Cuero Homme Gift Set

Alvarez Gómez Cuero Homme Gift Set is built on leather, warm and smooth rather than smoky, with dry wood pressed around it. A dusty spice sits over the top and a resinous sweetness underneath, which together give the scent a finished, polished feel instead of a rough one. The spice is dry and the sweetness is resinous rather than sugary, and there is nothing green or citric in it anywhere; it smells of something kept rather than something new.

Cedarwood and nutmeg hold the heart: the cedar dry and splintery, the nutmeg warm and faintly powdery. Amber, leather and sandalwood make up the base, with the leather carrying the identity, the amber lending a sweet resinous glow and the sandalwood a creamy wood that softens everything it touches. Cedarwood keeps the base upright, nutmeg is the detail that stops the amber reading as plain sweetness, and the five materials make one continuous impression of leather and wood rather than a sequence of stages.

Alvarez Gómez began in 1899 when three men from Leon, Herminio Alvarez Gomez, Berlarmino Gomez and Emilio Vuelta Gomez, opened a shop at Calle Sevilla 2 in Madrid, and the house has made its Agua de Colonia Concentrada by hand since 1912. Cuero Homme is one of the fragrances in its range, and it is offered here as a gift set.