Acqua Colonia Amber Mandarin Eau de Parfum 100ml

Nearly everything in this line is sold at cologne strength, which makes 4711 Acqua Colonia Amber Mandarin Eau de Parfum 100ml the weightier exception among its siblings.

It opens on citrus, as the line always does, but handled with more depth than usual. Green mandarin oil from italy is the lead, and the green version of the fruit is sharper and leafier than the sweet mandarin most people picture, with a bitter twist in the peel. Orange fills in behind it, rounder and warmer, and pink pepper adds a dry sparkle over the top. Where it parts company with the rest of the range is underneath. Black cardamom from guatemala is nothing like the pale green pods of a spice rack. It is smoky, dry and faintly cooling, and it gives the middle a seriousness that citrus on its own would not have. Iris sits alongside it, cool and powdery with a slightly earthy, rooty quality, and osmanthus absolute softens the pair with a sweet, fruity, faintly bitter character like dried flowers. Patchouli and musk close it, the first damp and earthy and the second warm and skin like, and together they are what let the scent hold on. The concentration is the practical argument for buying it. At eau de parfum strength this carries considerably further than a cologne splash, so two or three sprays in the morning will still be with you in the afternoon, which is not something the lighter bottles in the range can promise. It reads as unisex, works through the year, and suits an office or a long day out rather than a short burst after a shower.

The house behind it is an eau de cologne maker of long standing, and the number it goes by is an address rather than a formula: French troops numbered the building 4711 in 1794 and the figure was registered as a trademark in 1875. Maurer and Wirtz introduced the Acqua Colonia line in 2009.