Halmaddi available

September 15, 2011 at 10:43 pm (Halmaddi / Mattipal, Miscellaneous, Ross)

Andrew at Equinox Aromatics has managed to source and bring into the US real Halmaddi.  You can check it out at the link above, It is a brown grey rather sticky substance that needs to be stored in water, so working with it will be “interesting”. You can expect to see incenses using it coming out fairly soon. At least in my case, and I am pretty sure in a number of others, they will be built around natural ingredients. The only problem with this is the cost factor of  of the essential oils and absolutes now days 🙂

OK, back to the laboratory..oh no, the musk ox is loose again!

-Ross

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New Mandala Trading source

February 26, 2024 at 12:53 pm (Administrative, Incense, Mandala Trading (Art & Incense), Mike, Nepal)

I’ve changed all but one of the links on the following pages to the Everest Trader Etsy page as Pat just received fresh stock in of all these incenses, except the Himalayan Herbal Incense:

In terms of incenses, batch variation is always an issue with incenses of all different types and I will try to share changes in these when I have hard evidence. I’ve always felt that two of the best Nepalese incenses are the Himalayan Herbal and Tibetan Monastery incenses from Mandala Trading, they are available in many shops in the US that sells Tibetan incenses. I reviewed these both a little over 15 years ago. Before restarting ORS a few years ago I purchased the top box from Sensia. I was disappointed with the aroma at the time, it wasn’t quite what I remember and as in most cases it just gets kind of pushed to the back of my mind. One expectation that you can have is that an incense can change and never come back again, or at least for sure this is true in incenses with rare ingredients in them: sandalwood, aloeswood, halmaddi etc. While I’m not sure I could have explained the difference here, especially in that the inner wrapper has the ingredients actually listed, the ingredients appear to both be virtually identical.

I’m glad to say this new batch from Everest Trading is much more like I remember it, the stick is red and thick again and all the complexity has come back. The picture above is a comparison of the two boxes. So this is a case where something can actually move back to where it once was! I would imagine that the changes were probably the quality of the natural materials that came together to make the incense, perhaps a harvest wasn’t as up to snuff as it was in a different year. Anyway, in as many cases as I can get to, if I can note changes I will update a review page to say so (I’ve also been working through a lot of Shroff incenses, a company whose every batch shifts quite noticeably, and even a couple of Mothers). Thanks to Everest Trading I have new rolls of many of the others as well and will update these reviews as I go through them, although certainly based on this one, the batches look good! I’ve also confirmed that Mandala Trading and Mandala Art & Incense are the same company so that has been updated in the reviews index and I’ll eventually do so with the categories as well!

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Ramakrishna’s Handmade Incense / Om Shiva, Khus, Spiritual, Gulmohar

January 24, 2024 at 1:42 pm (Halmaddi / Mattipal, Incense, India, Ramkrishna's Handmade Incense, Sandalwood, Stephen, Vetivert / Khus)
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This is our second installment of reviews of Ramakrishna’s Handmade Incense vendor from Goa. (Link to first review) (Note that we tried to include links to Exotic Incense in the US, if an incense is not linked, please use the first link. These reviews are of sticks purchased directly from Goa.)

Om Shiva

If you are a fan of musky floral presentations similar to the Happy Harry “King of Vrindavan” or Sri Sai Flora, this is going to tickle your fancy. This is a natural stick with a soft charcoal masala that is finished with a brown powder that marbles into the wetness of the halmaddi content of the masala. What sets this apart is that this one smells a little less intense and my guess is that I’ve been used to a synthetic perfume and this is using more natural ingredients. The scent has the core musky scent but there is an interplay between some salty sandalwood and the sweetness of the halmaddi that gives this more dimension than the others that really stay squarely in the musky category. Knowing that more than 95% of the Indian incense market uses synthetic scent components, I still can’t say for sure if this one is in that 5%, but it is so exquisite and gentle that it feels that it might be the case.

Khus (Missing package label)

Natural stick with a soft charcoal masala hand-applied and finished with a brown powder. This smells great, in fact, most top end vetivers from other Indian incense factories are similar in notes but this smells less perfumy and more natural, not sure if they’re using an absolute or an oil but it’s definitely seemingly all-natural and charming with all the halmaddi in this. I’m guessing this is what incense used to smell like before artificial scent molecules were invented.

Spiritual

This is a natural stick with a hand-applied soft charcoal masala finished with a brown powder. I am starting to suspect that some of the Happy Hari family of incense come from ‘traditional’ recipes. This is, as far as I can tell, Pratyahara Sutra done exactly as it used to be. The Happy Hari version is more like a perfume on a charcoal extruded stick. This smells like it is made from all the individual ingredients that make up this sweet, slightly floral/slightly fruity smell. If I had to say what this smells like, it smells like an altar where fruit and flowers have been left and the fragrances have intertwined.

Gulmohar

This comes as a yellow stick with a hand-applied soft charcoal masala finished with a dark brown powder. This is an amazing agarbatti. I have encountered versions of this smell in other catalogs and this is the superior version. This is a spikenard-heavy perfume with hints of caramel, and sweetness from the halmaddi in the masala, and there is something that comes across as a touch of musk, or perhaps it’s what I’ve been suggesting is musk in many Tibetans. Either way, this is a beautiful stick and it has enough playfulness that you don’t get the same smell twice.

Future Ramakrishna reviews are pending Stephen recovering his sense of smell after a bout of COVID.

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Pushkar Temple Incense / 100g / Anant Flora, Chandan Flora, Sai Flora, Shashank Flora, Vinayak Flora

December 12, 2023 at 8:23 am (Flora, Fluxo, Incense, India, Pushkar Temple Incense, Uncategorized)

Pushkar Temple / 100g 1 of 3
Pushkar Temple / 100g 2 of 3

So the final group of the Pushkar Temple incenses packaged as 100g bundles are all floras. Those familiar with the style will notice they have a Sai Flora, which in many ways is the most well-known/popular flora known in Indian incense through the dark red package that shows up nearly everywhere (I used to think this was something like second in popularity to blue box Nag Champa). Many floras, even outside of PT will have orange-dipped bamboo sticks and certainly PT’s Sai Flora and a few others do as well. Floras are generally highly perfumed mixes of so many elements it is almost impossible to parse them separately in an aroma, but it’s probably safe to say they are mostly mixes of florals and often fruits.

Anant Flora has the fruits fairly up front, I mean right away you can get some pear and apple in the front mix. So it is unquestionably a friendly blend right away. I suspect some floral oils are in here matching those notes, although it’s difficult to tell what they are. But while I can often think many incenses have a citrus-like note, Anant Flora is definitely more of like a fruit salad sort of note, with not even a touch of orange, lemon or lime. There is definitely a sense of some perfume in the background but this is all gently applied. There is also a really strong aromatic that I tend to sense in something like cherry bubble gum. I’m not too sure of many incenses that get as western friendly as this one, there seems little in the way of indigenous Indian herbs and flowers here that I know of. So maybe a simple answer is this is like a fruit salad bubble gum scent. Mind you these types of scents aren’t exactly in my own wheelhouse, but given how some of these elements can often come with strange notes, it is a little surprising they’re missing here. If you like fruitier/champa like mixes (this one’s also a bit halmaddi-squishy), you’d want to check this one out, just don’t expect this to be anything but generically friendly.

The Chandan Flora does take some aspects from the Mysore Chandan I reviewed last installment but it’s also really different while still landing somewhere in the flora area. It actually does still have something of a woody center, although like I mentioned before this woodiness seems more overlapping with sandalwood than having any actual sandalwood note that stands out and it tends to submerge into the rest of the bouquet. It has the same sort of interesting confectionary note mixed with that strange chandan creaminess, but outside of that all of these sweet aspects seem to sort of strangely merge into the florals. It has quite a bit of vanilla in the mix which sort of evokes something like ice cream, sherbet or a mix of both. There also feels like a lot of honey, even honeycomb and then a strange, toasted note floating in the middle that reminds me a little of that smell you get after someone gets a perm. It is quite a strange mix of elements for sure, definitely not a chandan in the classic sense, but more like a remix of those elements shuffled into something new. It’s not what I’d call a traditional flora so much, but it definitely has some aspects of them and, in the end, I don’t know if I’ve tried anything quite like this before, so it’s pretty fascinating. I do very much like the sort of toasted sugary vanilla that is central to it and when this comes out in full force it’s a very attractive incense.

Pushkar’s Sai Flora is actually close to the King of Vrindavan incense that Absolute Bliss carried for a while which is basically the Vedic Sai Flora. Noting the blueberry content really opened this formula up for me (Stephen pointed this out to me some time ago) and I far prefer it over the red packaged Sai Flora, an incense that used to be excellent but is more of a loud perfume bomb now. Pushkar’s version is something of a lateral move to the Vedic version but it’s still somewhat similar. I’m not sure if it’s quite as refined, it’s more as if some of the familiar aspects are reshuffled in level. In this version there’s almost like a fresh orange squeeze to it in addition to a mix of florals that is fairly hard to parse, mostly because it is all very loud. I contrast my impressions that this much orange can be overwhelming (olibanum? neroli? orange blossom?) and a little bit citrus-sour with a wonder what it would be like just to sense this element on its own. Overall, I feel like the heaviness of this blend can be mitigated just by giving it a bit of room to disperse, for example I found that I liked it more in my burning spot upstairs compared to either place I might burn it downstairs – a little room is helpful. Having experienced at least a half dozen of these sticks, I still am not entirely sure where I fall with it, largely because I definitely like some of what’s going on while perhaps feeling like I’m struggling to find a balance in it.

I’m not even sure I’d consider Shashank Flora a flora at least in the sense that it doesn’t bear any high volume of floral oils, in fact it seems to be more of a modest sandalwood vanilla mix, a sweetened combination one is likely to find more often under a description of a champa. In that sense after the previous two blasts of fruits and florals its modesty is actually quite an attraction (a Shashank Redemption if you will). I burned something like four sticks of this just hovering over this review because I wanted to say more, but really the combination of oils and ingredients only give it something like a mild confectionary feel to it, a bit toffee or something, and not a lot more. At the very edge there feels like maybe another wood in the mix and maybe a light touch of patchouli, all of which keeps a good part of the bouquet feeling a bit dry. It is a very friendly blend though, super easy to get into but definitely not as complex or as loud as most floras are.

The Vinayak Flora is a strange hybrid of loban and flora qualities, in fact you’d probably have to be a fan of lobans to even start with this one. Unfortunately, the mix of florals on top of this tends towards the soapy, so even though the mix has Sai Flora-like qualities, the hints of blueberries and orange feel a bit lost in the mix (if there at all, the similarity is a bit vaguer). The florals and resins don’t match up well, particularly with this stick having the sort of gravel-like tendencies most lobans have in the background. I was actually surprised I didn’t notice a lot of this until I did the review. Before this I had most of the year to cycle these and I made note of the florals being closer to geranium or other pseudo-rose scents and I do pick that up still a bit. The bottom line is that there are a few issues that cause some bitterness or sourness to the overall mix and this basically overwhelms anything positive about it.

Next up we’ll move to the 50g packages, which is where the lion’s share of the better Pushkar Temple incenses exist…

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Good Incense / Gold, Patchouli, Rose, Saffron, Vetiver + notes on other fragrances

December 9, 2023 at 4:17 pm (Good Incense, Halmaddi / Mattipal, Incense, India, Mike, Patchouli, Rose, Saffron, Vetivert / Khus)

I hadn’t put it together right away in my head, but Good Incense is something of a sister imprint to Bhagwan Incense. It seems from looking at the site that Good Incenses are more affordably priced by comparison to Bhagwan, they don’t come in the fancy boxes and are just simply presented in wrappers. But there are honestly a lot of nice incenses in this line as well, including a trend of similarly constructed incenses that present a different tradition to what I have experienced in other Indian exports. It’s a line that intrigues me quite a bit, definitely quality but not having the hallmarks of incenses more commonly seen in the west; it’s the kind of trend you hope for.

The first of these we’ll discuss is the Gold. The only clues we have are halmaddi and sweet floral notes but this is an incense that has an intriguing almost root-like nip at the top of the bouquet. It’s similar to ways I have seen patchouli or vetivert used in some incenses and it’s a note I’ve always liked a lot personally, it’s kind of green-banana in a way. There is also some level of an herb like tobacco in the mix. This is of course all grounded in a very friendly charcoal-masala mix with a lot of breadth in the middle. You can smell the halmaddi for sure, but the stated florals are too much of a mix to really identify anything specific from, but they certainly play an important component in that breadth. So overall this is a very unique incense, it’s the kind of thing you want to share with friends just to get their take on it as it’s sort of like a friendly incense modified in a slightly unique direction. I continue to remain really fascinated with it, it really keeps you on your toes.

The Good Incense Patchouli looks to be fairly close to a dusted charcoal as a style. It would not surprise me at all if this was Madhavadas sourced as there’s a lot of vanilla and sandalwood coming off the burn. Vanilla often seems fairly comfortable next to patchouli for some reason, it’s not a match I’d make on my own, but it often works as it does here. In my recent Asayu review I talked about patchouli variations to hopefully give some idea where I sit with the scent as a whole. The more premium, essential oil heavy sticks with it tend to fatigue me (probably because living in California I used to come across people wearing the oil as an aromatic), so this match-up of a more leaf-oriented scent and the vanilla/sandalwood base fronting an oil that’s a bit greener than your average essential oil is probably a bit closer to my personal preferences. That is, the greener a patchouli is the better. So not only does this hit that spot but it’s also variant from other Indian sticks that are roughly in the same region. The herb will always fall somewhere in the middle for me, I like a good one but I’ll likely come more across it in reviews than looking for it myself if that makes sense.

I’ve probably walked out my story about walking through Sacramento’s Capitol Rose Garden a dozen times by now, and I do because it sets a sort of basis for how I perceive rose. And I don’t mean something like a deep Bulgarian rose absolute or something more expensive and premium, I just mean that it’s a measure for getting what a bunch of roses smell like walking between them. I bring this up because the Good Incense Rose is shockingly good at getting this smell dead on. You’re not even just getting a general rose-direction floral scent here, it actually does smell a lot like actual roses, which is no mean feat given the costs it would take to make this actually happen. Sure it’s a little sweet and there does indeed seem to be some halmaddi here, but all this does is just give a bit of comfort and backing to the floral scent. Compared to all of the pink stick mixes across various companies, this actually comes across as being slightly more authentic and true to the actual scent. 15g at 3 euros for this is a deep bargain, I can’t even think of a deal anywhere close to this for this particular scent. I might add that this strikes me as being the same lineage as the Balsamic Amber and Gold so it’s equally as intriguing in that sense.

And to add to that lineage is a very nice Saffron Masala. This has what I might call the most on point saffron scent in an incense that one can imagine, bereft of the kind of additions you usually find with it. The caveat as always is an ingredient as rare as this doesn’t really have essential oils you can fuel an incense with but creators of it usually have something that smells like the herb that still works really nicely. In many ways it’s just the clarity of this that’s so attractive, while there’s a charcoal-halmaddi-masala base that helps to broaden the incense’s aroma (this base works really well in all of this lineage’s sticks), it doesn’t detract from this nice spicy top mix. I often find myself searching for the saffron note in an incense, it’s nice to find a masala that makes it really obvious, not to mention quite simple on top. If you like saffron this is a no-brainer. It actually gives me a little nostalgia of how saffron smelled in the incenses of the 90s.

Vetiver (vetivert) feels like a different lineage altogether and is a very interesting dry masala with a few different notes. I wouldn’t even think of vetivert being a holiday sort of scent but the way this brings out mint and foresty notes constantly reminds me of that sort of thing, neither are notes I tend to associate with most vetivert incenses but they sometimes even pop from the fresh stick. And so even though this stick has more familiar sorts of vetivert notes, it has a much broader palette which tends to send the nose out searching along the burn. Vetivert usually seems to have deeper rooty or earthy sort notes which I mentally file closer to patchouli and for sure this sort of dry masala has some similarities to patchouli dry masalas as well. But vetivert can also tend to grassy and more citrus like notes and so the more earthy part of the scent seems more like its bunched up in the middle, while these other notes play off the base in strange and unique ways. The description includes halmaddi, but in this case its presence is probably pretty minor. Overall I do think this is a cool experience for sure. I wouldn’t have considered a more earthy, rooty scent to base something almost brighter and more high altitude but it’s part of what makes this an interesting incense. It’s likely to stretch one’s own interpretation of what vetivert can do.

Some of the other Good Incenses I tried didn’t fare as well. In all of my incense exploring life I’ve never understood why Red Sandalwood is prized as an aromatic; however, putting it in a stick on its own isn’t likely to move all but the most eccentric of us. This one just smells like dull campfire wood to me, but to be fair I’ve never tried a Red Sandalwood that made me feel otherwise. The Golden Sandal is simply neither, it doesn’t even do wood and furniture polish particularly well. Mystifyingly the sandalwood in the Sandalwood Saffron can be smelled just a smidge on the fresh stick too, but overall feels a bit of a chemical mess in the burn and ultimately neither. Both of these I’d take to task with original exporter, unfortunately in the West this is the kind of thing the importer has to either absorb as costs or hope to thin stock in the catalog, maybe something a lot of readers are not particularly aware of. One feels that Benzoin Supreme may be of similar provenance to these in that it has a similar chemical or perfume finish, but at least the scent lands somewhere in the ballpark as if the resin end was refined to some end – it’s not even that bad once it gets a cloud about it, although you never do lose the chemical note in the background behind it.

I had better hopes for Sambrani. It is described as “[a] delightful herbal, menthol, mineral, floral, and vanilla scent.” I don’t have any problem with that other than the first adjective, as the extreme bitterness of the burn pretty much overwhelms everything about this mix to an eye-watering distraction. Menthol’s a tough call in incense and here a lot of its better attributes are left to an edge around the shocking remains of the rest of it. You almost have to recover after burning even a little of it. As a contrast, Summer Bouquet is just a sort of fruity floral mix and definitely not a bad incense at all, in fact I started liking it a bit more on later burns. Its supposedly made from Mt Arunachala flowers and seems to have that more natural yet maybe slightly-not-perfect burn of actual floral material rather than a lot of perfumes. It kind of hovers a bit around a harvest-like plum or grapes sort of scent. Like a lot of florals that verge fruity it’s probably not terribly memorable, but I would imagine some liking this for sure.

Both Bhagwan Incense and Good Incense have a lot I haven’t covered so do look around the catalogs a bit, the incenses come from a number of different Indian companies, and so many of these can be surprises. I understand from Eugene that this stock is just the beginning!

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Pushkar Temple Incense / 100g / Ellora, Keshar Dhoop, Mysore Chandan, Maya, Rudraksh

December 3, 2023 at 11:10 am (Incense, India, Mike, Pushkar Temple Incense)

Pushkar Temple / 100g 1 of 3

This is the second installment of ORS’ review of the Pushkar Temple Incense line and covers the second third of the available incenses packaged as 100g bundles. Where when I started with the first group I wanted to get the outliers out of the way, this middle group is really all of the remaining incenses that aren’t classified as floras explicitly – those will be in the next installment (and the first of the 50gs). This group also contains my favorite incense in the 100g range, the one that really made me realize Pushkar Temple has some really good incenses in their line.

The Ellora is a light green dusted masala, pretty solid and close to charcoal but with just a bit of give. It is one of a large number of incenses in the catalog with a name that really doesn’t give much of a clue to its ingredients. It’s not just the color, but the aroma reminds me of something analagous to the old Shroff Parrot Green Durbar, but still very different. It has a great deal of vanilla down the middle but the notes on top have an almost, slightly bitter green touch. There’s a subnote that actually kind of reminds me of paint or something, but there are a lot of aspects that reminds me of a menagerie of fruit, without any single one being in front. It has the same sort of interesting vegetative or organic quality as the PGD. Almost like a weird mix of banana, lime (like sherbet), apple, spearmint and lacquer. Given its green color I wonder if there’s a touch of heena in the mix as well (the minty note seems to have a bit of cross over), but this isn’t immediately obvious. It’s a very intriguing incense, one I appreciated a bit more when I noticed the similarities to Maya (below).

Keshar Dhoop slots somewhat tangentially into the floral red stick category I mentioned in my Bhagwan Spring Blossom review, with, of course the various axes changed. Where the Spring Blossom had a real rose direction it’s more the cherry that’s turned up here. This of course makes its sugary sweetness akin to candies like Sweet Tarts, Jolly Ranchers or Valentine’s Day candy (I would imagine an article or exploration on fragrances in candy would be fascinating). So many fruity dominant incenses do tend to have something like a crayon note that I would imagine is synthetic (or maybe just a byproduct of trying to create something aromatically fruity) in some way, simply because a lot of fruits don’t actually source essential oils that smell like the fruits. But compared to some sticks it is fortunately faint here. Like I previously mentioned I have sampled so many sticks like this at this point that my general feeling about this category is they’re usually very accessible and Western-friendly, but my preferences to what mixes I like are likely to not be the same as anyone else, so if you like this style it behooves one to sampler several until you experience enough variations to be able to determine what you like. I think my favorite is still the Vedic Vaani Bappa Morya that Absolute Bliss carried for a little while as it pops with a bubble gum note that’s quite nostalgic for me. I tend to really like the cherry forward ones as well, but the Keshar isn’t my favorite of those, and by comparison feels like it’s missing something. But I doubt most will have the same experience.

Mysore Chandan was the first incense I tried from my initial Pushkar Temple order that really got my attention. First of all, this isn’t a company that really does sandalwood all that well, and they wouldn’t be the first that didn’t. None of the Pushkar Temple sandalwoods have the oil strength or resolution of something like Temple of Incense Extreme Sandalwood, nor do any of them have the resolution of many more standard Absolute Bliss or TOI variations. But a Chandan Sandalwood is often a bit different, it’s usually something of a creamier mix, a tangential step from a pure sandalwood oil stick. What Pushkar Temple seems to do is create masalas with some sandalwood similarities but tends to also sweeten them up a bit until they’re more lateral to the category. And of the few that do that, none I think are better than this one. I wouldn’t call it legitimately Mysore but the combination of elements is still beautifully done. I wouldn’t call it a champa per se (in the sense that champas have become synonyms for halmaddi rich masalas), but it’s a little bit in that direction. But as I’ve said, that sort of creamy sandalwood mix is definitely what this incense is going for. Once I was reminded of oatmeal with cream and brown sugar as I had this lit. It’s both confectionary and woody, but it’s with the thought of confectionary that the sandalwood note really shines through. So it may not be legit sandalwood, may be too sweet to be a Chandan and yet it ends up being something really beautiful by touching lightly on all those elements and tying them all together.

The order in which I rotated incenses after I purchased my first batch of Pushkar Temple incenses was quite a bit different than the order I reviewed them and so I had almost forgotten that Maya is in essence quite close to Ellora. My initial notes said “[T]his isn’t quite as full bodied or floral as the Ellora is, I sort of want to say that it has patchouli or vetivert hints in it, but it’s also not exactly that kind of incense either.” The similarity to the old Shroff Parrot Green Durbar is even stronger with the Maya, the strange sort of paint-like scent (much louder here), the weird mix like lime, banana, spilled tequila and lacquer, and of course the green color. However the green here is a bit more faded and feels a bit more part of the masala than dusting on a charcoal. And not only that but this feels a lot less friendly, there’s no mint (or heena) note and it’s not quite as cooling. I sort of wondered if this is trying to take on some sort of dry, grassy, herbal mixture, but with the Ellora it felt like there was a lot more to hold onto. I would definitely start there if you were to pick one or the other. Ellora I actually find intriguing, while I realized that I generally wanted to put Maya out.

Rudraksha is something of a gentler fruity floral, with a mix that reminds me a little of a carnation or other pink or white flowers. The base and other ingredients also move this over to a slightly confectionary like scent (a touch powdery, a little sugar and sour if that makes sense) which reminds me a little of the tart candies that are strung together like a necklace. However, there is also either an herbal component or perhaps some actual organic floral content that sits lightly in the background that prevents this from getting too sweet. The pink dipped bamboo stick and overall look is also fairly reminiscent of a traditional stick I can’t place, so it may well be familiar to you as well, but even so it’s a new take. It’s not too deep on the oil content, the burn is more mellow and somewhat light as befits the floral mix. It’s certainly a decent blend for the money.

The third installment will cover all of the 100g packaged floras. Pushkar Temple have a surprisingly high number of floras including their own Sai Flora (and their version is really good) and this classification is one of their strengths. Lots of goodies coming up….

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Temple of Incense / Bulgarian Rose & Oudh, Festive Kiss, Portobello, Tulsi

November 28, 2023 at 11:42 am (Amber, Bayberry, Benzoin (Loban), Bergamot, Geranium, Halmaddi / Mattipal, Incense, India, Mike, Musk, Oakmoss (Lichen), Orange, Oud, Pine / Pinon, Rose, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Temple of Incense, Vanilla)

Please note that if you are new to ORS, we have done a wide-ranging number of reviews on the absolutely fabulous Temple of Incense line, all of which can be found by either clicking on the Temple of Incense link under Incense>India or checking out Incense Reviews Index. Please note that Temple of Incense has provided ORS readers with a 10% off coupon since February 2022 by using the code OLFACTORY. The current review is a bit of a catch up as for the most part the Temple of Incense line has remained largely stable. These four are among the newest of their line.

The Aydees announced their new Bulgarian Rose & Oudh incense recently, and if we can encourage the well from which great ideas come from, then we’d have to encourage them for more pairings like this one, it’s quite frankly one of the most stunning incenses I’ve encountered not only in their catalog but outside of it. And like a lot of good things it comes from a simple pairing of two notes both well-famed in the incense community, Bulgarian rose absolute and oudh (they also mark notes of oakmoss, sandawood, amber and geranium, all of which I imagine would make two good things go a long way). It is a HUGELY brash and powerful incense and their suggestion to burn half a stick at a time is a good one. To explain this better, I could burn a stick of this in the evening, wake up, go downstairs, do a bunch of things and go back up in the early morning to still smell the main note as it hovers in the room many hours later. This would be a bad thing if it wasn’t such a good incense, but it is a tremendous thing for an incense as well-crafted as this one. It’s difficult to go much farther than to say it really is an equal combination of these notes, but in an era where both of these ingredients are expensive, and often too expensive for incense, the way the creators managed to still get some great and real smelling rose top notes out of the mix, not to mention a deep oudh base, should be congratulated. It will be sticks and sticks before I can really suss out the complexities here, but the main combination is absolutely top notch. An absolute classic, this one!

Festive Kiss is an essential oil blend on charcoal (I’d imagine the incense in the photos at the TOI link must have been the first vintage, what I have here does not look dusted) that Temple of Incense provides for the holidays and it’s a wonderful, cheery and perhaps surprisingly British-themed incense that certainly brings some nostalgia back for me from living there in the 70s. The list of ingredients is pine, cinnamon, orange, bergamot, and bayberry. The cinnamon and orange in the middle are a combination I have loved since a child in spiced tea, the pine gives everything a yuletide grounding, but I think it’s the bayberry here that gives this a nicely original twist on this sort of holiday scent. I asked the rhetorical question in one of the articles I wrote recently about which ingredients tend to do well in a charcoal base, and well here’s one of the answers right here. This is a lovely treat for the holidays and just from an incense perspective it’s completely unlike almost anything you have tried before.

Portobello is the Temple of Incense import of the great Meena Supreme. I have probably sampled a half dozen of these incenses and they all vary just a little bit (and some more than a little bit) but I am always particularly happy when you can get Meena Supreme out of those old carboard boxes and weak inner wrappers and into something a bit more protective that will hold the aroma longer. So of all the variants I’ve tried this is probably the best by probably the slightest of hairs, there is a bit of a thickness in the middle of the aroma that makes it a bit richer than I usually experience (as always the question here is just how fresh it is and based on this batch everything feels at a peak). Oh and hey we get a nice list of ingredients here, halmaddi, a vanillin base, gum benzoin and a touch of musk. It’s something of a simple list of things that come together to create a classic incense for sure, certainly the base itself is something that grounds several of the Meena line. If you haven’t tried the Meena Supreme, I highly recommend it, it has an aroma that you won’t find outside the company (well at least done properly), it has something of an almost creamy sort of base, with something of a light feel contrasted by a lot of complex notes in the middle. It’s absolutely one of a kind, and there’s no better place to start than with the Portobello.

I nearly went to publication with the above three, but the arrival of a couple sticks of Tulsi in my last package from TOI was a nice (eventual) reminder that this one was released a year or so ago right after Stephen was wrapping up the catalog. But it is absolutely one I wanted to add to our reviews as it’s a brilliant incense, easily in the line’s top 10 or 20. Tulsi is basically “Holy Basil,” and in a lot of incenses I’ve tried that claim to use it, it’s the herbal side of the basil that is usually accentuated. However, this incense sweetens it up in an absolutely beautiful and extremely arresting and user-friendly way that I’d imagine you’d never expect. I loved it the first time I tried it and have ever since (I’ve tried several variations of it and the more halmaddi the better). It has this sort of fruity-green middle (part of this is sort of like fresh kiwi fruit), quite attractive and friendly with the herbiness just being a slight component of this. It is in no way a pesto sort of basil scent and it made me wonder if the holy basil essential oil went in the direction of the major notes or if the creators moved it in this direction with other ingredients. Needless to say this one is brilliant, and well worth picking up, it’s certainly an incense that will go on my list to reorder when I’m close to running out.

So, overall I can enthusiastically recommend all four of these scents the next time you visit Temple of Incense. To wrap up here I also want to bring attention to the Temple of Incense Three Kings sampler, this is a nice way to sample the line’s Nag Champa Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, all of which have been previously reviewed here, it’s nicely holiday themed. I see that it’s not the only sampler that TOI have added since I last visited, and they have also added quite a few incense and holder combos that should be of interest as well. You can scan their list of goodies here and elsewhere on the site for more information.

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Bhagwan Incense / Balsamic Amber, Frank & Rose, Garden of Eden, Oudh Majestic, Woody Champa + notes on other fragrances

November 10, 2023 at 11:28 am (Amber, Balsam, Beeswax, Bhagwan Incense, Champa / Durbar, Champa Flower, Floral, Frankincense, Halmaddi / Mattipal, Honey, Incense, India, Meena Perfumery Industries, Oud, Propolis, Resins, Rose, Uncategorized, Vanilla)

Bhagwan Incense is a relatively new incense company operating out of the EEU by Ukranian Eugene Andruschenko out of Paris, France and Bucharest, Romania. Bhagwan Incense is a label that fronts several Indian exports including both the familiar and the unfamiliar, in extremely beautiful packaging with mandala, paisley and other patterning that should be smart and attractive at the get-go. Also, Bhagwan “…do not sell coal-based, synthetic or perfume-dipped incense, only premium masala incense made using pure halmaddi, sandalwood powder, natural oils and attars (oils) produced with age-old methods for perfume distillation.” So in this sense they sell the sorts of incenses that will be of interest to ORS readers.

However, I am going to mention that this review is basically provisional in the sense that there has been an agreement to drop some of the Bhagwan line that overlapped another seller. While I really do feel like, to the best of my knowledge, that Bhagwan has managed to find some really good incenses that I have not seen sourced anywhere before (which I will share in these and upcoming reviews), I think some lines were crossed with some items in the catalog and nor do I think this is entirely the fault of Bhagwan. I’m not trying to stir up controversy and definitely not discussion, I’m just noting this here because I really hope I’ll be able to share more good news in the future that came out of the resolution of this. If this seems a little vague, it’s just that some of it is not my news to share and it will need some time to settle out.

The following will be reviews of some of the newly imported incenses Eugene sent for review as well as some quick stops in familiar territory (Madhavadas and Meena to name two) that I’ll include with the other reviews. Generally speaking, well-versed incense enthusiasts are likely going to find some things they know in this catalog, but I will be concentrating the most on the things I don’t recognize. There are probably roughly 15 scents in the catalog I want to get to (with some notes on others), and I’m going to start with a few real highlights.

Balsamic Amber just absolutely impressed immediately, it’s an instant hall of famer. It’s interesting but when we talk about good incenses we can spend so much time in areas (usually the woods) where resources are precious and rewards only given to the expensive, so Balsamic Amber reminds me that you can still create something excellent without having to go there. First of all it’s super rich with a lot of breadth, second it’s not hard at all to get the really wonderful balsamic quality and how it helps get an almost honeycomb-like amber in the center. Honey-like undoubtedly due to the inclusion of propolis and beeswax in the aroma. It’s wonderfully topped off with this expansive foresty vibe and a lot of cinnamon spiciness. I will admit that something like this is naturally in my wheelhouse but I am not sure I’ve ever smelled an Indian incense that does this so well. It’s one of those invigorating incenses that is perfect for a colder morning. I hope Bhagwan are able to keep this stocked a long as possible, it’s an absolute must.

I was expecting Frank & Rose to probably be Madhavadas but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that family do a purple color masala like this one and it definitely has a scent range I haven’t experienced before. And not only that, the squishiness of the stick shows it’s halmaddi based, although I would say it’s not champa-like in any way. I’m on record in several places on ORS about being usually nonplussed by Indian frankincense sticks and in probably even more places about my feelings on a wide variety of rose incenses, but this marriage feels fairly unique to me. While I have not tried a pure Bhagwan frankincense, the Rose I was sent (and will review in a later installment) was incredibly well done and it’s hard to tell if that’s what is in this. The incense is really about the collision between the two, and it is an interesting one because it seems fairly dynamic where you can get the individualities of both while mostly experiencing them interact together. I think that’s a really fine trick in a “two ingredient” incense, where it seems like the relative strengths of both vary during the burn. In fact because I wasn’t sure how this would work, I spent a bit of time with this one. The honey in the mix actually reminds me of what might happen if the Holy Smoke line went for more premium perfume oils. Strangely the way the middle meets is something almost like a confection, with some caramel or even fruit in the mix which shows that the base is as much of a player as the two ingredients listed. Its a long burner as well, and my experience was I liked this more and more with every stick.

Of the five incenses here, I’m not completely sure of the provenance of each, but Garden of Eden strikes me as at least similar to some of the Meena line. Bhagwan repackages Meena Supreme as well and while I’ve come across bootlegs before that don’t quite smell right, not only is their Supreme authentic, it seems to stay fresher in this packaging than it does in the original cardboard box which is a really nice touch. I recently reviewed a few different Meena incenses but don’t immediately notice a match up with Garden of Eden, except to say that it still feels like it has that similar note that ties many of their incenses together while perhaps being even more friendly. Bhagwan describes this as “Young, fresh, light and ethereal summer bouquet, made with the highest quality floral oils from Kerala, honey and halmaddi resin” and it’s hard to disagree with that assessment as it really is a pleasantly light, almost mild incense that you’re not as likely to have tried before. It doesn’t feel all that oil saturated, so either it’s a gentle mix or there’s a bit of wood or something in the middle. There’s also this fleeting quality that reminds me of aromatic ice cream as well, which I’ve never smelled in anything before. Garden of Eden should scratch that something different itch, especially as no other incenses in the line other than the Supreme itself are similar to this one. A really nice find.

It’s been a long time since there was a real contender to the Oud Masala from the Happy Hari family, that nearly perfect blend of masala base and at least an approximation of a decent oud to complement it. There are also a number of charcoal based ouds out there that one might not be able to pick out a specific aroma in a line up. Pure Incense have provided a wide and almost dizzying array of oud and aloeswood incenses from Madhavadas and often the issue is less the top oils than the base. I’m not sure where Oudh Majestic came from but it’s a really good charcoal oudh and has an oil mix on top that seems constructed to display something a bit better than the usual oudh tinged colognes. Mind you we caution anyone expecting real oudh notes in an incense this inexpensive, but the glass half full side of this shows that occasionally there are some really good “will pass fors” out there. I’d guess this may have come from a tincture as it still has some hints of alcohol in it, but they do not overwhelm the excellent scent. If you’re happy with the incenses just named, for sure you want to try this gem. It particularly fared well compared to what seems to be a Madhavadas-sourced Saffron Oudh that seems to have lost its power to overwhelm its base. Perhaps I got the wrong sample here as the brown colored stick looks not a bit like the one in the store photo. But I know, as with Pure Incense, that Madhavadas have different ranks to them and this scent could just be a lower rank where the oil isn’t applied as liberally. The issue with the incenses like this is that with casual use the scent really becomes the base.

Finally, in this group, is the somewhat humble Woody Champa, an incense that actually reminds me a bit of the Blue Pearl champa range both old and new. This isn’t as halmaddi squishy as, say, the Frank & Rose is, but you can definitely smell it on the stick. It does have a bit of a foresty vibe slightly reminiscent of the Balsamic Amber, and certainly the vanilla in the description is detectable, but ultimately the central champaca floral doesn’t get lost in its mildness. As someone who finds the Gold Nag Champa and variations a little bitter in places, I welcome a champa that is missing this element. Like the Garden of Eden this is a mild but pleasant and pretty incense, and one wonders if there are other champas from this exporter.

More to come in the Bhagwan line, but I wanted to start with a few highlights. Keep in mind this is a new and growing, multi-sourced line and as I’ve mentioned, there is some overlap but for now I am hoping any controversy can be avoided in the comments section. These five are at least brand new to my nose and very good and I can wholeheartedly recommend them all.

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Gokula Incense / Rose & Saffron, Royal Vrindavan Flower, Sandalwood & Myrrh, Sandalwood & Saffron, Shiva Nag Champa, Tulsi Vrinda

January 5, 2023 at 10:02 am (Basil / Tulasi / Tulsi, Champa / Durbar, Champa Flower, Gokula Incense, Incense, India, Mike, Myrrh, Rose, Saffron, Sandalwood, Vrindavan Flower)

Agarwood & Musk, Agar Sandal, Aloeswood & Jasmine, Amber & Frankincense, Celestial Fruits, Chocolate & Vanilla
Flora Fluxo, Floral Bouquet, Gold Sandal, Jasmine & Lotus, Jasmine & Nag Champa, Lotus & Kewra
Marigold & Juhi, Musk & Amber, Musk & Champa, Musk Heena, Musk & Patchouli, Pink Rose

This is the last of four in a series of Gokula Incense reviews, please see the first installment for an introduction to the company.

Rose & Saffron is a natural pairing for incense and this one acts as a very different incense to the Pink Rose I covered last time. For one, this isn’t as sweet, but you can still feel some similarities between the two incenses around the base. Strangely enough I detect something like a chocolate note but I also felt what is stepping in for the saffron here might be more obvious on the fresh stick than on the burn. It also has some sort of camphorous-cooling elements in the mix as well. This is very different from, say, the Vedic Vaani Saffron Rose and that’s a good thing as this combination of elements doesn’t really remind you of other incenses and keeps it fresh. In the end I kind of love the minty sort of top on it. Quite a bit to explore on this one, there’s a lot going on.

Every time I see an incense with Vrindavan in it, it’s kind of like musk or lotus, they’re so different from stick to stick that you can’t always be sure what you’re getting. But Gokula’s Royal Vrindavan Flower is a really gorgeous stick and mostly presents a champa-ish incense with a really beautiful and somewhat unique floral oil that I can’t remember every placing in an incense before, at least exactly. I’m not even sure how to describe it because it strikes me as being sort of pink, sort of lotus like, but ultimately really balanced. It’s a touch soft, so likely a bit of halmaddi is in the mix, but overall I love the pretty after effect of burning, it’s as if some of the perfume is separate from the smoke. Definitely one I’d put on your Gokula shopping list, this one’s quite special.

So I had almost forgot until I checked my notes but there was a slight snafu with my order (no worries the kind Gokula folks cleared it up right away) but I think there was one non-Madhavadas I did not get and then one Mahavadas I did get and that’s the Sandalwood & Myrrh. Madhavadas sourced incenses, of course, have their usual base (vanilla, sandalwood – often an equal aromatic note in any of their incenses) which, while the company tends to have a huge arsenal of top notes that are very good, can be quite fatiguing if used frequently. I’m not really quite sure if something like this would have been to my tastes whatever the source, but it does seem like a reasonable low grade sandalwood/myrrh mix, although the combination really evokes something different rather than the listed ingredients. The resin seems a bit more in front of the wood and certainly the base plays a part in it, but overall it feels a bit musky and a touch mysterious. I am pretty sure I have tried this before, may have been Pure Incense but it could have also been Primo, but ultimately it sort of gets on my nerves over the burn.

Visually, the Sandalwood & Saffron seems to look a lot like the yellow dusted thinner masalas we’ve seen so recently with the Absolute Bliss imported King of Saffron. This isn’t a really successful version of it, if it is, in fact it seems strangely a bit closer to a champa, except the combination of ingredients seems to leave the aroma sort of bitter and a bit incoherent. It’s almost like you can tell what they were going for but without distinct notes of either ingredient, it feels more like a sort of sour or bitter mix (perhaps a bit camphorous as well) with vanilla and other more sweeter accompaniment, and as a merger it doesn’t really work for me too well. I’m not sure if that’s because it doesn’t fit my expectations visually, but it just strikes me as a really odd mix. Saffron and sandalwood mixes really only work well if the resolution is higher and the qualities are kept to woody and dry.

Although Shiva Nag Champa is not a Madhavadas incense, the top perfume does remind me of some of the Pure Incenses champas I’ve tried over the years. These perfumes aren’t all that reminiscent of say the Blue Box/Satya Nag Champa perfume or even the Gold Nagchampa/Vintage Nag Champa types you get from AB or Temple of Incense (it’s sort of like Nag Champa vs champa flower maybe?). This doesn’t have the powdery qualities of that scent and is instead much sweeter and piquant. It verges ever so slightly on bitter during the burn which seems to be aspects of the citrus in the mix as well, gulp, as a touch or urine or something. It’s a strangely complex and involved top note for what may seem like a critical perspective, but it could cause a bit of flip flop in impression because it’s like a mix of pleasant and notes that most are probably not going to like too much.

Tulsi Vrinda is an herbal incense that leans a bit in a spicier direction while still having a lot of the same powdery characteristics of Gokula florals. It’s cousin to something like the Kerala Flower in the Temple of Incense line or Happy Hari Samadhi Sutra. This isn’t Tulsi (basil) in the same way the Temple of Incense stick is, but it has some hints of that scent buried in an overall base. It’s enough to perhaps give this incense a bit of personality that some of the others don’t have. There’s also a bit of woodiness in the mix that prevents it from getting too pink or sweet.

So this installment wraps up the Gokula reviews! As you can see there are some definite highlights in the last four reviews, for sure the Musk & Amber and Royal Vrindavan Flower are really strong, and just coming behind those I’d recommend the Jasmine & Nag Champa, Lotus & Kewra, Musk Heena and Rose & Saffron (so all six would make a good starter order). A lot of other scents could be growers in hindsight as well, with a number of solid scents in the middle, but for the most part this is a decent quality line overall and at least this “half” of the line has a profile that might be different than what you’d tried before.

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Gokula Incense / Marigold & Juhi, Musk & Amber, Musk & Champa, Musk Heena, Musk & Patchouli, Pink Rose

January 5, 2023 at 9:56 am (Amber, Champa Flower, Frankincense, Gokula Incense, Hina (Heena), Incense, India, Juhi, Marigold, Mike, Musk, Patchouli, Rose, Sandalwood)

Agarwood & Musk, Agar Sandal, Aloeswood & Jasmine, Amber & Frankincense, Celestial Fruits, Chocolate & Vanilla
Flora Fluxo, Floral Bouquet, Gold Sandal, Jasmine & Lotus, Jasmine & Nag Champa, Lotus & Kewra

This is the third of four in a series of Gokula Incense reviews, please see the first installment for an introduction to the company.

In the latest installment I wrote about three very good floral incenses, some of which used marigold and/or juhi in the aromas. However the Marigold & Juhi as an incense on its own is probably the first Gokula incense I’ve come across I found actively unpleasant. Floral charcoals often have pitfalls of having bitter, sour or other off notes and this one seems to have the middle quality. The lemon or citrus qualities (described on the site as citric floral) are a too loud and while the charcoal often isn’t too bad in Gokula incenses, it’s unwelcome in this sort of combination. Perhaps this is just my own feelings about citrus floral mixes and I admit I don’t usually like them so if you do you might like this one better.

Then we go from maybe the worst to probably the best incense in the catalog that I’ve tried, Musk & Amber. In the last year I’ve sampled a number of great Vedic Vaani musks and this one is akin to those that lean more in the animalic direction rather than the sweet. Amber always seems to pair really well with musk and there is a thickness to this scent that a lot of the catalog doesn’t have as much. There’s something about amber that brings out some balsamic qualities in the middle that really compliment the musk so it’s almost a perfect merger. The site also describes this as having frankincense, hina and sandalwood in the mix and while I wouldn’t expect any of these notes to be loud they certainly help with the complexity. I know this is one I would bulk up on with a repeat visit, it’s just extraordinary so I’d certainly recommend adding this to an order.

The Musk & Champa incense is a scent that I’ve gotten really familiar with through the Vedic Vaani catalog. VV have a gigantic host of sticks that are dark brown colored and usually have some level of halmaddi in the mix. They’re a faint cousin to some of the darker flora/fluxos but in something like 8 out of 10 cases the top note is something that doesn’t quite come together with the rest of the stick. This note often kind of reminds me of crayon or an oil used in a candle. For sure whatever the musk here is very different to that used in Musk & Amber and is much moved over to the sweet side but I’d guess that element is either synthetic or created from a combination of elements. This probably includes the agarwood and saffron given as side notes. Where the champa is soft and powdery in the florals I described last review, everything in this incense blots out those gentle elements. Don’t get me wrong, this is likely to be something ORS readers will like, but I will admit these sort of incenses are heavily fatiguing me. But I have tried a couple that got the balance right outside of Gokula, although I will have to discuss those another day.

One of my new favorite aromas of late is heena (also hina), the leaves from the tree that impart a lovely green note very different from western trees. Like amber, and sometimes included with amber, heena imparts a really different characteristic to incenses that tends to make the aroma a bit more complex, because being fairly unique it tends to broaden any profile its put in. While I’d love to see what Gokula imports could do for a Musk, Amber and Heena incense, the Musk Heena here is still a really lovely scent with the heena sorta of tempering the animalic qualities of the musk. It keeps a sort of bitter but somewhat evergreen meets herbal freshness to the scene that a lot of these other musk incenses don’t quite have as much. So this is a yummy goody as well, well worth checking out.

It’s strange that with some of the Gokula musk incenses being so powerful that the Musk & Patchouli would be such a mild incense and not really be strong in either ingredient. Perhaps some of this profile is because of the additionally listed ingredients of sandalwood, frankincense and neroli. It seems more like this was going for a champa-ish incense without really evoking musk or patchouli all that much. The incense is instead cooling, camphorous, powdery and has quite a bit of vanilla. So it’s a relatively mellow scent but seems to have a bit of resolution nonetheless. The incenses tilts largely over to a dusted charcoal but even some of these that are quite firm seem to have a bit of halmaddi in them. I wouldn’t really get this for the musk or patchouli, and nor would I recommend this as a starter incenses but there’s little wrong with it. It just doesn’t leap out and grab you and I would guess it doesn’t end up being particularly memorable.

Finally, we have the Pink Rose with a similarly colored masala. All roses these days are usually created from something else as it’s rarely been an affordable oil. This often results in incenses well off the aroma and some can be painful. Gokula have the right compromise which is basically something of a sweet floral hybrid, a very common take on a recipe (think Krishna Rose at Absolute Bliss for example). This is certainly a pleasant version of it and while it’s not really all that near rose, it’s likely to be well appreciated as long as you’re not overstocked in this area.

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