Yerbamate
Lorenzo Villoresi (2001)

Upon initial application, the opening of this fragrance evokes a slight reminiscence of Grey Flannel, with its powdery green and grassy note. The green aspect is a combination of mate, tea, grass, and ylang-ylang, creating a unique amalgamation. There is a fleeting hint of mint that quickly fades after the opening. As it progresses into the drydown, the green powderiness becomes more pronounced. It may give off a somewhat old-fashioned vibe during this phase, but overall, it offers a simple musky and powdery green scent with a touch of sweetness. Personally, I prefer the opening with its fresher green notes. In terms of performance, it falls within the moderate range. This fragrance will likely appeal to those who appreciate this particular scent profile, although it doesn't fully align with the type of green fragrance I was seeking.

This is in a league of its own. The open is just extraordinary, a raw earthy greenness that is rarely captured in perfume as it is here: I can certainly detected mate and tea leaves, but there's also the most incredible smell of newly mown hay and the coumarinic aspects of cut grass in the summer sun. Delicious.

After several minutes, the powdery notes extend the effect into a heart of lavender absolute and mint leaves. I almost feel like I detect cassie in the heart as well. This in time dries to a subdued vetiver, soft woods and moss.

I very quickly developed an emotional response to Yerbamate, a nostalgic, wistful sense of comfort. I love when a fragrance can impart such feelings. It most certainly doesn't happen all the time. A truly personal, almost spiritual connection.

My regards to Mr. Villoresi for creating this masterpiece.

Leonard Bernstein once said about Beethoven's music that i had shocking rightness,and i can't think of a better description of Yerbamate.this is really good.full of intensely natural smell of earth and sap,nose-tingling crushed vegetation.more of a smell than a scent,much less a perfume.reminds me of a well tended greenhouse as the evening cools,full of tea,grass.

The harsh bitter verdancy of galbanum with cool mint and green tea being a crisp breeze brings forward scents of early flowers and past winter's decay.the fragrance eventually softens and becomes more transparent in the dry down with a little citrusy powder musk.it is perfect for those hot summer days when you feel that you need to take several showers to preserve your freshness. sillage not huge,longevity fades out at 4-5 for me.but it's really worth reapplying.

Not a hint of masculinity. There is a sourness but this does not make it unisex it just makes it cloying. Verbena , tomato , sweetness. Phew. A wash off.

Fragrance: 5/10
Projection: 7/10
Longevity: 7.5/10

Hark, what faint aura
From magic nature's brew, this
Weak force masterpiece?

Village behind Trees Paul Cézanne 1879

Love, love, love the green and biting opening.

Hate, hate, hate the sweet and powdery dry down.

The clash between these two polar extremes makes this fragrance somehow cloying. If only the opening went on forever...

Yerbamate is a very nice and complex fragrance with sweet and musky green start, woody and floral mid and finally musky earthy base.

At the opening I can smell a sweet green herbal scent with some floral notes in the background.
The sweetness is warm and very sensual that beside warmth and and sweet smell it has some sort of powdery feeling. this sweet feeling remind me of soil sugar's smell and taste but in powdery form not solid small cube shape! there's small amount of musk beside this powdery sweetness as well but not too much.
For unknown reason this powdery green and slightly floral opening gives the scent a well known aura of iris (at least to my nose!) which is very nice.

In the mid that green feeling settles down and sweetness amps up a little bit. now some woods joining in. the woody smell is bitter and dry with soft peppery aspect that gives the scent a really nice masculine kick.
The powdery feeling and soft floral notes still kicking in this part and you can feel them.

In the base I get a semi sweet musky, soft woody and slightly earthy smell that is completely close to the skin and hard to detect.
Projection is above average and longevity is around 5 hours on my skin but after 3 hours it sticks to the skin and even yourself can barely smell it.

For its first few minutes, I find Yerbamate dizzying and irresistible. It's lemony and tea-ish, soapy and musky, and all taking place in a weird sort of hyper-sweetened vetiver and abstract leafy greens. It's ridiculously strong, with a weird sharpness to it. And that's where it loses me.

At an old job I had, the building manager used to buy concentrated bathroom cleaner that was supposed to be diluted before use, but he never bothered to dilute it, so whenever he cleaned up, the whole building was shrouded in nose-piercing chemical fumes that smelled like a pleasant clean green smell, but way too sharp and harshly soapy, which also served to amplify the sweetness into something saccharine. It should have smelled good, but it was just unbearable.

That's what Yerbamate reminds me of. A pleasant, almost pretty smell so laden with sweet chemical sharpness and drowned in soapy chemicals that it becomes unpleasant.

I love yerbamate its my second favorite villoresi. Smells like green powdery turkish delight candy. Quitedifferent from other villoresi perfumes. More one dimentional and quite linear. Not such a journey. But pleasant and I would say unisex but only just - more feminine side of unisex. Smells like canoe by dana to me

Genre: Green

Given the polarized views that Yerbamate seems to generate here, I was hardly sure what to expect of it. As it happens, expectations were irrelevant: Yerbamate would have confounded them no matter what they'd been.

Yerbamate goes on green and herbal, almost harsh, with just a hint of spicy sweetness in the background to keep the greens from getting out of hand. The herbal notes assimilate quickly, revealing some incense beneath. The tea and mate surface soon after, blending with the incense to create a very beautiful, yet austere accord that marks the heart of Yerbamate. The smoky note observed by some reviewers seems very faint to me - almost a soft shadow of the tea. The tea and mate volley back and forth between woods, incense and a very light powder in a long, slow drydown whose character changes, sometimes abruptly, until it finally fades.

This fragrance utterly transcends the typical green scent experience. It is complicated, surprising, and more than a little bit mysterious. I'm not sure why some find it so offensive. Maybe it's just baffling, or maybe it responds inconsistently with different skin types. At any rate, I encourage everyone to give it at least a try.

The opening shows the tea and mate note very well, and the mate grows stronger. The greenness with the galbanum and labdanum impression in the drydown add to an overall freshness, that has reminiscences of a nice gin on my skin. Longevity around three hours. A fairly unique scent and is totally enjoyable.