Original
At 20ml, 4711 Original Eau de Cologne 20ml is the bottle you put in a coat pocket, a handbag or a wash kit, and it is also the cheapest way to find out whether a fragrance that has been in continuous production for generations is for you.
The composition holds seven materials and no secrets. Lemon leads, cold and sour. Bergamot sits alongside with a rounder, faintly tea scented bitterness and orange fills in underneath with something sweeter and softer. That citrus opening is the part everybody recognises, and in a cologne concentration it is vivid for a few minutes and then begins to settle. What it settles into is more interesting than people expect. Lavender gives it a laundered, mildly medicinal calm, rosemary adds a green camphorous bite, and then neroli and petitgrain take it to the end. Neroli is the bitter orange blossom and smells sweet and white and slightly honeyed. Petitgrain comes from the same tree's leaves and twigs and smells bitter, dry and green. The two of them pulling against each other is the whole character of the dry down.
Small is the right word for the scent as well as for the bottle. It keeps near the skin and runs for a couple of hours, which is simply what a low oil concentration does, and it is why a 20ml bottle makes more sense for topping up during the day than as a single morning application. Take it travelling, keep it in a desk drawer, or buy it as a stocking filler for somebody who has never tried the full size bottle.
Behind the figure is a merchant named Wilhelm Muelhens and a Cologne address. The brand's own telling has the recipe arriving as a wedding gift in October 1792, with the number following from the street two years afterwards.
Please note: images are a guide only. Packaging and bottle design may occasionally differ from those shown due to manufacturer updates or promotions.
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