Marc-Antoine Barrois Encelade

The brief was the jungle at the edge of a volcano, and Enceladus is both a moon of Saturn and a giant buried under Sicily, so the naming is doing a lot at once. Marc-Antoine Barrois released Encelade in 2022 as an eau de parfum, the house's third fragrance after B683 and Ganymede, with Quentin Bisch composing again. The idea is a green leather, which is a harder thing to build than it sounds. Aromatica carries the Encelade decant in Bangladesh in all four sizes.

Fragrance Notes

Top: Rhubarb

Heart: Cedar

Base: Vetiver, Sandalwood, Tonka Bean, Leather

Full note breakdown on Fragrantica.

The Scent

Rhubarb opens it and it is not a fruit note in the ordinary sense. It is tart, acidic and faintly bitter, closer to the stalk than to anything cooked, and it arrives with vetiver already alongside it so the first impression is dry and green rather than sweet. That acidity is doing structural work, and the Fragrantica review of it argues the sourness exists specifically to pull the leather upward and expose facets of it that usually stay buried under smoke. Cedar fills the heart and gives the composition its spine. The leather itself is unusual. Reviewers describe it as green rather than dark, the texture of a long-tanned hide rather than a smoky Russian leather, and there is broad agreement that it has an animalic edge without any of the pyrogenic balsams that usually create one. Coumarin sits warm and sweet through the middle, and several people compare the effect to drying hay in sun or freshly pressed wool. From the second hour it becomes cosier, with tonka and sandalwood rounding the leather and the whole thing turning balsamic and woody. Reactions are genuinely polarised. A significant group calls it the best thing the house has made and reports compliments on it, while others describe the opening as sharp, aggressive and smoky to the point of nausea, and at least one Parfumo reviewer scrubbed it. Almost everyone agrees on tenacity, and stories of test strips holding the scent for weeks are common. The house comparison people always draw is Ganymede, and the consensus is that they are not rivals: Ganymede is bright and morning-like, Encelade is earthy and after-dark.

The composition is deliberately spare on paper, with a single top note and a single heart note, and that austerity is part of why it works. Reviewers who like it tend to describe a fragrance that reveals more with wear rather than announcing everything in the first ten minutes.

When to Wear

Cooler months and evening. Dinners, dates and formal nights where a leather is appropriate and you want it to read as modern rather than vintage. Spring works for the green opening. The Leather and Suede collection holds more.

Who Is It For

Someone who wants a leather fragrance without the smoke and the tobacco that usually come attached, and who likes a sour green opening rather than a sweet one.

If Encelade interests you, Ganymede is the house fragrance it is always measured against and owning both makes more sense than choosing. Browse the full Marc-Antoine Barrois collection at Aromatica.

Available as an authentic decant in Bangladesh at Aromatica in 3ml, 5ml, 9ml, and 15ml.