TOLA – Alhada at Pitti Fragranze

As many of you know, Tola is a unit of mass originating in India – and as well it is a name of niche brand created and owned by Dhaher Bin Dhaher from UAE. And as it seems, the Orient gave birth to an amazing new talent in perfumery, with a potentiality to touch the stars.

source: Tola Perfumery Instagram

Although Dhaher’s professional career as a nose has been continuing for two years now, there’s a tradition of mixing the fragrant oils in his family. His mother and sister collaborate on manufacturing the Tola perfumes too. Interestingly enough, the company promo visuals are created by Dhaher’s niece:

source: Tola Perfumery

Alhada belongs to the newest Tola creations, it’s been introduced at Pitti Fragranze in Florence this September. The company’s exhibition stand was catching the eye by placing the perfumes on a beautiful oriental carpet. Fragrances were presented in stylish ornated ceramic bells. Aside of perfumes, visitors could also try the original Arabic coffee (it tastes quite differently than I expected) and dates. The name Alhada refers to a Saudi city (and a mountain) next to the Ta’if city, where the famous eponymous roses come from.

source: Tola Perfumery

From the beginning till its last fragrant whiff, Alhada smells beautifully and luxuriously. One can almost hear the top quality ingredients speak. The fine materials alone surely won’t guarantee the accomplished perfume, but Alhada is a precisely blended concoction. It is impossible to tell which component is standing out in the fragrance, thanks to its rounded smoothness. Naturally, as an arabian classic Alhada is based on a customary union of oud and rose, but at the same time it is more than a “mere” skillfully constructed composition of fragrant essencies. Intoxicating the nose with its lightness, Alhada feels as naturally as something being created by the almighty hand of Nature and as such it transcends to the realms of the art. Despite it never asserts itself aggressively, not even overly prominently, it features a significant depth you can recognize by focused sniffing. It’s like glimpsing the beauty of a woman walking by – but if you stop and look her in the eyes, you will acknowledge her soulful intellect as well.
The top-class oud used is being handled so it never brings the slightest coarse to the fragrance, let alone desecrating the one thousand and one nights’ elixir with some reeking blasphemy – no such a thing. With Alhada you can only be given the highest, celestial spheres, the magical scent of oud is ever able to reach. It provides Alhada with oriental nature and a barely discernible tinge of smokiness, ungraspable as a memory of dream, but nothing else. In spite of the indispensability of oud for Alhada, I woldn’t dare to label it as an oud-fragrance. It mainly consists of the plant and floral essences, plus white musc and touch of hesperidic oils. I can hardly fancy Alhada could be honed in any way – it is simply perfect. One can feel the love it’s been created with. Such an accomplished and delicious fragrance means to perfumista what a pure heroin would be to the tobacco addict – reach out and venture to it and it’ll take you further than you ever expected. Minus the inconveniences, that is.