Earth Elixir Eau de Parfum

Truffle is the material that will decide whether you get on with Loewe Earth Elixir Eau de Parfum, because nothing else in it is anything like as divisive.

Used in fragrance, truffle is earthy, damp and faintly savoury, with a musty quality closer to soil after rain than to anything you would want on a plate. It is the first thing you notice and the thing that stays. Oud sits with it and pushes in the same direction, dark, resinous and animal, and between them they give the composition a weight that very little else from this house has.

Pear is the counterweight. Soft, watery and sweet, its job is to keep the earth and the resin from becoming oppressive, which it manages for the first hour or so. Mimosa adds a powdery floral warmth and violet a cool dusted sweetness, and those two are what make the drydown wearable rather than forbidding. Without them this would be a hard fragrance to finish a day in.

Five materials, and the balance between them is the whole craft of the thing. There is no gradual unfolding: the opposition between sweet fruit and dark earth is established immediately and simply shifts in proportion as the hours pass. Expect strong longevity and moderate projection. Cold weather suits it, evenings suit it, and it reads unisex. Try it on skin before committing, because the truffle is not a background detail and no amount of hoping will turn it into one. Four hours in, it is still unmistakably there.

A Spanish house founded in Madrid in 1846, Loewe put its name to fragrance from 1972 onward, and the perfume business belongs to LVMH. Its releases are organised into collections, each with its own character.