Esprit du Roi Penhaligon's 2011

After the opening, a recognizable vegetable note quickly emerges. I wasn't aware that tomato leaf smells so much like tomato. Well, that could be tested: We recently filled three plant pots accordingly - mainly for the amusement of the children - and with tomatoes, you have to regularly remove the unfruitful side shoots ("pinching") to ensure that the growth power remains for the main shoots and ultimately the fruits. I directly plucked and crushed the first such side shoot. I smell - surprise! - leaf. Well. Maybe Penhaligon’s uses a different variety of tomato. Or perhaps they mean the stems just plucked from the fruit. Or you have to take the precious leaves from the main shoots. Or the gentlemen simply helped themselves with a few little fruits. Next time I pluck, I might sacrifice (with little hope for change) a piece of noble leaf and sniff again.

Fresh and minty, quite British-cologne-like, is the start otherwise and I like it. An original idea to give the whole thing this hardly describable as anything other than "tomato" touch. In my childhood, there was a book called "We Don’t Care About the Cucumber King." I never read it - it was award-winning and thus considered educationally valuable. Well, today I instead have to deal with the Tomato King or rather his spirit.

A heart note does not occur for me - to put it pointedly.

We rather immediately move on to the base. Vetiver and wood mix quite nobly, a dry, subtly animalistic undertone is present, which I quite like, even though I just learned that it includes, among other things (Hyrax; Penhaligon’s refers to it as "africa stone"), petrified excrement from rock hyraxes, small mammals from Africa and West Asia.

In the sixth hour, the EdR has developed into a herbaceous-distinguished scent close to the skin, fundamentally well-balanced, although I perceive a certain emphasis on the foreign-animalistic. Although the petrified hyrax poop (at least here) does not smell typically fecal, I find it less appealing now.

Conclusion: Somewhat decent, but the scent progression changes (I agree with this already expressed opinion) a bit too much and not exactly in my preferred direction. There are better options, especially for the price and certainly from Mr. Duchaufour.