Olfactory Rescue Service

The first note of interest is my recent restocking of Satya’s Ajaro blend. It’s moments like this that I wish I had a digital camera (well other than on the cell phone) to take a picture of the Ajaro stick in my current box compared to the ones in the new batches I received. The former is dark without any powder and a white stick, the latter very powdery with an orange stick. Even the scent is slightly different. The former came from the 10g package, the latter from a 15g package that looks a bit older. Right now I feel a tad disappointed as it seems the new one doesn’t have the deep resinous tone that made me restock it in the first place, but I need to burn more to be sure. But it goes to show you that Satya can be very inconsistent even under one brand. I’ve seen an even more egregious example of this with their Beauty line, where I’ve encountered two totally different incenses. Fortunately experience shows, something you loved and lost usually shows up again under a different name.

Got in a few aloeswood blends. The first and the best of these is my first Kyukyodo incense, a 50 stick sample of their Shuin (5th item down the page) stick. A very aromatic stick even without burning it, this aloeswood blend has hints of cherry and rhubarb in it and is quite delightful even if it doesn’t have the depth of some of the more high enders.

Two lower grade aloeswood incenses from Nippon Kodo also came. The cheaper of the two, Kangetsu (second item), seems like it’s a slightly more deluxe version of their Mainichi-Koh Kyara Deluxe stick, which is about as bottom line an aloeswood incense as you’d imagine, if kyara is in it, it’s probably a microscopic amount. These two sticks are kind of interesting in that on one hand they’re not bad at all, but on the other they strike me as being a bit cheap. The grade up, Zuiun (fourth item), is a bit better, drier and without a heck of a lot of presence. Both are very affordable, with full bundles around $5-6. Neither are very exciting, although the Zuiun strikes me that it might be a part-time standard if I end up liking it more.

The other aloeswood blend was Baieido’s Tokusen Kobunboku (second item) and to be honest it’s more a sandalwood stick with a little aloeswood. But it has a rather lovely depth and complexity to it with all sorts of subscents wafting off the smoke. A very nice and also rather affordable incense.

I’m finding Nippon Kodo’s Kayuragi line to be rather good overall, and just received a box in of their Osmanthus line (towards bottom of page), one recommended to me via a local store. This is a very nice and friendly floral/fruity incense, honeysuckle-like in ways and perfect for contrasting with denser sticks. It definitely seems to be one of the best in the line so far and I can’t think of too many other sticks with the same qualities.

And onto the Cafe Time cones (all at top of page). I was pretty impressed with the Cassia and Mocha cones, so some of these others were a bit disappointing. Cafe Time cones are rather expensive in the first place at $5-7 for 10 cones (2 different kinds, 5 each) and only a few are up to that price. The first I ordered as Cherry and Green Tea, although it came as Sakura and Green Tea. I’d have thought it was the translation, but the cone struck me as being too floral and a bit on the synthetic-seeming side, like running across some standard cone kit in an incense store. The Green Tea on the other hand, was very powerful with extremely intense and strong tea oil, in fact it reminded me so much of Salvia Divinorum it started tripping me out a bit. In fact I used the same burner for later cones and most of them ended still dissipating the green tea oil that had leaked onto the burner. It has some similarities with the Yume no Yume Bamboo Leaf, but with a much more authentically green tea aroma.

I was pretty intrigued by the Lotus and Wine cones and I was about to start griping about the Lotus when the cone started releasing some of its complexity. IIRC you can’t really extract Lotus essential oil (or it’s too expensive, I forget) so Lotus bouquet’s tend to vary from incense to incense. This one was quite nice, with that bit of sweltering floral hint the best ones have. The Wine cone on the other hand, well I don’t want to give anyone the wrong idea, but at least one whiff made me think of long night drinking sessions and that’s not particularly good. It’s another one made from a bouquet of various incense-friendly scents, I thought I detected berry and cinnamon among others. Overall, I didn’t find it particularly interesting or pleasant.

Both the Lime and Mint Tea cones didn’t do much for me. Lime is actually quite similar to the Fragrance Memories blend Tequila Sunrise and I wouldn’t be surpised at all if there’s a little aloe and bergamot in this one too. The Mint Tea, well I may have kind of spaced my concentration on this one doing something else, but it barely struck me as minty and didn’t have the powerful tea oil of the Green Tea.

Now onto the worst incense in recent memory. As I’ve been lauding, Ramakrishnanda make fine durbar blends, some of the best, but the two charcoal based lines aren’t anywhere close. Matsya stinks like hell, in fact just to burn off one stick in full (yeah I should probably have tossed it and its partner, but I’d rather pass them on than do that) took me three to four tries. Incredibly smoky, it just goes to show that charcoal based florals tend to be very overwhelmed by their base and this was basically air pollution. Quite a shame as the rest of the Varaha sampler is brilliant.

Jaganatha struck me as a very nice floral champa style, reminiscent of something I can’t quite place now, a little on the fruity side.

Govinda, a blend of Sandalwood, Sage and Lavender, struck me as being not too far off from the Mayapur Nag Champa I mentioned earlier.

Wow, this is one mighty fine line. I may have mentioned before but there are definitely similarities between incenses in various companies and lines and so there have been times where I’ve completely lost track of an old favorite only for it to show up again in a new stick and package. And fortunately that just happened again.

And that would be the Gopala, a special floral blend. To back up a bit, one of the more well known Indian imports is a gold on red packaged incense called Sai Flora, which is probably about the thickest durbar out there. I mentioned it earlier, I think, Mystic Temple call their similar blend Golden Champa and it’s a very heady, earthy stick. Anyway there’s a smaller company called Shantimalai that, at least used to do their own Sai Flora and it was this incense I used to adore. Like Sai Flora but not as earthy and more fruity and sweet, just a flat out classic that would be on my top 10 had I had a stick in years. But in a way, now I do. The Gopala isn’t as big or thick as a stick as any of the previously mentioned but as a bouquet it is very close to what I remember as the Shanthi Sai Flora, and the fact that it’s a regular stick is probably not a bad thing. It may be that my packages are just super fresh or maybe the whole line is this perfectly scented, but this incense is basically superb and highly recommended.

Backing up a bit, I did finish off the Yamuna stick that I spoke about yesterday. As much as I liked the idea of a vanilla, amber and copal blend, the charcoal-like stick that holds the Yamuna manage to only portray the vanilla part and given how fresh everything else is, it’s hard to imagine that the amber had already gone. Unfortunatlely it just reminds me of a Primo floral like jasmine or yellow rose. Since the samplers come with two sticks each, I’ve got one more but I doubt I’ll like it anymore than I do now.

As an amber, sandalwood and cinnamon blend, the Hari wasn’t at all what I was expecting. Extraordinarily floral for such a combination and quite a floral at that, almost heady in its scent. In fact I’d forgotten this had a cinnamon part, because I don’t remember that so much. But given the whole impression of this is quite new, I like it.

Mayapur is presented as Nag Champa, but for such an appelation it was a bit of a let down, not really anything like Nag from my perspective, close to the Narasingha Dev blend with its sweet resiny overtones, and maybe a bit too undistinguished in comparison. For some reason I thought this was the Nag Champa Supreme when I burned it so my expectations might have been a bit too high for it.

Shyam is something of a Sandalwood Champa and is similar to the Rare Essence blends Supreme Sandalwood and Precious Sandalwood, not as dry and woody as the former or as deep and oil-rich as the latter, with a hint of floral at the front. I love these blends in general so I found this to be quite good.

I also gave about a centimeter burn to the Mukunda and Gopinatha blends, both of which are fairly similar despite the former being patchouli and spice, and the latter iris flower and jasmine. Both dark sticks with very heady oil, I get the impression I’m going to like both a great deal. In fact I’d say with these two and the above-mentioned Gopala, the best of the three sampler packs may be the Dhanvantari, although the presence of the Yamuna weakens the overall a bit. But I’ll leave talk on these two after some more experience with them.

Took a quick drive past the local new age store (East-West) yesterday to be greeted by an entirely new display of incense, none of which I’d encountered before. You could tell immediately how fresh it was coming of the display, and since many of them were obviously in the durbar/masala category, I figured I’d check a few out, three samplers and three other packages I thought I’d like right off the bat.

Now the name is going to be resonant of Indian incense and stylistically it definitely is, although the lack of a “made in India” insignia made me wonder if these were handrolled in the US. Nevertheless, they’re beautifully done and fresh enough (at least this batch was) to make the eyes sting, giving me nostalgic feelings several times of old forgotten sticks. Anyway I haven’t had a chance to check out all 15 scents yet, but have checked out a few…

Balaram is maybe what you’d call a clove & lemongrass champa, a blend I’ve never experienced anything close to before and quite impressive, the clove the top note, the lemongrass the bottom. I wish I’d brought a full package home, but I couldn’t imagine how well balanced this was going to be just reading the package. But it’s got a spice feel to it I really like and it reminds me of the since deleted Blue Pearl Spice Champa to enough of an extent to be reminiscent.

Ganga is one I did pick up a package on, its deep red stick and hints of cinnamon did the trick. Balanced with lavender and jasmine, neither strong enough to overwhelm the spice, it was about as good as I hoped and expected. I find it hard to find a perfect incense with a strong cinnamon sense, so it’s kind of nice to be on my third so quickly. Gorgeous stuff for sure.

Gokula is like a deluxe Satya Natural in style and it brought out in my memory the distinct myrrh note to this fragrance, one I’d never considered before. Whatever you call it, Honey Dust, Natural, etc., this is a pretty standard blend, but the Ramak. version may be the best one, or at least it’s fresh enough to seem like it.

Narasingha Dev was subtitled Frankincense Champa which I interpret as “buy me” every time out. But like every incense with this description it differs and I’ve actually never had an incense quite like this. It doesn’t actually have the citrusy, resinous nature of frankincense so much, more like it deepens the essential base of the incense, so that it comes off more like a deluxe Nag Champa. Overall it had a depth to it that was very promising.

The rest are here, and the best part is I have eleven more to check out and I can see that at least five of them are likely to be excellent or better. The one I checked out but didn’t go into above, and which I need a little more time with, was the Yamuna, which seems to be a charcoal/dipped stick and reminds me by similarity of some Primo styles, not a recommendation in my book. But this seemed like it was a little more intricate, even if I’m still not likely to rate it highly.

I also picked up some tibetan incense on a lark, including the alluringly named Red Crystal, which turned out to be very thick sticks created from 23 different ingredients that only ended up smelling like really good white sandalwood. Not bad at all, but not what I need at the moment. Also checked out a gift pack by Green Tara, which includes that incense and several others. The two I checked out, the Green Tara and the Kalachakra (I probably have this spelled wrong), both seemed to have that kind of sour agar-ish quality I tend to like, so they seemed promising if not particularly exciting.