Les Aventures Thé Vert Wellbeing Fragrant Water 30ml

With nine materials, Roger & Gallet Les Aventures Thé Vert Wellbeing Fragrant Water 30ml is the most fully built of the small bottles in this part of the range.

Yuzu and tangerine open it, and they are a well chosen pair. Yuzu is sharp and floral with a bitter edge that sets it apart from ordinary citrus, while tangerine is sweeter and rounder, softening the yuzu without dulling it. The middle is where the name is earned. Green tea is dry and slightly astringent, closer to leaves steeping than to anything sweetened, and it is held up by three flowers that each do a different job. Jasmine adds warmth and body, freesia brings a clean, bright sharpness, and lily of the valley supplies a dewy green clarity. Together they keep the tea from reading as thin.

Amber, guaiac wood and cedarwood finish it. The amber is warm and resinous, the guaiac wood smoky and dry with a tarry depth, and the cedarwood sharp and clean. It is a more substantial base than a light water usually carries, and it is why this holds on a little longer than its format suggests.

Even so, a fragrant water is a low concentration and should be used as one: generously, often, and without expecting a full day from it. The 30ml size is built around exactly that habit, and it travels without taking up room. It is unisex and best in warm weather and daylight. Nine materials in a format this light is generous, and it shows in the first half hour.

Roger & Gallet has been a Paris perfumery and soap house since 1862, when two brothers in law started it. The firm took its Faubourg Saint-Honore address in 1932 and broadened into body and bath products through the 1950s.