Mandragore (2005)
by Annick Goutal

Update: I now own the big bottle. The citrus and greenness with a bit of sweetness pack a one-two punch I find appealing this spring.
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This is the first Goutal I've liked, but it leaves me frustrated for its meekness. I have to plant my nose right on my skin to appreciate its classy spearmint aroma. I've been looking for a scent like this, but if it has no sillage, I'll have to keep searching.

The opening is green, aromatic, and a little bit citrus — the aromatics are very important to this fragrance, and they are presented quite stunningly. At first I thought that “sparkle” of the opening was caused by aldehydes until I realized that those soaring notes are really some sort of crystal clear aromatics. These high-flying notes do not have a strong aromatic ambiance so they rather lose their identity as herbal notes and take on an identity as texture — it’s quite an impressive accomplishment. The middle notes are spicy green, star anise, and mint, and they provide a real change from the opening as well as giving the fragrance a rather tea-like persona. The mandrake finally shows up in the base where it is combined with a light wood accord. To me this is a unique scent because the most edgy accord is the base. The ginger and the mandrake combine to form an interesting tangy, aromatic, light wood accord — quite an attractive way to finish the progression. Mandragore is an excellent fragrance; however, it is like most of Annick Goutal’s other works in that it suffers from poor longevity.

Mandragore - Annick Goutal
This a similar tart-sweet/dry-woody effect as Eau d'Hadrien. However, instead of lemon and cypres, it uses pepper, spearmint, and anise. I enjoy Mandragore, but not as much as the mouth-watering lemon of Eau d'Hadrien. The pepper or ginger is a bit overdone for my taste. This genre does offer a nice alternative to mainstream sweetness.

Bland and ephemeral citrus on a base of woods. Gone before it had a chance to impress me.

Foetidus' analysis is, as always, quite rigth on. This is a stunning scent; unfortunately the dry down lasts about fifteen minutes.

This juice should be classified as the "idea" of a perfume. I've tried it both on arm and on strip, and the impression has been the same: too fresh, surely charming, but actually too light and evanishing. Reading the composition of the fragrance you discover a plenty of notes that come to your nose only for some minutes, not more, like a suggestion. I'm not talking only about the top ones (conventional orange). That's why in my opinion this is just an "idea" of a perfume, or a "souvenir" if you want. Nothing more than a good, fresh, sunny eau de cologne (but pretending, as the price tells you, to be a parfum).