Rosemary is one of the oldest perfume ingredients still in use. It was the main note in Hungary Water, made in the 14th century and widely held to be the first alcohol-based perfume in Europe. The oldest recipes are simple: fresh rosemary distilled with brandy, sometimes with thyme. Until eau de cologne arrived in the 1700s, Hungary Water was the scent Europe reached for.
The plant is an evergreen herb in the mint family, alongside sage, lavender and basil. That family link is closer than it looks. In 2017, on molecular evidence, botanists reclassified rosemary from Rosmarinus officinalis to Salvia rosmarinus, making it officially a sage.
The smell comes mostly from three compounds: 1,8-cineole, which is fresh and almost minty, plus camphor and pinene, which bring the cool, pine-like bite. Together they give rosemary its clean, green, slightly medicinal character. It reads crisp rather than sweet, which is why it works so well in colognes, fougères and aromatic-aquatic scents for men.
Acqua di Gio is the obvious example. Alberto Morillas built rosemary into the heart of the 1996 original, sitting under the sea notes and citrus and over jasmine. It is part of what makes that fragrance smell like fresh air rather than flowers. Morillas has kept rosemary in nearly every Acqua di Gio flanker since.
One thing rosemary cannot do is last. It is a volatile top-to-heart note, so it lifts a fragrance in the first hour and then steps back as the base takes over. That is the honest trade. A rosemary scent smells brilliant on the spray and settles into something woodier or muskier by the afternoon. If you buy one expecting the herbal freshness to stay all day, you will be let down. Judge the opening and the drydown separately, because they are two different scents.
Rosemary also crosses over with the kitchen and the medicine cabinet, which puts some people off. The trick, as ever, is dosage. A little reads fresh and expensive. A lot reads like herbal shampoo.
For the herbal-aquatic version done properly, our Aqua De Gio, our take on Armani Acqua di Gio, carries that rosemary freshness in a UK-made 35% spray. See the full Armani collection or read the best Acqua di Gio dupes in the UK.
