Agua de Colonia Concentrada Deodorant Roll-On 75ml

A cologne formula in a roll-on deodorant sounds like an afterthought, but Alvarez Gómez Agua de Colonia Concentrada Deodorant Roll-On 75ml is a sensible companion to the scent the house has sold since 1912.

The smell is the familiar six material arrangement. Lemon and bergamot give a citrus peel brightness that lasts only a few minutes on skin, lavender settles in behind them with its clean herbal softness, and rosemary keeps the whole thing dry instead of sweet. Eucalyptus is the material that suits this format best, cool and slightly camphorous, genuinely refreshing in the moments after application. Geranium adds a green, mildly rosy sharpness around the edges.

Judge it as a deodorant and not as a fragrance. A roll-on puts the product exactly where it is needed and nowhere else, dries quickly, and leaves a light scent meant to be noticed by you rather than by the room. It will not carry across a room, nor is it intended to, and it will not fight whatever you spray on afterwards, which is the main argument for wearing a deodorant from the same family as your cologne.

75ml of roll-on lasts a long time in daily use. It suits anyone who finds modern deodorant scents cloying and would rather smell of lemon and lavender than of something vaguely marketed as freshness, and it travels without leaking.

The company is Spanish and still in family hands. Its first shop stood at Calle Sevilla 2 in Madrid and dates from 1899, opened by three young men out of Leon who had found work in the aroma trade there, and the concentrated cologne they first blended downstairs by hand in 1912 remains its best known product. A fourth generation holds the business today.