L'Instant de Guerlain Pour Homme Eau de Parfum 100ml

Cocoa and tea are not the materials most men's fragrances are built on, and that is precisely why Guerlain L'Instant de Guerlain Pour Homme Eau de Parfum 100ml still has people hunting for it years after release.

It opens sharp and clean. Lemon, bergamot and grapefruit give a proper bitter citrus lift, anise adds a cool dry edge underneath, and jasmine appears early, which is unusual in a masculine opening and softens the whole entry.

The middle is the interesting part. Cocoa comes through dry and unsweetened, nothing like a confectionery version of it, more like the dust at the bottom of a tin. Tea sits alongside it, tannic and slightly bitter, and the two together produce something dusky and grown up. Lavender adds a herbal cleanness, while patchouli, sandalwood and cedarwood build out the body with earth and dry wood.

The base is where it turns soft, and musk rounds everything off, elemi contributes a lemony resin that lifts the cocoa, and hibiscus seed gives a faintly musky, slightly leathery warmth that is hard to place and very pleasant. Beatrice Piquet composed it. At eau de parfum strength it gives six to eight hours with a moderate trail, and it is best in cool weather and after dark, where the cocoa reads richest. It is sold as a men's fragrance, though the tea and citrus make it less gendered than most of its shelf neighbours.

The company started in Paris in 1828 and is LVMH owned now. Its founder earned the title of official perfumer with Eau de Cologne Imperiale, made in 1853 for the wedding of Napoleon III to Eugenie, and the house has kept that taste for refinement even in something as unexpected as a cocoa scent for men.