Shroff Channabasappa / Natural (Masalas) / Masala Natural, Rose Natural, Patcholie, Vetivert (Lavancha)

January 5, 2010 at 12:53 pm (Incense, India, Shroff Channabasappa)

Shroff Channabasappa Part 1
Shroff Channabasappa Part 2
Shroff Channabasappa Part 3
Shroff Channabasappa Part 4
Shroff Channabasappa Part 5
Shroff Channabasappa Part 6
Shroff Channabasappa Part 7

Yesterday, I went over the latest group of Shroff Channabasappa incenses and their classifications, all of which you can catch up with by reading the link at Part 7 above. In it I discussed the new grouping called Natural Incenses, in which a group of nine incenses are split between five charcoals (also reviewed) and four masalas, and in this article I’ll be discussing these other four.

What we have here is a slightly unusual incense style that seems to be even more wood-based than your average masala. All four of these incenses, despite any individual ingredients are based on a warm, sawdust-like wood center, which manages not only to capture the particular herb added but to combine with them in quite consonant ways. It’s difficult to tell what woods are being used, I’d guess some sandalwood, but the wood blends don’t just smell like sandalwood based incenses. I’d guess that these wood blends are actually used in a similar method to the charcoals in that they act as an absorbent to capture essential oils. Perhaps in the case of charcoals such woodiness would overwhelm the particular scents, but here it seems to be assumed that the added oils are powerful enough to come out in their own right.

The first of these incenses, Masala Natural, might act as a sort of base stick and is unfortunately one of the few Shroff failures, an incense that seems to only smell like a base wood punk. While I’m not sure if this contains benzoin or not, the stick reminded me of the rough and ready nature of the more basic lobans, and even more so it’s an Indian that is reminiscent of the more campfire-like Tibetan sticks. As such, it’s not impressive in any way and is one of the least Shroff-like scents in the catalog in that it doesn’t seem to have much in the way of perfume or oils. It’s almost like the scent of mesquite charcoal heating in a bit or even burning paper. I’d hold out hope it might get better but I would not expect it to given it has so little breadth.

Fortunately the other three wood masalas here are more up to the usual Shroff standards. In fact the Rose Natural is quite lovely, as with the wood taking up so much of the aromatic panorama, the rose scent tends to be milder and more gentle than it tends to be as a perfume. It’s almost what it would be like if you took away the amber aspects of the Amber Rose and added a woodier base, dissipating some of the strength of the perfume. Like the rest of the masalas in this group, the base is a very clean, almost fresh-cut wood scent and it gives the atmosphere of the incense both a down to earth simplicity and a subtle beauty. One of the best in the new batch and another where Shroff shows how they excel in rose incenses.

The other two incenses feature two well-known, deep, green herbal scents. The unusually spelt Patcholie continues the trend of embedding a fine essential oil in a wood base and the results are both similar and quite different to the wide variety of patchouli incenses in other companies. For one thing this is not a sweet patchouli, featuring the more dry, herbal, green and claylike scents found in some green masalas as well as the black, oily notes you tend to find in the oils. As with all the oils used in this subline, there’s a clarity and intensity that’s quite impressive and overall I came out of this thinking that it was just different enough to sit alongside the varying patchouli styles so common in the incense world.

Vetivert/Lavancha costs approximately twice as much as the preceding three incenses, and we’ll assume that the cost increase is due to the expense of vetivert oil. After all, this is a fabulously earthy, green and pungent vetivert scent, mixed in with a fresh-cut sawdust base wood, a combination that seems to combine for a very fresh and invigorating scent. Like with the patchouli the oil seems natural and true to form rather than a stylized perfume so the more intense and pleasing elements of the herb come to the fore. In fact I’ve always felt both vetivert and patchouli have some crossover similarities with the patchouli being a bit darker and more overtly oily and the vetivert more grassy and herbal, so certainly one should be confident in buying both if you’re only familiar with one. Only in resin and herbal blends have I experienced a vetivert scent with this sort of definition and I love the balance of it being seated in a woodbase, especially as I would have never expected it.

So overall 3 for 4 in this group, with a style that seems to be somewhat different than I’ve seen in Indian incense, wood-based in a closer sense to charcoal-based than the mix usually found as a base in Indian masalas. Up tomorrow (most likely) will be the two new wet masalas in the Shroff line up.