GFT by Geo F Trumper, 2001

What a delightful pick-me-up! To my tastes, this, along with Balle de Match, is pretty much the pinnacle of men's semi-sweet citrus fragrances. It begins as grassy lemon, somehow capturing the brightness but not the sourness of the peel, with just enough soapiness from the blossoms thrown in to mellow it out. In a sense, it's lemon dishsoap, but only in the most delicate, ephemeral way, with just a hint of that sharp soap fizziness that irritates my nose when overdone. It also has a bit of the creamy headiness that I recently found in Creed's Royal Water, but it actually backs it up with something! As it fades, it manages to keep the ratio of tart lemon rind, sweet fruit, and soapy blossoms surprisingly constant, and slowly introduces woodier basenotes. It does venture closer to the brassy, golden metallic aura of Colonia Intensa or Lalique White, but like Burberry Original, GFT stops short of crossing over into that zone; I might call it an "organic" alternative to CI or LW. What's probably the most unusual here is that the stuff has superhuman longevity for a citrus fragrance. Even at the end of the day, I can still smell the quiet, soapy-citrus base, as almost a "clean linen" or "white musk" type of scent, but again in only the most natural, unforced sense, and with sweet lemon juice persisting hours beyond the point where you'd normally expect it to disappear. One of the best in its class.

This review is for the old formulation from a few years back. A quite brilliant modern take on their classic (and itself still brilliant, albeit short-lived on the skin) West Indian Limes, GFT is a lemon/orange citrus frag with some delicate herbs thrown in to compliment. The tarragon, often lending an unusual and almost gourmand accord to many juices it appears in, here is only just detectable in the middle and acts more as a supporting frame for the lemon to latch onto, which means that over four hours later the lemon is still there. Impressive for a citrus. Slowly, but surely, the whole thing melts into a light woody base, similar to Azzaro Pure Cedrat, slightly freshened by the "light musk" in the pyramid. Very well blended and balanced, GFT is probably the best frag Trumper have released since the 90s, specifically since Ajaccio Violets. The best thing about GFT, though, is the usual cloyingly sweet-powdery house accord, the down-fall of many a Trumper frag, is, by and large, a no show, leaving the simple notes to speak for themselves. The current formulation is, happily, pretty much identical to the original - the only difference I detect is that the citrus opening is not quite as intense, but otherwise it's still a five star frag and one of the most natural smelling synthetics currently available on the market.