Les Heures de Parfum - III L'Heure Vertueuse
Cartier (2012)

I like my greens brisk, agrestic and so real I can smell the chlorophyll. Vertueuse delivers on all three accounts as it truly feels like lying down in the tall grass with the sun beaming down, the hum of harmless insects all around. It catches that buzz of milkiness in grass as well as the herbal accents of foliage – indeed, as the thyme registers its presence (never too much) in this creation, it evokes hints of high summer in what is essentially a cool green glade. Hints of anise and a foamy lavender (as much herb as it is flower) billowing within it complete the impression. I wish I had had this perfume when I had been working on a fruitless thesis at university and would often wander off to a secluded spot in the local park and spent hours there basking in the grass – it would have been the perfect companion. Beautiful and transportive.

Whenever absinthe / wormwood / artemisia is involved in a scent, I feel a bit nervous. It has a bitterness which needs careful treatment alongside other notes to work.

L'Heure Vertueuse achieves just that! Cartier's noses included effective use of herbs (thyme, rosemary, lavender) to accompany the inherent minty, bitter green absinth. This all makes for a fresh, green, aromatic blanket that stays on for as long as the scent is "alive." Beautiful lemony touch from verbena and the arabic gum (mastic) adds a nice pine-like quality that is compatible with the herbs.

This fragrance has a really natural, garden fresh greenness befitting its color. Not a heavy scent, but medium-light in projection. Seems like a great mood fragrance, but with heavier application can leave more of a trail for others to behold.

A simple sparkling resinous cologney Cartier's appointment with a dominant accord of rosemary, neroli, aromatic greens and hesperidic lavender (a la 4711 EKW) and a more sticky mossy dry down (mastered by mastic, oakmoss and may be galbanum). Absinth and aromatics provide a sort of balsamic-minty background. Throughout the atmosphere is kind of "enchanted", musky, vegetal and botanic. L'Heure Vertueuse is really green and silvan but frankly unworthy the huge price.