Five O'Clock Au Gingembre

Tea-Time or Happy Hour?... I was intrigued by the name of this scent, and puzzled as to whether the "5 O'Clock" refers to tea-time or happy hour or neither...or perhaps it's different for each person based on skin chemistry. First Impression: I have mixed feelings about this one. It's not far outside the realm of what I was expecting, but testing it yesterday was fun. It's definitely an interesting scent, and although tea scents usually work well on my skin, this one leans cologne-like on me, or at least have a veneer of a men's cologne over-top. For part of my experience it was giving Moscow Mule which was more unisex. This didn't give me gingerbread, cookies or biscuits of any kind, but there is an almost plum-y richness to the base with the well-blend candied ginger, honey, cacao, patchouli & amber. Based on how it performed on my skin, I think this would be amazing on a man, but I'm not sure it's for me personally. Looking at other reviews, I think this is probably highly variable on how it performs on a person's skin and I would definitely suggest testing it first. Enjoy! Update 10/14/24: This scent pulled me back in. After the initial impression, I'm finding it a little richer, and pepper is less forward, with less of the veneer of men's cologne. There's hints of biscuit-ginger & cacao in the sillage, but up close it's more candied-ginger/fruity & tea-with-honey. Altogether it's giving a range of different types of ginger. The second time I'm enjoying it more than the first test. There's something about it that's magnetic. I like it on me now and would wear it - the sillage is incredible - but I also feel I might like it most on a man. Love, Love, Love.

Having long passed the 300 mark on sampled fragrances there rarely is anything that really leaves a lasting impression anymore and even when that is the case it is usually bizarre or difficult to wear. Five O’clock is one of those special cases that are both exciting but also super easy to wear. Funnily enough I usually don’t enjoy ginger, for example in Baruti Chai Extrait, with a very dry and somewhat astringent ginger that I find quite challenging. The ginger note in Five o'clock is nothing like that, it's a sweet portrayal like a honey ginger pastille or lemon drop with a spicy gingery undercurrent and this resonates very nicely with a woody aromatic tea backdrop with some tender ambery cacao undertones resonating throughout the whole composition detectable from the very first few seconds. Sheldrake seems to enjoy using fresh accords to cut through heavy and spicy amber compositions, for example there is an almost minty green hay accord cutting through the powdery ambery tobacco of Chergui. In Five O'clock there is a similar effect of a fresh slightly green slightly aromatic tea accord (not picture perfect tea, just a general evocation) that cuts through the sweet warm spicy amber base that really hits a certain sweet spot between freshness and warmth. That being said, I can imagine the really young crowd to struggle with those aromatic facets and may consider it a bit on the mature side, 25+ seems reasonable to me though. A pleasure to wear and a few sprays are enough to get it to perform. Excellent scent overall, for me personally on the masculine leaning side of unisex. Unquestionable a top 3 Lutens fragrance for me.

I've had this for years (probably since 2014ish) and to this day it still confuses me a little bit. When I first bought this, I was put off by the strong opening. To me, it smelled like something an old lady would wear: strong bergamot and spicy ginger. I didn't necessarily get a tea vibe from it. Well, I put this one away for quite awhile, coming back only for an occasional wearing. I did eventually start to notice the earl grey tea vibe and loved the smell of this, but still struggled with feeling like it just wasn't for me. I actually tried wearing this on a warm summer evening last year, while I was going to a friend's house. The entire time I was at his house I thought he had just finished baking some gingerbread cookies and kept telling him how great it smelled at his place. After I left I realized that it was in fact ME that smelled so great and started wearing it as a casual evening scent. It smelled great and lasted a long time with decent projection, although it does come and go a bit. Well this past winter every time I'd wear it I got a an odd "earthy" smell right off the bat, but not in a good way. Very little early grey tea, very little cinnamon, and very little ginger, nor honey. The winter and fall are definitely the perfect time to wear this, but that just doesn't seem to work well with my skin chemistry, so I am still perplexed by this fragrance. I love it, but I just don't know how many evenings in the summer I want something this "warm".

I think in my mind I’d decided this was going to be some gourmand, biscuity concoction; heavily spiced and overly edible. It’s not that at all. This is Uncle Serge’s take on a freshie, and I absolutely love it. The opening has touches of warmth and almost feels a little sweaty, with the spices coming together to create a salty, skin-like appeal that plays on the tension between comfort and slight unease. It quickly gives way to a bright, candied ginger that fizzes off the skin with a beautifully effervescent quality that just screams summer to me, which is completely at odds with what I expected. I get very little in the way of patchouli, and absolutely nothing that even remotely resembles cacao. That’s not a criticism, as frankly I think it would be an entirely different fragrance if it leaned that way. Instead, I pick up fizzy lemon and lashings of tea notes that are green, fresh and totally uplifting. This is a really gorgeous composition and unlike anything else I’ve tried from the house. It has Sheldrake’s signature all over it, yet paradoxically feels completely different to almost anything else in his repertoire. If I’m being picky, my only critique would be that it’s incredibly fleeting, sitting very close to the skin after the first few moments. It’s a bit of a shame really, as this could very easily be a favourite on the warmest of days if only it wanted to spend a little more time by my side.

Ok, so ‘Five O’Clock au Gingembre’! Where do I start with this one? As I sit, close my eyes and try to relate my life experiences with the complexity of this fragrance, I’m transported back to the early days of my apprenticeship, as a shipwright in the wood store of a Glasgow shipyard. My morning started brewing the tea for my journeymen. Rich dark tea served with McVities gingerbread. As the morning progressed and the wood shop slowly sprung to life the scents of resinous woods filed the air. Then there was lunchtime and the scents of pepper, mixed spices and rich sweetness of the preserves that my mentors loved so much. As I explained before, I used to believe the smells of the shipyard were all stale sweat, tallow and engine oil, but slowly, fragrances such as this are starting to make me realize that the more subtle scents that surrounded me as a youth registered with me subliminally, more than I ever realized! To cut a long story short, this fragrance is for me (as the salty old tar that posted before), a wake up call that perfumes are not all about attracting the opposite sex, but invigorating the senses and in this case my memories as a youth. Five O’Clock au Gingembre is a masterful piece of work...just like the boats I used to build... and just like my journeymen, Sheldrake is a supreme master of his trade! MacIain!