Tonka Impériale by Guerlain: The Anthem to Tonka Bean

The Tonka Bean: A Little Magic Seed

The tonka bean is found in South America and particularly in Venezuela, Guyana, and Brazil. It comes from the fruit of a tropical tree called Dipteryx odorata. It is also called coumarouna, coumaru, or sarrapia.

It grows along the banks of Amazonian rivers. 20 to 30 m high, it has a trunk 50 to 70 cm in diameter, large leaves reminiscent of walnut leaves, and pink-violet flowers that are quite fragrant as soon as the fruits are ripe.

Its fruits are shaped like a large almond and each contains a unique black seed, oval, oblong, shiny, which wrinkles as it dries; it is then that it begins to smell and its perfume will intensify.

Harvest and Processing (The Sappapiero)

It takes place in May. Ripe fruits fallen on the ground are collected. They are dried for a year and the shell is broken either with a stone or with a hammer to extract the seeds.

The recovered beans are then sun-dried, then immersed in containers with 65° strong alcohol for 24 hours. They are then air-dried, which causes a beautiful white frosting, resulting from the appearance of crystals or white powder of coumarin. A tree yields between 15 and 75 kg of fruit per year. The person who harvests tonka beans is called a sappapiero.

Multiple Uses of the Bean

• Initially: these seeds were reduced to powder sold in sachets to be placed in wardrobes between piles of linen.
• In perfumery: it is the bean that is treated by volatile solvent extraction to give tonka bean absolute.
• In cooking: the bean itself can also be grated just like nutmeg to be used in pastry making associated with chocolate, coffee, desserts (panna cotta); it can also be associated with savory notes. Be careful to use it, like nutmeg, in reasonable quantities because tonka bean can be a bit dangerous in high doses.
• To scent tobacco: snuff and also “Amsterdamer” pipe tobacco (a practice now banned in France and the US).
• Personal tip: I like to slip tonka beans into my car near the heater; it’s a delight!

Olfactory Profile and Chemistry: Coumarin

It is a scented composition in itself, very rich in facets: woody, balsamic, vanilla, almondy, pistachio, tobacco, hay, honeyed.

The main molecule of this raw material is called coumarin. The tonka bean contains 46% coumarin which is olfactorily very almondy and bears a striking resemblance to the smell of the small pots of Cléopâtre glue from our childhood. The synthesis of coumarin was developed in 1868 and used for the first time in Jicky with linalool and Ethyl vanilline.

The Creation of Tonka Impériale

Tonka is an astonishing construction that blows hot and cold between the freshness of rosemary (fusing aromatic top note) and the gourmand and enveloping roundness of the tonka bean: a raw material dear to Guerlain and to myself.

I developed it with Delphine Jelk, who is now a perfumer at Guerlain, with whom I also created La Petite Robe Noire, among others.

The Creative Idea: A Nod to Jicky

The idea was to accentuate the natural facets of the tonka bean, so the fragrance is woody, almondy, honeyed-balsamic, tobacco-like, and gourmand: between gingerbread and chocolate. This quite astonishing contrast is a nod to the fragrance Jicky. Lavender being replaced by rosemary and the oriental part replaced by tonka bean associated with balsamic and woody notes.

Its fragrance is perceived as both masculine by its aromatic and woody facet and feminine by the roundness of the tonka bean and balsamic notes. Like Jicky, Tonka Impériale is contrasted, ambivalent. Racy and soft, dynamic, yet enveloping, a fragrance that loves to sow confusion. I adore it!

Tonka Impériale is available in the 30 Guerlain boutiques worldwide and in the twelve Parisian boutiques and airports.