Reviews of Rocabar (1998)
by Hermès

A super woody aromatic of great proportion! This is pine, cedar, sandalwood--no, several types of pine and several types of cedar on a creamy balsam base. The dry down is pretty good, but the initial blast of woods is too much for me.

Rocabar has juniper, citrus, and maybe even artemisia on top. It's cool, it's piney, and it's a bit astringent. In fact, the conifer notes in Rocabar have a bracing, almost menthol quality about them. There are also some sweet undertones which, combined with the pine, vaguely suggest anise. The whole thing is very clean and bright, like crisp cold air in winter. Or like Vick's Vapo-Rub.

Michael Edwards classifies Rocabar as a dry woods (read: "leather") scent, but I can't find a lick of leather here. If anything the base strikes me as a fairly conventional sweet fougère. Then again, what do I know? All I can tell you is that Rocabar seems simplistic, even puerile, coming from Hermès. It appeals less to me than any other pre-Ellena scent in the line.

Musky, semi-sweet, cedarwoods and coniferous greens. Kinda of a bland scent but different enough to be more unique than other designer scents.

Rocabar certainly contains an entire evergreen forest: The coniferous notes are present from top to dry down, which normally would please me, but with this fragrance, I’m not very excited. My main problem with Rocabar is that I find almost all the accords in it rather unclear and needlessly crowded and I also have a problem with its sweetness. For instance, I think the opening green accord doesn’t need both cinnamon and cardamom contributing to the accord. Those are strong spice notes and both of them together just confuse the cedar, juniper, and greens of the top IMO. I not too sure the lavender helps in the top notes, either. The accords are just busy and unclear. To top it all off, the vanilla and benzoin from the base already appear in the opening, adding a quantity of sweet and further muddling up the accord.

Where the top notes are strong and hearty, the middle notes aren’t: They just seem to fade. Of the three pyramid levels in Rocabar, I like the middle best. The florals in the middle form a very attractive accord with the cypress and the cedar woods. I would like these heart notes to project more than they do, but they are minimized for some reason. With the basenotes, the strength returns to the fragrance somewhat — I get what could be an incense note, or else what I’m smelling is the cedar and balsam and patchouli combining to form a note that resembles incense to my nose. The patchouli / woody accord would be nice except that I also get an overload of vanilla and benzoin — way too sweet, and sweet combined with conifer is a lethal combination. These overdoses of sweet simply ruin the fragrance for me. Rocobar is about the only conifer scent I’ve tested that I don’t really care for. It isn’t a poor scent, by any means, but it is a disappointment.

This is really nothing to write home about. Goes from a pungent opening of pine to almost nothing in about 2 hours. Not a good offering from Hermes and not as good or unique as Bel Ami or their Jardin range.

I'm a young boy (only 21), but I owned this fragance a couple years ago. It's a extra-warm scent from top to base notes, with a sweet nice touch. However, it's not my favourite scent. I think in fact, due to his strong smell, you could quickly finish hating it.

A nice woody, no, woodsy, scent with a hint of sweetness, the sweetness of walking through a pine forest. Lots of evergreens and herbs but not really a "green" scent, more of a dry brown scent. The reason I don't give it thumbs up is a certain soapy/perfumey quality, a little sharp, a little overly "clean" and artificial, a little generic.

Hmmm... For some reason, I can smell Dill as the top note for about an hour. After that, it's an OK scent, but nothing special. DO NOT get this thinking it is "John Varvatos' rich uncle". It's not sweet, or powdery. This scent doesn't really stick out, but I have gotten one or two compliments from it. *On a side note, Terre de Hermes has the same Dill opening when I smell it, so neither of these two fragrances wow me, but try them for yourself, you might like them.
- Rich

Mario Justiniani is correct: love it or leave it. I left it. Received this as a gift. Nice, all right, but could not relate to it. Wore it for about ten days, still couldn't recognize the scent even after the last day of use. Down into the "drawer of neglect" until it somehow disappared. This is a very personal thing- - men and their fragrance choices. One should not give them as gifts purely because the giver likes something, unless the giver KNOWS the recipient likes somehing already, and doesn't have it. Absolutely nothing wrong with this. It is somewhat warm, somewhat spicy, somewhat masculine, a teensy bit sweet all in the nicest way. Yawn. I guess my friend mistook me for someone else. Who, I wonder?

Joe