Hermès Terre d’Hermès is a men’s eau de toilette that Jean-Claude Ellena composed for the house in 2006. 

Hermès names three main materials for it: grapefruit, cedar and flint. The brand publishes them as a short list, not as top, heart and base notes, so we have not split them into stages. Grapefruit is the citrus. Cedar is the wood. Flint is the stone.

Something here does not add up. Our own specification table calls Terre d’Hermès spicy and woody, and Hermès describes its mood as spicy and dry, yet none of the three named materials is a spice. The woody side traces straight to the cedar. The spice must come from ingredients the house leaves off the list. Flint is the other oddity. You cannot press or distil a stone, so a flint note is always an accord a perfumer builds to suggest one. So this spicy perfume has an unnamed spice and a mineral note that is pure construction.