London: it smells better than you think. This interesting little number from artisan perfume house 4160 Tuesdays may well have you flocking to sniff Ealing’s Green.

Listed notes

White thyme, green grass, violet, lavender, geranium, roses, earth.

The brand

4160 Tuesdays were founded in 2011 by Sarah McCartney. They are based in Acton, West London, and aim to make the world a lovelier place through the medium of scent. Their website, although difficult to navigate, is limited in its use of perfume-marketing waffle, which means it is welcoming and easy to understand, once you can find the information you are after that is.

The perfumes are created by Sarah McCartney but the brand collaborates with Victor Wong of Zoologist fame amongst others.

Top notes

To our mind the top notes of Ealing Green were the least inspiring part of the experience. Straight of the bat we got a very polish-like scent (as in Pledge furniture polish) which was familiar and not unpleasant, although not exactly high-end either. This was followed up by a warmer hay note and a mossy greenness that were both rather nice but, if we are being harsh, nothing unexpected.

Heart notes

Thankfully, the scent starts to hit its stride in the heart. It becomes fresh-ish, with a sort of rainy, petrichor smell developing.

The geranium comes through here too, and it’s a real old-fashioned type of geranium with that spikey, itchy sort of smell to it. It’s held at just the right level to give some nuance without smelling like cat pee. The geranium never really becomes a floral scent as such (even though it obviously is a flower). Instead, it stays at a more herbal level and gives further strength to the sense of outdoorsy freshness. Don’t get us wrong though, this isn’t the unfettered smell of a day in the countryside, it’s greenery growing in a city, greenery growing despite it’s inhospitable surroundings. It’s the smell of the small flower bed tucked away at the side of a park, next to a playground, that’s just had a shower of rain fall on it. That sort of greenery.

There are also hints of lavender in here too, but they come through as a sort of menthol-like expansiveness in the background and open the scent up somewhat.

Base notes

There’s a nice sort of symmetry to this scent in that the base notes seemed to refer, at least in part, to the top notes. Again, we were reminded of the smell of furniture polish in the end of the scent. This isn’t unpleasant at all, especially in the base, and it gave a slightly old-world feel to it. There’s something of the antique store about it which we rather liked.

There’s also a soapy note in the base that really does give the scent that freshly scrubbed feel which we are big fans of here at The Sniff. This felt like the sort of scrubbing you would get after the war though, when fragrant, floral soaps might have been out of financial reach and so your mum might have washed you with a bit of soap and a horse chestnut leaf instead. It has that green, unrefined quality to it.

When we were testing Ealing Green, we wrote ‘potatoes’ in our notes. The listed notes say ‘earth’, but to us it smells just like the scent of a freshly dug and cut into potato. This was a surprise, and a rather intriguing one. This note called to mind the vegetal roots in Bat by Zoologist, but this is in a much less challenging form, so if you liked that, but found it a bit much, then this might be something you would enjoy.

The other stuff

The longevity of the scent was moderate, it lasted until around lunchtime before it vanished. It is a very light and easy to wear fragrance, however, so we weren’t that surprised by this.

The projection of the scent was also fairly quiet, but it did envelop us in an aura of cleanliness whilst it lasted which we did very much enjoy.

Ealing Green is definitely something that could be worn by all genders, however, we felt that in the base it tended a little more towards the masculine side of the spectrum, in quite a nice, nostalgic way. We could really imagine an old-fashioned (although not necessarily old) gent applying this after a proper wet shave.

All in all this was a promising start from a brand which is new to us here at The Sniff, and one which we hope to feature again in future. If you’re a fan of 4160 Tuesdays, let us know what scent you’d like us to try out next.

Buy it

4160 Tuesdays are mostly available online, although they do have a small number of stockists worldwide.

100ml of Ealing Green EdP will set you back £90, although very handily 4160 Tuesdays produce their scent in 50ml, 30ml and even 9ml bottles so you don’t have to commit to splurging that straight away. The smaller sizes are priced from £60 to £15.

It’s also worth mentioning that in our dealings with the brand they did seem very nice and helpful, and it’s always good to deal with helpful people. They provided us with a sample of Ealing Green when we purchased another fragrance from their website.