Francis Kurkdjian is revealing the rarest version of Baccarat Rouge yet – and he’s only making 54 bottles a year

When Francis Kurkdjian was tasked to craft a fragrance for Baccarat’s 250th anniversary back in 2014, he didn’t know he would have an olfactory hit on his hands. Nearly a decade later, Baccarat Rouge 540 – so named for the temperature at which gold dust and crystal transform into a molten red hue – has become one of the world’s most coveted fragrances, so much so, that it’s even been namedropped in a Drake song.

A decade on, though, Kurkdjian wanted to push his creation further, releasing something even rarer and even more exhilarating. Today, the perfumer’s eponymous fragrance house, Maison Francis Kurkdjian, has unveiled an ultra-limited edition of Baccarat Rouge – the Édition Millésime.

So restricted is the release that only 54 bottles will be released per year for the next decade. And so precious are the ingredients, that a flacon of Édition Millésime will set you back $28,000.

The fragrance’s rarity, not to mention breathtaking cost, comes from an ingredient that’s even rarer than gold: ambergris, a substance that forms in the digestive tracts of sperm whales thought to originate from undigested squid beaks. ‘It's super disgusting,’ Kurkdjian tells Wallpaper*. But once expelled into the ocean and washed ashore, the hardened material emits a musky, earthy odour that’s been treasured by perfumers for centuries.

Though the original Baccarat Rouge fragrance includes an ambergris accord, it’s a synthetic version that is derived from a fragrant herb called clary sage. As the perfumer recalls, ‘At some point, I said to my business partner Marc [Chaya] that I would love to push some boundaries and to use real ambergris. However, if I do, you won't be able to sell as much.’

And thus, Édition Millésime was born.

Because Kurkdjian had never worked with real ambergris, he had to do some research. In fact, he quite literally immersed himself in it, spending weeks on a boat with Longitude 181, an environmental organisation co-founded by a protege of legendary French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, to learn about sperm whales and their migration habits.

Working with a specialised ambergris broker, Kurkdjian acquired a block of the natural stuff, crushed it into a powder, and synthesized it into a precious liquid. Working with it, Kurkdjian says, is an olfactory version of editing an image in Photoshop: ‘You tell the guy next to you, “push the light, bring the brightness. Ok, stop there, go back.” Perfume works the same, more or less,’ he says.

So what does Édition Millésime smell like? Fans of the Baccarat Rouge 540 may not be able to discern the difference immediately, but as the perfume mellows, it reveals more complexities, even a certain creaminess, per the perfumer. ‘The new scent remains in the same family, it’s just a difference of strength,’ Kurkdjian explains. ‘It's bigger in terms of volume and sillage. You have more strength. Real ambergris brings indescribable, intangible, sexiness.’

Such a remarkable perfume required an equally remarkable vessel. Kurkdjian and his team worked directly with the artisans at Baccarat in eastern France to craft a special red crystal bottle and luminous base for Édition Millésime. ‘It was a very intense dialog,’ the perfumer recalls. ‘[I told them] you have to push your boundaries. I pushed my boundaries with the scent.’

The result is something that’s an objet d’art, rather than a simple perfume bottle; The bottle, which comes topped with a 24-karat gold cap, and base, which ensconces the bottle between eight crystal pillars, required 19 artisans to make and some 500 hours of workmanship. The bottle and base, in turn, are stored in a spruce box – a miniature version of the ones that Baccarat uses to transport chandeliers – and even comes with its own drawstring leather carrying bag.

The 54 lucky owners who get a hold of Édition Millésime this year will also be a part of an exclusive clique called ‘Les amis du Rouge’ and have access to special invitation-only events and releases from the Maison; each perfume bottle even comes with its own membership card.

Kurkdjian, for his part, didn’t have a particular end-customer in mind to be a part of this exclusively-scented set. ‘If you start to think that you want to target a group, it becomes cheap,’ he insists.

Still, we wouldn’t be one bit surprised if Drake – and several other avowed A-List fans – joined the club.