Beauty Care: Xerjoff Golden Moka Perfume Review

Xerjoff Golden Moka Eau de Parfum starts with tangier, zestier citrus fruits that quickly sweeten but have a green undercurrent that mitigates them from getting to be cloyingly sweet. There was a jammier rose that was hard to detect individually but rounded things out. The drydown was more ambered and resinous but the sweeter citrus lingered noticeably. Coffee, not so much; at least not as a definable note, possibly as something that gave body to the overall fragrance but it really didn’t show up for me!

It’s described, in brief, by Xerjoff as an “explosion of rich coffee and enlivening citrus.” Here are the notes:

top notes: blood orange, mandarin, lemon
heart notes: coffee absolute, rose absolute, Cambodian oud, amber
base notes: incense, labdanum, green accord

It opened with bitter citrus, their juice dripping down a cutting board they were that sharp and vibrant. The mandarin came last in the citrus trio, which added orange sweetness but not enough to entirely overtake the sharpness of lemon. Their leaves discarded nearby, still fresh and green but in the distance. A soft, jammy rose added more sweetness and body to the fragrance after five minutes.

Golden Moka was warm, fruity, and sweet with green undertones that kept it from being cloyingly sweet, but it was definitely sweeter within a few minutes of application than I would have guessed by the description and list of notes! The green undertone strengthened and ran through the fragrance after a half hour, and a soft, smoky incense and amber duo became the new undercurrent.

There were minor shifts in the middle where the greenness slowly but surely was subsumed by golden resins, warm and sweet, with a hint of fruity-something-rather that amplified the overall feel of sweetness and tamped down any spice. The drydown was lightly fruity, sweet, and ambered.

Application

For testing, I used 1/3 of a 0.7ml sample vial dabbed to the underside and topside of my wrist area on my left arm. I used an unscented moisturizer prior to applying the scent as this is also my swatching arm (aka, incredibly parched at any given moment) as I found scent did not hold well here otherwise.

I purchased my sample in January 2022; fragrances are known to be reformulated over their lifetime , so be mindful of when a review was made, e.g. a review from 2010 may not reflect what the same-named perfume smells like in 2022.

Longevity

It lasted for seven hours until it was a skin-scent and about 10 hours before it was quite difficult to detect on my skin. The sillage and projection were moderate with the sillage dropping faster than the projection within two hours of wear.

Personal Thoughts

It was too sweetly fruity in a way that felt unnatural, so it wasn’t something I ended up loving, but it was by no means difficult to wear! I also would want to get the coffee note out of a scent that’s supposed to have it!