August 24, 2026
6 min read
Today the fragrance we’re talking about is from Lattafa perfumes, and the specific fragrance is Lattafa Khamrah Qahwa. This fragrance launched in 2023, and it has quickly become one of the most talked about releases from the house of Lattafa.
Many brothers and sisters keep searching for this fragrance review. I was somehow avoiding buying it. I just wasn’t purchasing it. In fact, the bottle I have with me right now was gifted to me by my dear sister. So I thought, well, I still wouldn’t have made a review of it.
When I found out that this fragrance won the Fragrantica Fragrance of the Year award, even then I didn’t feel any special interest in it. It was only when I actually wore this fragrance and liked it that I thought, okay, now I should make a review of it. And obviously, since it was a gift, I definitely should.
Lattafa Khamrah Qahwa Box and Bottle Presentation
Let me present you its box first, and then we’ll talk more about it. The box has a divider design, with “Khamrah Qahwa” written on the front. On one side there’s a hologram of Lattafa, and the back has a bit of branding on it. The production date is written below the branding, and this particular bottle has a manufacturing date of March 2024.
The box opens to reveal the bottle sitting inside, and it’s a tremendous bottle. Behind the bottle there’s a glass-type shade, and “Khamrah Qahwa” is written on that too.
Now for the main part, the perfume bottle itself. On top of the bottle you can see “Khamrah Qahwa” written clearly. The original Khamrah bottle was completely transparent with orange-type juice inside. This one’s bottle is dark brown, with a gradient going from dark to light orange. The cap is heavy, but I’d still say it gives a plastic-y feel rather than a high-definition, premium feel. On top of the cap there’s also the Lattafa logo. That covers the total presentation of the bottle and box.
What Does Lattafa Khamrah Qahwa Smell Like?
As soon as you open the cap, you start getting a scent from it right away. I checked this fragrance side by side with a few others too. Some people say it’s supposedly a clone or inspired by Kilian’s Angel Share, and some say it’s inspired by Strong Water You Intensely. But here’s something interesting that people will ask about a lot, it won Fragrantica’s Unisex Fragrance of the Year award.
Fragrantica is a website where normal people register themselves and leave reviews. You’ll find very few actual experts there, maybe five to ten at most. The rest are people who used four or five perfumes and after that became self-proclaimed “pro” experts, writing long statements defining and praising perfumes. So Fragrantica is a place where the laymen’s voting somehow counts and somehow doesn’t. It’s not necessary that a perfume one person liked will be liked by everyone else too. But since it won that Fragrance of the Year award, there had to be something to it, so I got more eager to try it out properly.
As soon as you apply Khamrah Qahwa, right at the start, you literally feel as if you walked into a shop and picked up a coffee-based pastry (BTW, I love coffee). From that pastry you get a tremendous creamy coffee-based scent that’s also a bit dark and dense. That’s exactly the scent you feel at the start, a coffee-based pastry note.
In the second phase, you get a light coconut, basically khopra, dried coconut, as if someone sprinkled a bit of khopra over that same pastry. That combination, the coffee-based pastry plus the dry, dusty scent of khopra, is somewhat patchouli-like but with that distinct dry, dusty khopra character. That’s exactly what you’ll feel in the second phase.
In the third phase, the coffee scent becomes a bit medicinal. As far as I can tell, a proper tobacco note gets introduced at this point. A cinnamon note runs through the fragrance from start to end. At the start, you get cinnamon along with the coffee-based pastry. In the second phase, you get khopra along with the medicinal tobacco note and the cinnamon. And in the dry down, the medicinal, pipe-tobacco-like note becomes completely prominent, the cinnamon disappears, but the coffee-based pastry scent stays until the end.
Lattafa Khamrah Qahwa Fragrance Official Notes and Performance
There’s no age restriction on this fragrance, but I don’t understand how Fragrantica put the “unisex” tag on it. It feels much more leaning toward the masculine side to me. It doesn’t feel unisex at all, or maybe there just wasn’t much competition in the unisex category on Fragrantica that year. Either way, to me it leans masculine rather than unisex.
Longevity and projection are where this fragrance really makes its case. We were checking various fragrances, around 15 to 20 of them. My arms were already full from testing scent after scent. I sprayed one spray of Khamrah Qahwa on my knee, and after that I couldn’t smell any other perfume in the whole room except this one. That’s how strong it is. It overpowered 15 to 20 other fragrances we had already tested. Even the next day, the scent was still coming through from my trousers. So longevity isn’t an issue here at all, I’d say it holds for a full 24 hours.
Projection, on the other hand, felt somewhat weak to me. It projected within arm’s length for about two hours. When a fragrance has this kind of longevity, you’d expect the projection to be just as beastly, but on me it stayed close to the skin rather than filling the room. Still, that closeness held on well into the next day.
As for weather and occasion, I wouldn’t call this an all-season fragrance. I’d put it firmly in the fall and winter category. You can wear it to school, college, or university, pretty much anywhere, except maybe during sports activities if you want to avoid a heavy coffee and tobacco scent while being active.
Final Verdict on Lattafa Khamrah Qahwa
Overall, this is a very, very good fragrance from Lattafa Perfumes. Between the coffee-pastry opening, the khopra and cinnamon in the middle, and the medicinal pipe tobacco dry down, Khamrah Qahwa earns its reputation, even if I’d argue with Fragrantica’s unisex label. If you’re looking for a long-lasting, gourmand-leaning fall and winter scent, this one is worth trying.
