The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Nut & Noir arrived in 2026 as Susurri's contribution to the gourmand-leaning corner of the woody category. Lorenzo Orlandi Berti is the credited perfumer, and the composition wears its concept plainly: roasted darkness balanced by a hazelnut warmth that never tips into pastry. The 'Noir' in the name signals the tilt, the smoky register that carries the scent past dessert into something more contemplative. Where many compositions announce themselves with bright top notes, this one asks you to settle in. The hazelnut arrives almost immediately, a soft, oily roundness that buffers the coffee's sharper edges and makes the opening feel less like a statement and more like a setting.
What makes the structure interesting is the pairing of two gourmand naturals, Italian coffee and roasted hazelnut, against a sandalwood and licorice heart that refuses to play sweet. The sweetening is done by licorice, which keeps the composition from collapsing into patisserie territory. Licorice in fragrance is a peculiar material, less the bright red candy of childhood memory and more the quiet, herbal root itself, and here it lends a faint anise-tinged lift that prevents the hazelnut from going flat.
The evolution
The opening is immediate, almost confrontational. Italian coffee arrives first, dark and slightly burnt, with the hazelnut warmth right behind it. There's no citrus to buffer the hit. The hazelnut reads as toasted rather than raw, with a faint oily sweetness that rounds the coffee's bitter edge without softening it into something milky. Ten minutes in, the coffee hasn't faded but the hazelnut has relaxed into something more diffuse, and that's where the licorice begins to surface, that faint anise sweetness that you feel more than smell. It curls around the coffee like smoke rather than sitting on top of it, and for the first quarter-hour the composition feels like a conversation between two roasted materials, neither willing to yield the floor.
Cultural impact
Nut & Noir occupies a particular position in contemporary niche perfumery, one where gourmand materials are treated with the seriousness usually reserved for resins and woods. The coffee note here is rendered as a material with texture and weight, not as a flavor shorthand, and the hazelnut contributes an oily, toasted warmth that grounds the composition in something edible yet restrained. For wearers drawn to intimate, after-hours scents that read close to skin, it offers an alternative to fragrances that broadcast sweetness from across a room.
