not so with Fueguia 1833’s Muskara Cacao, which is nothing but chocolate – specifically two unique extracts from different varietals from Ecuador and Mexico that fill up the room when you spray like two chocolatiers having a pillow fight full of dusty, packed-down, pure cacao powder : more chocolatey than hell: a chocoficianado’s dream.
I really like it. Anchored with a unique pheromonal plant musk – skin close, sexy – a specially engineered accord by the Buenos Aires based Argentinian perfume house that also features prominently in the entire Muskara range (I am also,l drawn to the husky Vetiver in the line), this is a dry, sly, podlicious perfume that will satisfy the chocolate purist or dieter – or plain gourmand perfume lover – leaving you as polyphenolic as a ganache.
The only drawback ? The price. Thinking I might treat myself to something niche and brand new as a New Year pat on the back with my next pay packet, this perfume immediately popped into my mind today as a prime contender. At the boutique in Roppongi I had noted the price in my mind, mistakenly, as ¥18,000, which still definitely isn’t cheap (but then you are talking about quite a luxury gourmand, and it apparently takes 800kg of cacao pods to extract 1kg of perfume extract); looking at the website, however, I see that a 100ml bottle of this precious concoction in fact costs a cool ¥60,000 – or at today’s exchange rate, about $548. Which is quite a lot, even for an admittedly interesting scent that you could probably approximate by melting some high end chocolate and then dusting yourself with cacao powders and licking yourself clean.
But no. No…… not really.
( I still want it )
The Black Narcissus 
OK now I’ll stop.
Interesting, I didn’t know they had another chocolate fragrance other than Xocoatl. My current favourite chocolate scent is by Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays in London, Over the Chocolate shop. Only £150, a bargain compared to the Fueguia.
I think that I only need a chocolate scent every once in a blue moon, so that sounds like a more sensible option! I like the lack of sweetness in this
With the hauntingly delucious image of the ultimate Chocolate Tart I get my fix all along your cacao sleigh ride into Luilekkerland (dutch for Land of Plenty of Sweets)
Licking myself? Was a longtime one of my dreams .Not with my 73 years old bone and muscle system, alas !!
There must be something to be desired and longed for, just out of reach to keep life sizzling
A perfect way of putting it.
I could simply never afford it in any case
For $548, I’d go back and get yourself that Coty Chypre. And a bottle of Krug to celebrate your new job.
That bottle still haunts me actually …. good point
perhaps you forgot all about this fragrance by now, but i will still ask: how would you compare it to Lutens Borneo? I’ve got Borneo and love it, so would be curious to know how they compare! I love chocolate, especially dark, but since the beginning of the year I went sugar free, so I wonder if smelling fueguia will make me want to raid a chocolate factory, haha!
I haven’t forgot it at all – in fact I was craving it recently and you have created a marvellous idea : this PLUS Borneo.
Cacao is just chocolate – it would layer magnificently !
I bought Xocoatl first. It’s spicy. Muskara Cacao was a more recent purchase.I don’t know of anything like it. There’s something about Fueguia 1833 that I like.
Serge Lutens discontinued Veilleur de Nuit that I also have is even more expensive, but not similar.
Another non sweet cacao, Perris Monte Carlo Cacao Azteque.
I had Serge Lutens Borneo 1834 and it was all earthy patchouli on me, I sold it.
Akro Dark, perhaps I should try that, but I didn’t like Awake, their coffee fragrance. I have Tobacco Vanille (Tom Ford) and Vanille Havane (Les Idemodables), but cacao only supports the other notes.
Terenzi’s Al Contrario, nutty.
Wow you have a sweet tooth!
I have seen Cacao Azteque at a scent boutique in Yokohama. I might have to go back and try it again.