Clive Christian — E for Men Gourmand Oriental With Sweet Clove
Essence
This is Clive Christian’s stab at the maximalist gourmand-oriental, and it pushes the genre to its outer limit: burnt maple syrup poured over clove-studded mulled wine, with a boozy alcoholic burn at the very top. It belongs to the house’s “Original Collection” letter series (the C/E/I/L/V/X/No.
Scent Profile
The opening is the most dramatic moment - and reviewers describe being “blasted by an intense accord of oak barrels housing beautifully aged rum,” with a literal “alcoholic burn hitting the back of your throat. That rum-and-peach top is fleeting; within fifteen minutes the smoke and booze settle and clove takes over as the dominant note, “dark, earthy, powerful and intoxicating,” lightly cut with cinnamon. The labdanum sits underneath the whole arc, contributing a warm resinous smoke that one reviewer noted “goes on through the whole composition. The base is the gourmand payoff: bourbon vanilla, maple syrup and caramel, repeatedly described as smelling like “maple syrup and cloves” or “gorgeously sweet and syrupy mulled wine. There is some disagreement on the fruit - the house and several reviewers cite peachy osmanthus, but at least one experienced reviewer insisted “it’s not fruity. Peach is not present here as a Peach,” reading it instead as smoky-spicy with subtle sweetness. Worth flagging: a few aggregator/retailer note lists (and even Clive Christian’s own gourmande blog page) muddy the picture with clary sage, ylang-ylang, rose oil and oakmoss; the catalog pyramid (rum/peach → labdanum → clove, syrup, maple, caramel, cinnamon, bourbon vanilla) matches the dominant wearers reading and should be treated as ground truth.
Performance
This is reputedly the strongest performer in the entire Clive Christian range. One reviewer who otherwise disliked it conceded “this is the best Clive Christian in terms of performance overall,” reporting that even a light application projected strongly for hours and left a faint scent lingering in the house. A reviewer logged it as starting with good-to-moderate projection and going to a skin scent around the six-hour mark, with “decent” longevity. The consensus is a powerful, room-filling opening followed by a long, close-to-skin sweet-resinous drydown - a thick, potentially cloying scent that wants to be applied sparingly.
Wearing Context
Squarely a cold-weather, evening fragrance. Reviewers reach for the obvious imagery - sitting next to a fireplace, the Christmas period, mulled wine - and the maple-clove-caramel profile makes it a winter-night scent rather than anything daytime or office-appropriate. Its sweetness and density mean it reads as a statement/special-occasion gourmand. Despite the “for Men” name it leans unisex in the way most boozy gourmands do; the marketed gender is masculine but nothing in the profile excludes anyone who likes the genre.
Comparisons & DNA
The most frequent wearers comparison is By Kilian Black Phantom (the rum-coffee-sugar gourmand) - multiple reviewers cite hearing the two compared, with the note that this Clive Christian leans more overtly masculine and can be found cheaper than Black Phantom while Black Phantom is sweeter and more unisex. The mulled-wine-and-clove character also puts it in conversation with the spiced-boozy end of the gourmand category rather than the tobacco-vanilla axis of Tom Ford Tobacco Vanille. Within the house, it is the sweet, edible outlier of the Original Collection: where V Amber Fougere is a peppery aromatic and C for Men is a leather-oud powerhouse, the E Gourmand Oriental is the dessert. Several reviewers explicitly frame it as a rare Clive Christian that justifies a full bottle on uniqueness alone.
Reception
Polarizing but respected. The split is essentially “best-blended gourmand I’ve smelled” versus “I don’t want to smell like maple syrup. Admirers call it “full bottle worthy” for its uniqueness, praising the seamless blending where “all the notes blend seamlessly,” the high-quality natural feel, and the standout performance. Detractors find it “very thick,” “cloying,” and one-dimensionally syrupy. Even the critics tend to concede the craftsmanship while questioning the value - a recurring theme being that the juice is genuinely good but very few Clive Christians (like very few Rojas) are “bottle worthy at full price.
Versions & Reformulation
No documented reformulation of this specific reference. The more important versioning caveat is identity confusion: Clive Christian’s letter-based naming has been reworked over the years (the Original Collection traces to 1999/2005, with the lettered “for Men/for Women” descriptors layered on later), and retailer/aggregator pages frequently cross-list incompatible note sets for “E” fragrances - some describing a clary-sage/ylang/rose-oil/sandalwood composition that does not match the gourmand-oriental at issue here. Buyers should verify they’re getting the rum-peach-clove-maple “Gourmand Oriental With Sweet Clove” and not a differently structured “E. The fragrance is now discontinued at the house level.
Acquisition Notes
Discontinued and increasingly a secondary-market item. It surfaces at discounters and decant houses, and because it was never a volume seller, full bottles can be found below the original ~$400 retail. Given the price and the strong-but-divisive profile, sampling first is the near-universal recommendation - this is a love-it-or-find-it-cloying scent, and the performance means a small decant goes a long way. Watch for the note-list confusion above when buying unsniffed; confirm the “Gourmand Oriental With Sweet Clove” subtitle.
Notable Facts & Lore
- The fragrance is part of the house’s lettered “Original Collection,” the line that established the modern Clive Christian identity and that the house markets as descending from the historic Crown Perfumery (1872).
- Clive Christian himself received an OBE in the 2012 New Year Honours “for services to the Luxury Goods Industry,” saying he was “tremendously proud” to be acknowledged “in her Diamond Jubilee year.
- The brand is most famous for No.
- 1 Imperial Majesty, recognized by Guinness World Records as the most expensive commercially available perfume - a 10-bottle limited edition launched in November 2005 at Roja Dove’s Haute Parfumerie in Harrods, priced at £115,000 (then about $205,000) per 500ml and delivered in a Bentley.
- That context frames why even a discontinued flanker like this commands niche-luxury pricing.