Menthe Fraiche

Scent wise top notch, easily the best green tea note I have smelt to date and I've smelled and bought a few, I love tea in frags in both black and green variants. The mint top notes plus citrus are really really good too. The tea and citrus does stick around longer than the mint (and gives a nice Rhubarb vibe with the faded mint on top) and is great but unfortunately not long lasting at all, about 1hr good projection and then a few hours in skin scent territory. Guerlain Herba Fresca is somewhat close to it testing side by side and although the Heeley does smell a little cleaner and its citrus is more natural and a little sweeter I would much rather buy Herba Fresca given it is 1/3 of the price. You can top up a spray when it starts to fade and it still would be less overall cost by a large chunk. HF's mint also stays around for it's entire wearing but is more grass and mint to the simple fresh natural mint of the Heeley if that is what you are after. That Rhubarb and Green Tea vibe in the Heeley dry down is pretty special though so if cost is no option I wouldn't hesitate to grab it. As a side note Amouage Beach Hut has an excellent natural mint smell to it, but it strong and quite linear. If you want to have that smell projecting heavy for a long time that is one to go for (it was too much and too literal for me). edit: I ended up getting a FB of Menthe Fraiche in a small sale, its just too damn good a scent to pass up.

Best mint scent ever! Nice watery green spearmint with a hint of green tea in the background. Yes, there are some woods at the base and some florals far on the background, but green spearmint is the major note!!! This is spearmint done to perfection, I must have tried 10-12 different mint-themed fragrances and I can attest this is by far the best. The tricky part is to have a pronounced mint note but not to make it smell like toothpaste. Menthe Fraiche accomplishes just that: the mint is so real that it almost feels like you just bathed in Moroccan Mint iced tea :) Surprisingly good performance too (5-6 hours of active projection) with longevity going into 8-10 hours (skin scent at the end). By no means it is a beast in projection. This is not a very intense but rather light, uplifting and very inoffensive but noticeable, likable scent! Very refreshing and great hot weather alternative to citrus based freshes. If you like what I am describing, this fragrance is a safe blind buy! It is worth every penny and no other scent is even close if you look at the list what it is compared to, none of them is remotely near Menthe-Fraiche!!!.

I'd heard about this fragrance a long time ago but I never had a chance to try it because Heeley does not have any sales point here in Brazil as far as I know. After receiving a 2ml samble finally I could try it and confirm what some of my friends used to say about this wonderful perfume. Some say that this perfume smells like smint toothpaste or mint gum what for me is absolutely ridiculous because this perfumes smells MINT, a very good and soft mint by the way. I think this is a very unique scent, worthy of consideration by people who really like simple, fresh fragrances and don't mind mint/sweetness. Projection/longevity are lacking, but you can always wear more, or put unscented lotion on your skin right before spraying. But for what it's lacking in those areas, it definitely makes up for in quality of scent. This is unbelievable, and definitely without a doubt will be my #1 summer daily-wear scent as soon as I have a chance to buy it. Fabulous and refreshing!!! Perfect perfume for Summer!!!

I'm going crazy over this! This scent is fabulous and so addictive. Not kitschy nor old-fashion, very unisex, fresh, clean, uplifting. Real work of art. Nostalgia in a bottle. Reminds me a tiny bit of a room mist scent. After 30 mins, mint transforms into green tea and green citrus. This is considered unisex but I would call it genderless. It doesn't smell flowery feminine nor woody masculine; not a single note in here is characteristic of women's or men's scents. Longevity is rather short, after an hour/hour and a half it barely smells on my wrist or clothes. The quality of the scent is so good that it doesn't even bother me to spray some more in the afternoon. According to other reviews I thought this would be more mentholy and "cold"-smelling, but the tea and citrus notes make it smell yellow-green, not mint/darker green scent. I give this a good 8/10, -1 for its longevity and -1 for the tea note that kind of steals the show after a while: the mint note deserved a longer life.

James Heeley makes elegant, subtle perfumes - Menthe Fraiche is no exception. This is undoubtedly the most natural and authentic mint fragrance on the market, but it seems that maintaining that authenticity comes at a cost: longevity and projection are minimal. I'm lucky if I get 2-3 hours out of this one. This fragrance, to me, is almost a perfect olfactory representation of mint tea on ice. It is both chilly (the menthol effect inherent in mint) and green (like dewy grass or fresh green tea leaves). Like others in the Heeley line (Sel Marin, Iris de Nuit, etc), it clearly prizes subtlety above all other virtues. If you are inclined to seek out fragrances that whisper rather than shout, you really should explore the Heeley line. I really like his fragrances, but none are truly must-own. They're just a bit too quiet. Also, they were more reasonably priced prior to the 2011-12 price increases.