Cuba is latest destination to be bottled in fragrance form

A perfume company has bottled the smells of Cuba, focusing on the heady scents of Havana’s nightlife to evoke the formerly forbidden city for American tourists.

Demeter fragrances has added a scent called Cuba to their ‘Destination Collection’ range, which also covers the Great Barrier Reef and New Zealand.

To stir the olfactory memories of Cuban nightlife, the perfume is laced with notes of tobacco leaf, green sugar cane and Latin spices for a warm and sensual fragrance.

Or, what The Cut describes as “the unlikely event of a fresh cigar burning inside a cupcake bakery.”

Cuba has been one of the biggest travel stories of 2015, following the diplomatic rapprochement between the US and the Caribbean island in late 2014 -- a move that has eased travel restrictions for American tourists.

Meanwhile, it’s not unusual for beauty brands to seek inspiration from travel destinations for new fragrances, given the intimate connection between a place and its smells.

Among the more exotic and interesting? L’Artisan Parfumeur’s scent Timbuktu captures the elusive and mythical scent of the West African city with pink pepper, cardamom, flower roots, incense and patchouli to evoke the popular fragrance used by Malian women to scent their hair and skin.

And Un Jardin après la Mousson by Hermès tries to evoke the fresh, rebirth of Kerala following monsoon rains with ginger, cardamom, coriander, pepper and vetiver.

A 1 oz bottle of cologne spray of Cuba retails for $20 USD.