A Toulouse Eau de Cologne that Berdoues keeps in its 1902 collection: lime at the opening, green tea leaf at the heart, musk for the trail. Its Clean version has lost coloring agent and UV filter without changing anything about its character — green, forthright, short, to be sprayed on skin as well as on linen.
Three notes in the pyramid, and that is already a lot for an Eau de Cologne: a citrus, a leaf, a base. Lime opens, and it opens dry. Sharper than lemon, more bitter too, without the sweet roundness of orange or the softness of bergamot, it grates the zest and instantly sets a near-cutting crispness. This is the attack of a classic cologne, without the citrus syrup of modern versions.
Green tea follows without a break, which makes sense: the two materials share the same vegetal bitterness. The leaf brings tannin, that slightly astringent dryness of an infusion left a few minutes too long, and a greenness far from cut grass or crushed leaves, closer instead to a dried plant. This is the moment the cologne stops being a mere citrus juice and becomes recognizable.
Musk closes it off, and here it does the job expected of it: it does not perfume, it holds. The regulatory list names two, both synthetic, one polycyclic and the other from the amber woods family; they give that slightly soapy cleanliness of well-built colognes and extend a composition that, without them, would evaporate in twenty minutes.
That same list tells more than the three notes announced. It names essential oils that the brand does not highlight: bergamot and bitter orange right after fragrance, so in a notable proportion, then lavender, geranium rosat and patchouli. Vanillin is also found there, accompanied by coumarin and a few rose ketones. None of these elements contradicts the pyramid — a green citrus accord is rarely built on a single zest — but they explain why the whole comes across as more aromatic, and rounder, than an isolated lime would suggest.
Those who have worn it for a long time sometimes describe a more forthright bergamot up top and a vanilla-like sweetness at the finish, which the bottle's content makes plausible. The trajectory itself does not move: green at the start, green at the finish, with no sweet turn or woody shift. Allow an hour or two on skin, longer on a shirt collar.