Last weekend, my boyfriend was reviewing what new products were on display in my apartment when he happened upon my brand-new tube of Aesop Resurrection Aromatique Hand Balm. “Oh good,” he said, picking it up. “I needed some new caulk,”

Boyfriend aside, basically everyone else I know—and definitely everyone in this office—is enamored with the stuff. It's a wonder it has taken so long for us to devote a full-on, single-product review to it. I mean, who couldn't love a hand cream inscribed with a T. S. Eliot quote “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood') on the bottom of the tube? And it's like that ideal, ruddy pink—not too pretty, but certainly not ugly. Honestly, caulk wishes it looked like this. The size is just right, too. It's substantial enough to hold court on a desk as a beauty product cum design feature, but it's not your industrial-sized vat with a pump top.

But onto the thing that actually matters—the balm. For a while, I thought hand cream was more of a winter product for those who refused to wear gloves. But as I get older, I realize that hands, cuticles, and feet are pretty much routinely in sorry shape unless you continually put the effort in. So here's what I suggest: Get yourself a nice hand cream. Love it; devote yourself to it. Aesop's Resurrection Aromatique Hand Balm smells like mandarin oranges mixed with woody cedar and rosemary, so it's not a seasonal smell so much as a thoroughly relaxing one—no matter what the temperature is.

Maybe it's silly to get so passionately worked up over a hand cream, but we're here for you. And you deserve a hand cream you're going to love. (And you'll probably love this one.)

—Emily Ferber

Photographed by Tom Newton. Pair the hand balm with Aesop's Resurrection Rinse-Free Hand Wash.