Pear and watery rose rolled in brash smelling pink pepper.

Gradually, a metallic tang emerges along with slightly rubbery notes. It's fairly linear and doesn't develop so much as gradually lessen in intensity.

Synthetic smelling (this is a description, not a criticism), the projection and longevity are huge and the scent is resolutely unsubtle. This, combined with the linearity, is what prevents it being an outright love for me. It is so persistent and so naggingly in your face that it grows to be a little tiresome. Still, it's a brave and unusual designer scent that strays relatively far from the mainstream.

Alas, despite the imagery in the notorious advertising campaign it does not turn me into a muscular leather-clad hottie straight out of Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising.

Look, I'm not even going to hide the fact that this is my favourite perfume of all time, or at least it's in that upper echelon where my favourite swivels between a select few fragrances.

I'm also not going to hide the fact that, in all likelihood, you will hate this, this being one of those compositions that is polarising in the extreme, with its detractors outweighing its admirers. To which I say, I don't care, I love it and my taste is, of course, much, much better than anyone else's (this is said with a deadpan expression).

This is the smell of the sea, not in an aquatic blue way, not in a beach summer holiday vibe, nor is it the mineral marine scent gaining in popularity of late. No, this is the smell of the sea at its fringes, where the water gathers in still, slightly stagnant rock pools, and the seaweed clings to the underside of piers and on slipways, drying and pungent in the almost-sun. It's the cutting, somewhat bitter odour of tenacious plants that somehow survive growing from rock faces and on cliff tops. As for actual ingredients? Who cares, when they combine to produce this magic, but they include real oud and ambergris.

I wore this today while walking by the sea shore. It was still and overcast and the tide was in, carrying with it a thick slip of marine debris on the water's surface. What struck me was how different this perfume was from the frankly odorous water, yet was also somehow fully suggestive of it.

On a Q&A a while back, Christophe Laudamiel suggested both this and Carre Blanc as his two perfumes most suitable for a workplace environment. The wag. The latter has a nuclear tenacity, while this is as far from a crowd pleaser as can be imagined.

Like all the perfumes in the Strangelove range, this is very expensive, but you should at the very least sample it a couple of times, if the opportunity arises. It's quite unlike anything I've encountered before.

A marketing team look longingly at the profits generated by Sauvage.

First off, what on earth is a colgne intense? A not-quite EDT? Or, more likely, a marketing ploy to avoid the supposed effeminacy of the word perfume, this being a fragrance that seems to aim itself fairly squarely at the men's market?

Anyway, this only occurred to me me after I sampled it, so didn't influence my overall impression.

From the outset, grapefruit or, on reflection, perhaps a sharp, cheap wine. Lots of it. This is offset by a fairly unobtrusive lavender, well blended, so it undercuts the tang of the top note.

From this point on, changes happen very quickly. It turns spicy and sweet, with an almost cola-like quality. There's an unexpected, very bitter blast of green cypress, gone almost as soon as it appears. Finally, it settles down to peppery citrus soap, and stays that way, droning away to itself persistently and boringly in the background. I did try to perservere with it, really I did, but ended up scrubbing it. Life's too short, etc.

There are things I liked here, most notably when the cypress gains dominance, but overall it is rather uninspired, with the spicy-sweet phase in particular both cloying and nauseating. It is, however, long lasting, considering that a) it's a cologne and b) it's a Jo Malone. Frankly though, I would have welcomed it if it had faded a little more quickly. Odd thing: it smells very pleasant in the bottle, but comes across as clumsily strident on the skin. An absolute pass from me.

This is magnificent.

Green and smokey, and a definite tribute to 70s mens' powerhouse fragrances, this is a prime example of taking that DNA then updating and bettering it. The key here is both the high quality of the ingredients, and the intense, ashy birch tar core which gives it a serenity and emotional depth. It's leathery and animalic, aromatic, bitter, floral, mossy. Longevity is eternal, projection ferocious- two sprays at the absolute maximum is needed.

I loved this from the outset, and didn't even get a third of the way through my little sample vial before splurging on a full-sized bottle. An all-year rounder, except on the very hottest of days, there's something very compelling about this scent that demands unequivocal attention and devotion.

Luca Turin apparently recently wrote a scathing review of this but, frankly, what does he know? You'd think he was a perfume expert or something. I adore it, and it sits very comfortably in my top 5 favourite perfumes of all time.

A fragrance that is only really suitable for colder weather, I always forget quite how astonishing this is.

First off, it's birch tar smokey. As in mega smokey, and at the same time brine-laden. It is such an intense blast that the first time wearing this, my immediate reaction was to recoil. On subsequent wearings I became innured to it and now just think, "That smells astonishing."

Gradually, a sweetness starts feeding through, which feels medicinal, almost jammy. This, I suppose is the opium scent, which I have smelt once, many years ago but can no longer recall if this is an accurate representation or not. The Smoke transforms to tea, lapsong sushong, with its meaty, earthy notes. There's a whiff of whisky, something floral then eventually it settles to deep, incense-laden woods. The smoke lingers, with varying intensity, from beginning to end.

There's not many perfumes I would class as an outright masterpiece, but this is one of them. It's extremely polarising (my partner loathes the smell as much as I love it) and there are a limited number of situations in which I'd dare to wear this. Nonetheless, if I had to whittle my collection down to three fragrances, this would be one of them: it's an outright love.