4711 Acqua Colonia Mandarine & Cardamom

Sparkling MANDARINE & CARDAMOM luxury shower gel-like scent. Opens with a burst of soft mandarin with faint cedar & spicy cardamom nuances that deepens into a fruity, aromatic & spicy heart resting on a musky woody base with faint pencil shavings & a faint, fleeting bubble-gum nuance on the skin. The mandarin is less forward here than the notes would suggest, and is very soft, and its underpinned by spicy, musky & woody facets. Overall I get a luxury mandarin shower gel with aquatic, fruity, woody, spicy & faintly soapy bubble-gum-floral tones. Average performance for a subtle wearing experience that's extended if layered over its matching body lotion. This was love at first sniff for me, and my favourite of the range. Contrast to Aqua Allegoria Mandarine Basilic Guerlain: These are different but there is a similar fruity 'shower fresh' vibe. MB has a forward basil note and is more similar to scents like Un Jardin Sur Le Nil Hermes. MB has superior performance. Contrast to Mandarine Glaciale Atelier Cologne: These are different, but this is the most similar scent to MG that I've smelt, but the mandarin in MC doesn't continue throughout the drydown but evolves with more cedar-spicy nuances. Roughly equivalent performance, or slightly better performance with MG. Contrast to Cheap & Chic I Love Love Moschino: These are different, but the mandarin here is done in a similar way. C&CILL has beast mode performance. Contrast to Club de Nuit for Men Armaf: These are different, but there are some similarities with spicy citrus and a bubble-gum note. CdN has beast mode performance, and the bubble-gum note is more forward. Overall: Affordable and a beautiful scent profile with average performance that can be extended by layering over its matching body lotion. This is the perfect scent to wear for a 'shower fresh' vibe. It's a love for me. Enjoy!

My sister bought this for me because she knows I love Mandarin and Cardamom, both as food and as scents, and she couldn't have made a better choice. I absolutely love this. It is what it is named. A beautiful balance of juicy, not so sweet mandarin, with a light spicy cardamom note, which gets a little heavier on the dry down where it is later joined by light woody notes. Projects lightly off the skin for about 2 hours, but stays a skin scent for about 5. It is pretty linear, but that's okay, because I think it smells great from beginning to end. I honestly like this more than any of the Jo Malone orange scents (Orange Bitters, Lime Basil & Mandarin) that I either own or tried, and it performs about the same too. Price wise, this is about 1/10th the price of a Malone, which makes it even better. I can't get enough of this right now. I now want the moisturizing body oil of this scent too. That should make this perform even better than it does right now, but this is so inexpensive that I can spray away all day if I like. I'm no psychic, but I see a large 5oz bottle of this in my future.

It is currently about 8o (F) here so it wasn't very logical to give this a try but I got a bottle on sale and decided I had to try it to make sure it was good. And I must say this is very, very good. This is an extremely traditional citrus fragrant that has an unusual amount of presence. It does not do the more traditional trick of smelling sunny for about 10 minutes then dropping to either a white floral or shy musk for the next several hours. It is also very distinctly orange (tangerine more than mandarin so there's acid for structure) and the cardamom is delightful. I don't get a lot of cinnamon but I do detect something that's a bit crunchy to give the scent some spine and structure--perhaps a particularly salty vetiver. So, to summarize, I've got sunshine on a cloudy day and a citrus scent that presents itself as perfume rather than aftershave or cologne. It will be interesting to see what this does in the heat of summer. Sillage: 2-3 feet, not shy Duration: 2-3 hours in cold weather Fabulosity:a glass of fresh sqeezed orange juice. Value to price ratio: excellent 7/10

This is absolutely my favourite of all the fragrances in the 4711 Acqua Colonia line. Like the other fragrances, Mandarin & Cardamom is a linear fragrance - what you smell on your first spritz is exactly what you'll smell hours later. That scent is a lovely, zesty, and fresh mandarin with a hint of cardamom to take the edge off and round out the fragrance. The only negative about this fragrance is the longevity. I'm lucky if I get an hour out of it, and with negligible sillage - this is a skin scent on me. However, that's a problem I face with all of 4711's fragrances, so not a big deal. At this price point (I paid around USD 15), you could bathe in the stuff and not feel the pinch (figuratively, not literally). It's also available in a gift box with a matching shower gel, so you could also bathe in it literally, if you so wish.

So good! This is a fall/winter orange freshie. Just as good if not better than Geza Schoen's other fragrance Molecule 01 + Mandarin and much lower in price. The mandarin is fresh and slighly sweet while the cardamom elevates it to something a bit more than just fruit juice. It lasts about 6 hours on me, but I like continuously spritzing it often. More potent than the instantly disappearing original 4711, but still ultimately a cologne, so keep that in mind. A smile in a bottle and will definitely satisfy your spring-summer mandarin craving. Side note: I also tried the Blood Orange & Basil which is completely different, but still nice (more herbal and slightly sweeter) and Lime & Nutmeg which to me has a more complementary feel to M&C, but with an atypical lime note. I recommend them both too!