Agua Brava Eau de Cologne

Agua Brava Eau de Cologne is a short, plain composition in the old Spanish style, and it makes no attempt whatsoever to be anything else.

Four materials carry it. Mint opens, and it is the cold, almost toothpaste clean reading of the material rather than a sweet one, which is what gives the first minutes their slap. Clary sage follows, herbal and slightly sweet with a nutty, hay dried undertone to it, and lavender sits alongside, soapy and clean and faintly medicinal in the way classic barbershop lavender always is. Oakmoss closes the whole thing out, damp and bitter and green, and it is the material that stops the composition evaporating into plain soap.

There is no long development to wait for here. What you smell at the ten minute mark is broadly what you get for the rest of its life on skin, with no modern layered structure and no surprise waiting in the base. Anyone who already knows this style will not be, because the directness is the appeal rather than a shortcoming.

It is a cologne, which means a low concentration and a deliberately short life. Expect two or three hours and plan to reapply, which is exactly how colognes of this kind were always meant to be used: splashed on generously after a shave or a shower rather than metered out in two careful sprays from a distance. Hot weather is where it makes most sense, and it is far better on a summer morning than on a winter evening. It suits men who were brought up on this sort of thing and younger wearers curious about where the barbershop register came from in the first place. It is inexpensive to wear and pleasant to be near, and between them those two facts are the whole argument for keeping a bottle in the bathroom.