Agua Fresca Eau de Toilette

Reputation is the first thing to say about Adolfo Domínguez Agua Fresca Eau de Toilette, which has been a fixture of Spanish bathrooms for decades and is the fragrance the house is identified with above all others.

Its structure is odd and worth understanding. Eight materials make up the opening, which is unusually many: mandarin orange and bergamot carry the citrus, lavender and rosemary bring a clean herbal lift, petitgrain and clary sage add green bitterness, coriander contributes a dry spiced edge and juniper berry a cool resinous bite like gin.

There is no floral middle at all. The composition drops from that busy top straight into a base of patchouli, musk, vetiver, sandalwood, oakmoss and pine, and that is where its character comes from. Oakmoss and pine give it a bitter, resinous, outdoor quality, vetiver and patchouli supply earth, and sandalwood with musk softens the whole thing enough to keep it comfortable. The effect is a scent that smells clean without smelling sweet, which is rarer than it sounds and is the reason people stay loyal to it for thirty years. There is nothing fashionable about it and that is the point.

At eau de toilette strength it is light, three or four hours, and it is meant to be used generously rather than sparingly. It reads as traditionally masculine, works in any season, and suits daily wear, work and family occasions rather than anything that needs a statement.

The company is Spanish, founded as a fashion house in 1976 on the base of a family tailoring business that had been running in Ourense since 1950. The founder lent his name to a perfume in 1990, the first Spanish designer to take that step, and the firm's own view is that this range permanently marked the country's memory of scent.