Cologne Twist Gift Set

Roger & Gallet Cologne Twist Gift Set takes the house's oldest idea, the cologne, and gives it a herbal turn that most colognes do not attempt.

Lemon opens it, and it is the clean, slightly zesty kind rather than a sweetened lemon, with the brief sharpness that a cologne always begins with. Then the twist arrives. Sage is dry, grey-green and faintly bitter, the smell of the leaf rubbed between fingers. Basil adds a peppery, almost aniseed lift beside it. Elemi is the material worth paying attention to, a resin with a lemony, slightly piney smell that bridges the citrus and the herbs and holds the whole thing together for longer than a cologne usually manages on its own.

Karine Dubreuil-Sereni composed it. Four materials in total, so it behaves as a short composition: direct, clear and over within a few hours rather than evolving across a day. That is the nature of a cologne and not a fault in one, and it is why colognes are meant to be reapplied without ceremony.

As a gift it is an easy one, because almost nobody dislikes a lemon and herb cologne and it reads equally well on men and women. It is a warm weather proposition above all, the sort of thing used generously on a hot morning rather than dabbed, and it works as well after a shave as it does on a shirt collar. Few things are more useful on a hot morning.

The business dates back to 1862, when two men related by marriage set it up in Paris, and soap has always mattered to it as much as scent. In 1879 it produced a round cake of soap perfumed right through its middle instead of only at the surface, which remains the sort of detail it cares about.