White Jasmine & Gardenia

White Jasmine & Gardenia is Cochine's most straightforward proposition, and there is nothing wrong with that. It opens briefly and lightly on mandarin and a green leaf note, just enough to stop the flowers arriving cold, and then it gets on with the job. The heart is the whole fragrance: champa jasmine, which is fuller and more indolic than the common grandiflorum reading, gardenia adding a creamy, faintly mushroomy weight underneath, peony bringing a watery pink freshness that keeps the top of the accord bright, and tuberose thickening the whole thing from below. It is a lot of white flowers in one place, and it will be too much for anyone who finds jasmine soapy or heady. For everyone else it is generous and very pretty. The base does not try to complicate matters, just musk and vanilla for softness with olibanum adding a thin line of dry incense that gives the drydown a little lift and stops it turning powdery. Longevity is strong, as white florals at this concentration tend to be, and it projects well for the first couple of hours. Spring and summer suit it best, though the vanilla-musk base carries it into cooler evenings. The lane is small-batch British niche at around GBP 110 for 50ml, and this is the range's most obvious gift bottle.