The King Eau de Toilette Gift Set

Give the Poseidon The King Eau de Toilette Gift Set to the man who still buys cologne rather than fragrance, and who would rather have a bottle he can use without thinking about it than a small one kept for best.

The box holds the 100ml Eau de Toilette and a 100ml aftershave. The scent inside the box is dry, spiced and better built than its modest standing suggests. Cypress and juniper open it with a cool evergreen resin, sharpened by lemon and given a dry crackle by pink pepper. Chili follows, and that is the material that makes people look twice, a real heat sitting in the middle of the composition rather than a hint of one. Clary sage and lavender keep it herbal and clean around the spice, geranium adds a green bitterness, and magnolia softens the edge with a white flower.

The last hours are the best of it. Amber supplies warmth, atlas cedar a dry splintered quality, vetiver a bitter root and patchouli the damp earth underneath. Thirteen materials, tiered properly rather than thrown together, lasting four to six hours on skin and a good deal longer on a shirt collar. It reads masculine and grown up, works from autumn through to spring and is better after dark than at breakfast. Two or three sprays is a sensible dose, and the box makes the gift look like one, which a bare bottle never quite manages.

The cologne is the sort of present that gets used rather than admired, and that is the strongest thing to say for it. Instituto Espanol owns the Poseidon line, a Spanish family firm in its third generation which dates itself to 1903 and manufactures at Hinojos in the Donana area of Huelva, producing colognes, shower gels, creams and deodorants under its own and other names.