Ambre Narguile’s less expensive doppelgänger

I have been sampling Spicy Road these last few days, and it's uncanny how similar it is to the lush autumnal opulence of Ambre Narguile...almost identical, except for a creamy vanilla softness at the end that the Hermès fragrance lacks.

Imagine you spent an afternoon moving through the National Gallery's autumn paintings — Cropsey's nine-foot Hudson River blaze, Homer's woman with her cascade of marigold leaves, Richards's forest path burning copper at the end, Hofmann's thick impasto slabs of buttercup and burnt orange — and then sat down in front of a fire afterward with a slice of some kind of dense figgy molasses cake and a dollop of poached prunes in spiced syrup, Donna Tartt's The Secret History open in your lap as the last light of tarnished gold came through the window as the room sank into umber and ochre and chestnut and cognac, this is what that would smell like. Jammy, sticky, amber-dark and burnished, raisins and plums stewed down, a ghost of bright peppercorn haunting the warm honeyed accumulation, vanilla lending it a late creaminess. The incense is the incense of all of it together, of leaves and resin and the last warmth before winter, of a room where something beautiful has been happening and is now, reluctantly, over.

If my bottle of Hermès Ambre Narguile ever runs out — doubtful, it's huge— this is what I am reaching for instead. Four hundred and twenty-five dollars cheaper and a much lovelier bottle!