Gokula Incense / Flora Fluxo, Floral Bouquet, Gold Sandal, Jasmine & Lotus, Jasmine & Nag Champa, Lotus & Kewra

December 28, 2022 at 2:57 pm (Champa / Durbar, Champa Flower, Flora, Fluxo, Floral, Gokula Incense, Incense, India, Jasmine, Juhi, Kewda / Kewra / Pandanus / Screwpine, Lotus, Marigold, Mike, Parijata, Sandalwood)

Agarwood & Musk, Agar Sandal, Aloeswood & Jasmine, Amber & Frankincense, Celestial Fruits, Chocolate & Vanilla

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

My general impression of flora/fluxo incenses is they usually come with an orange dipped stick (either full or just the end). And Gokula’s variant (one of them really) is actually called Flora Fluxo. I have reviewed or burned so many of these types of incenses in the last couple months that they probably feel more redundant to me than they actually are, but if you’re not familiar with the style then usually the standard version (kind of like how blue box Nag Champa is – or maybe used to be – the standard for those incenses) is the red package Sai Flora and it’s a reasonable baseline although it is heavily perfumed and often stronger than those I have reviewed lately. Gokula’s version is somewhat muted and not quite as bright and brassy as Sai Flora. Most floras and fluxos have earthier levels in them but they’re usually much more buried than they are here, which tends to give me an August, almost Dionysian vibe like prunes or grapes. I am not sure the balance maybe quite works for me on this stick, but I would not take that as gospel because most are just minor tweaks from one to the other and if you like the style, you’re likely going to search for the one that works for you. This is certainly a reasonable quality take.

Floral Bouquet actually does what it says it’s going to do and presents a floral mix that’s very pink and sweet. It’s a bit of a masala although still fairly firm but it’s worth noting because it doesn’t feel like it’s battling charcoal but is more of a blend with a bit of woodiness. I’ve gone on record many times the pitfalls of presenting general florals, but this one has no bitterness or off notes and it’s probably friendly enough to be kind even to incense muggles. It actually reminds me a little of some of the old Dhuni incenses, perhaps in a more manageable form than that, but approaching that kind of pleasantness (I keep being reminded by the sadly lamented Dhuni Frangipani for some reason). It feels like it has something like pink Valentine’s candy at heart, but the structure of it seems to balance it out in a good way.

Gold Sandal seems to be a cousin to the Agar Sandal we reviewed last time, but like a lot of midline Indian sandalwood incenses, they really don’t smell a lot like sandalwood. There is some inherent woodiness to the incense but there are bitter/sour off notes as well as some really strangely placed fruity notes like peach or apricot in the middle. One wonders if this was an attempt to build a sandalwood out of a different set of ingredients. The Agar Sandal actually felt a bit closer to me in getting to that note or at least it ended up being more genuinely woody than this one. Certainly, the overall bouquet of the Agar Sandal is much more coherent, so I’d suggested starting there before heading to this one.

Even though I am going in alphabetical order, the next three incenses share quite a few of the same ingredients and operate very closely in style. The Jasmine and Lotus (and according to the description juhi, kewra and parijata) is an interesting blend for sure in that you’d expect that to be tilted way over into jasmine when the noticeable lead aroma seems to be something similar to the blue lotus that’s part of the Madhavadas catalog. It’s a very pretty, powdery sort of scent where if you can imagine it, the jasmine kind of faintly provides a background color to give a bit of complexity to the lotus scent. And honestly I think that is where jasmine is at its best. So after introducing some incenses Gokula imports that may be wobbly, this is one that I think has a rather distinct sort of mix I haven’t turned up in other catalogs and that is indeed what one often looks for in an incense.

And better yet, the Jasmine & Nag Champa may be one of Gokula’s best. While I’m not sure either aroma is dead on, they are both close and the juhi and lotus they meld with work well together. Whatever one has in mind for a mix like this, it’s going to be a bit different than you expect. While the champa perfume isn’t the classic style you get on something like the AB or TOI Gold Nagchampa, it does have a much more powdery bottom to it that evinces maybe a bit of halmaddi in the masala. The top note is very pretty and while you can kind of sense jasmine in there somewhere it’s not unlike the previous incense where it seems to mostly come out in some aspects of the bouquet as part of a merger. And overall, it leans over into pink florals a bit.

Finally the Lotus & Kewra is a very interesting experiment. This stick is a lightly dusted charcoal, but even moving back from a more masala like approach this still seems to have the same sort of warm and gentle powdery qualities of the last two incenses, which I like very much. The charcoal does spike a little through it as is always the case with floral charcoals but the perfume mix is quite nice nonetheless with what seems like either a balsamic or vanilla like quality in the middle. And yes there is even a distinct kewra note through the middle! Screwpine is definitely an aroma I’d like to see more often as it’s such a distinct and different scent to anything else. While the lotus isn’t quite as distinct as it is in the incense above where it’s paired with jasmine, and this may be because of the kewra, the resulting merge is certainly worth it. The incense description also describes the blend “in a sandalwood base with swirling notes of champa and marigold.” The powdery quality is certainly champa-esque and the marigold can be faintly ascertained but to my nose I don’t get any sandalwood and nor would I think you’d need to. Whatever the case this is definitely a Gokula winner.

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Bosen / Hoi-An Aloeswood, Refining

December 26, 2022 at 8:06 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Ambergris, Animal, Artemisia (Mugwort, Wormwood), Bosen, Incense, Mike, Resins, Sandalwood, Storax, Taiwan)

So I had meant to sweep up these Bosen scents. I think for the most part ORS has covered many of this Taiwan-based line’s incenses through the years but occasionally they have added a new (ish) one like the Hoi-An Aloeswood, which is basically an ambergris-infused aloeswood and one we hadn’t reviewed.

This one’s a real treat from my perspective and the company appears to have matched the ambergris with a decent level aloeswood so you can equally experience the notes of the wood as well as the salty goodness of ambergris (also be sure not to close the link after the first sentence.) This stick of course reminds me of Ross and his “souked” agarwood, which this certain resembles in many ways. Anyway this is simply a match made in heaven, where some of Bosen’s lower end aloeswoods on their own can be average, the mix with ambergris just gives you a whole host of notes to experience during a burn. It’s honestly near the top of my favorite Bosens.

Refining Incense was probably left out of reviews all those years ago by accident as my check on Amazon shows I’ve ordered it twice. This is one I mentally classify with their more Tibetan-style incenses like in this group. Refining Incense is a mix of agarwood, white sandalwood, styrax, ghanten khampa, several Tibetan Dharma medicines and nectars, and binder. However, it really seems to be the styrax resin that stands out, and at 35% it is more than double the amount of any other ingredients. So the overall incense has a very strong and distinct resinous note with the agarwood, sandalwood and ghanten khampa (a Tibetan wormwood) making up much of the incense’s back notes. Most Bosen Tibetans have some sort of fruity-resin like mix that distinguishes them from the usual Tibetan incenses, not to mention the tensile strength of these sticks is certainly stronger. In many ways this actually reminds me a little of the Pythoncidere, although it seems to have some floral and other aspects that incense doesn’t have. But Bosen always made these to smell fresh, high altitude and distinctive and they’re all really enjoyable, there are none of the cheap wood aspects you get in lower tier Nepali/Tibetan incenses in Bosen products.

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Thank You!

December 20, 2022 at 2:09 pm (Administrative, Mike)

I realized when I just posted today’s review that it went to over 500 subscribers and followers and somewhere along the line I had missed this event. Just wanted to give thanks to all of you that read ORS and to wish you all the happiest of holidays! Also if anyone wants to tell us what you’re burning or heating lately feel free to in this thread.

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Koyasan Daishido / Shikimi (Japanese Star Anise)

December 20, 2022 at 2:05 pm (Anise, Incense, Japan, Koyasan Daishido, Mike)

We’re always looking for quality affordable Japanese incense as well as scents that go into less common areas and this pleasant stick from Koyasan Daishido was a really nice find on both accounts. Star Anise, of course, is a spice used in a lot of different applications, but it may be interesting to note that Japanese Star Anise is a toxic cousin to that plant, not edible, and only used in incense. In Koyasan Daishido’s blend, the JSA seems based in a bit of wood and the spice has been well balanced. Anise has always reminded me of licorice, but this isn’t quite that sort of scent, it seems more like there’s a hint of the aroma that has been blended intelligently with other ingredients for a daily scent with a neat little spice kick that you often don’t find anywhere else. In a milieu where so many incenses can be classified as predominantly sandalwood or aloeswood it’s nice to see one a bit lateral to that. The JSA spice is one that is notably different from the sorts of cinnamon and clove mixes you usually see and while it may have some cooking spice associations, I think Shikimi is well blended for aromatic appreciation. It’s got an interesting dry and tangy mix at heart with the spice tweaking it just so. Affordable and different enough to stretch the incense collection, Shikimi also comes in a much bigger size if you end up loving it.

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Chimi Poe Jorkhang / Kaar Sur-Poe, Maar Sur-Poe

December 17, 2022 at 9:00 pm (Animal, Bhutan, Butter, Cereal, Chimi Poe Jorkhang, Fruit, Honey, Incense, Mike, Milk)

So after so many Bhutanese incense reviews of red/purple incenses it feels like a bit of a relief to get incenses that are tan colored. Honestly I wondered right away if Kaar Sur-Poe and Maar Sur-Poe were the same incense because only the K/M and the white/pink wrappers were really different. They appear to be the same shade of tan as well, but I had to move them around a bunch in the light to confirm that. In a previous review I was also comparing an incense to a deleted one from long ago and it feels like I need to do that again. Kaar Sur-Poe is described as containing “a special blend of fruits, cereals and medicinal plants with an aroma both woody and spicy and not at all overpowering.” Maar Sur-Poe is described a bit more in detail as containing “an important blend of fruits, cereals, edible medicinal plants, milk, butter, honey,  juice, alcohol and animal fats.” Both blends remind me a lot of the long deleted or unavailable Lung Ta line. The use of food ingredients in these blends give these incenses a rather unique sort of sour and thick scent that I can sense in these incenses as well. So with that said, these are actually quite a bit different than most Bhutanese traditional incenses.

However I started writing this with the possibility they may just be the same incense. And they are indeed so close you really only need one and perhaps so close that the variation I am sensing is tough to assign to either a different incense or just a variation. But I think we have to assume the different list of ingredients sets them apart. But they’re so close I’m going to review them as one and just try and explain how they’re different, As the tan color might imply, both incenses are heavy on the woods, more so than the pink and purple styles. However where the contrasting spice mix in the reds/and purples actually often draw out a distinct sandalwood note, you really don’t get that much in either one of these. The Kaar Sur-Poe seems to be the woodier of the two with some elements that reminds me a bit of cooking spice. The Maar-Sur seems to be a bit more spicy in the whole cinnamon/clove sense you tend to get in so many incenses. And so the latter seems to be a bit tangier, maybe a bit more full bodied of a mix where the former is woodier with perhaps a bit of campfire or reediness in the actual burn. Otherwise they seem to share a great deal more in common, with a base woodiness that leans to the kind of freshly cut smell you get in a woodshop, maybe a bit of a nutty flavor to them, as well as feeling a lot of the woody elements come from trees other than the sandalwood. Neither are perhaps the kind of incense I’d reach for, as they seem perhaps a bit closer to low end Nepalese styles, but they aren’t ultimately unpleasant, just perhaps somewhat unremarkable overall.

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Gokula Incense / Agarwood & Musk, Agar Sandal, Aloeswood & Jasmine, Amber & Frankincense, Celestial Fruits, Chocolate & Vanilla

December 12, 2022 at 12:58 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Amber, Chocolate, Frankincense, Fruit, Gokula Incense, Incense, India, Jasmine, Mike, Musk, Sandalwood, Vanilla)

With the assistance of a reader, I made a 24-incense order of Gokula incense earlier in the year, basically all of the ones I was informed were not sourced by the Madhavadas family as these often overlap with other companies like Pure Incense. So these are divided into four reviews of six incenses each. My order arrived somewhere in the middle of several early orders to Vedic Vaani which largely eclipsed my entire incense year and while I went through all of the Gokulas, it felt like a good idea to sample and then let them rest a bit and come back to them with a fresh nose. With some exceptions in either direction, Gokula import a lot of decent scents and I might generally rate this half of the line as being on par with some of the Prabhuji’s Gifts incenses. All of these came in 20g packages although I do believe 250g bundles are also available. In my experience Gokula scents are either dusted charcoals almost entirely made from oil mixes or a step into masalas with occasional incenses being a bit softer to the touch.

So up front we’ll start with a trio of aloeswood/agarwood incenses. The Agar Sandal is definitely a masala and one way I can tell is that my package of it showed a number of places on sticks where parts of the masala had crumbled off (you can probably see in the photo) and even if the stick is relatively hard it definitely feels there is a noticeable amount of halmaddi in this. So in a way this is something like a cousin to Absolute Bliss’ King of Sandal in that it’s a bit of a “sandalwood champa” type. The agarwood doesn’t feel like it’s particularly woody or perhaps even the real thing, but whatever they are using does modify the aroma away from it just being sandalwood heavy on its own. I have noticed a lot of incenses like this in the Rare Essence or Prabhuji’s Gifts catalogs and this is basically on par with those, but perhaps not quite up to the resolution or balance of King of Sandal. There’s a feeling that at this level a lot of the aromatic functions of an incense tend to blur together to its detriment. But don’t get me wrong, this is still a pleasant burn, but unless you’re new to Indian incense it won’t be much of a surprise.

On the fresh Agarwood & Musk stick you really do get something of an idea of what the musk is supposed to be like here. And in the burn, it’s in there somewhere. But like the previous incense, there probably isn’t any actual agarwood in this, rather it feels like a mix of things meant to approximate it. So the overall aroma is almost like a collection of notes in between both of these things with the musk pulling the other elements over in its direction. It’s a reasonably pleasant scent overall but lacks a bit of distinctiveness, although I do like that this isn’t a sweet musk. For a charcoal it has some surprisingly masala-like characteristics and it reminds me a little of the Parrot Green Durbar that Shroff used to carry 10 or 15 years ago. The issue in the end is that the description isn’t quite what you get, but it for sure isn’t anything like what a Madhavadas incense would be with the same description. But it reminds me too much of what is missing from better incenses, which may not be an issue for everybody but it pushed it out from being a keeper.

I will admit that I am at a place in incense life where jasmine incenses are getting on my nerves, no matter how good they are, so I may not be the best judge of Aloeswood & Jasmine. Unlike the previous two incenses I don’t smell a lot of anything that might fall under the aloeswood category here but there does appear to be a reasonable jasmine perfume here in the sense that it’s that sort of weird mix of floral and peaches. This incense verges slightly in both bitter or astringent sort of areas which may be part and parcel of having jasmine in it because even some of the better Absolute Bliss, Temple of Incense or Vedic Vaani variations tend to still have these aspects (for example the deluxe “tube” Vedic Vaani Jasmine Sambac incense is one of the few premium tubes they do I don’t really like much). But it’s also possible some of this is where the “aloeswood” comes out. My opinion has often been that even in the best cases some of these florals either don’t work out or just as likely I’m not naturally fond of them. So definitely a YMMV sort of thing.

Amber & Frankincense is a recipe somewhat similar to Samadhi Sutra in the Happy Hari line. In Indian incenses, particularly those that are more akin to champas and have a little halmaddi, frankincense often sort of appears in a more peppery-spicy sort of form often with like a touch of licorice and these remind me a bit of frankincense champas and more of an old school recipe like Maharaj. It’s the green dipped tip that often identifies the formula as well. The amber, of course, gives it a bit of balsamic heft and an overall richness, so it’s a nice merging. This is really as good of a place to start with the formula as any, but if you’re familiar with a lot of Indian incense it’s likely you will know this one already.

With Celestial Fruits I’m largely out at the name. It’s the sort of incense that tends to inspire mini rants from me on why fruits are usually not a good idea in incense and this is even more so when it is a fruit salad sort of scent like this one. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not unpleasant but it’s definitely way too generic. The lightly dusted charcoal sticks gives it away and it’s essentially what I’d call a fruity floral in that I would guess the bouquet is probably a combination of elements all used to approximate fruitiness that is akin to something like one of those canned fruit cocktails by Dole or something. It’s soft, powdery, inoffensive and ultimately dull. And even though it’s supposedly in a sandalwood base I don’t sense much in the way of that.

Chocolate & Vanilla runs similar risks to the Celestial Fruits but incenses that cover coffee or chocolate are usually a bit more on point. However this is a bit softer of a masala which implies there’s a bit of halmaddi in the mix. I’ve tried a Vedic Vaani or two that had a similar profile to this and even though this doesn’t explicitly say so there’s a bit of coffee in this mix as well. The masala like elements of the stick do tend to help when it comes to moving this a bit farther away from a purely charcoal stick and for sure there are some elements of the burn that feel more traditional. But I would not go into this thinking you’re going to really get much in the way of an actual chocolate and/or vanilla scent. But it is kind of intriguing as a scent, there’s some level of woodiness (identified as sandalwood but more generic to my nose) along with something that roughly plays along the chocolate to vanillla to coconut axis. I actually enjoy a stick like this here and there but it’s the kind of scent I find fatiguing with overuse. It’s still quite a ways away from the kind of smell you get from baking or melting chocolate or so forth.

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Sera Monastery Incense

December 9, 2022 at 2:02 pm (Cardamom, Incense, Mike, Saffron, Sera Monastery, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Tibet Autonomous Region)

Sera Monastery Incense is noted as containing 25 ingredients, including laxangia tsaoko, saffron, sandalwood and clove. From a quick look on the internets the former ingredient is basically Chinese black cardamom, and I believe it’s something you can pick up in the foreground with all the other ingredients. The clove seems pretty mellow for a spice you can normally pick up right away but that saffron tang definitely seems there right in front, in fact this reminds me of some Indian saffron sandalwood sticks. In fact the incense this most reminds me of is the long deleted Saffron Medicinal Incense from Medicine King, it has that incense’s heavy woodiness mixed in with denser ingredients with a sort of corn chip note in the middle (it’s also a little mesquite-like). So all in all it’s definitely a familiar traditional blend that doesn’t, perhaps, pop up as often as some of the others. I will note that the woodiness of this one is beyond just the sandalwood and moves a bit into campfire levels of bitterness, so it could be too strong for some; however, I think the other ingredients are richer and full bodied enough to make it worth checking out anyway, certainly if you miss the Medicine King incenses like I do.

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Baieido Premium Assortment Set / revisits of Kokonoe Aloeswood, Ho Ryo Aloeswood, Kun Sho Aloeswood, Koh En Aloeswood, Koh Shi Boku Kyara

December 4, 2022 at 8:01 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Baieido, Incense, Japan, Kyara, Mike)

Anyone who is an afficianado of aloeswood knows that the stocks of the premium woods have been slowly shrinking over the years. The fact that the best of these stocks came from woods buried underground in deep jungles, allowing the fungus that turns aloeswood into the aromatic treasure that it is, not to mention the wood’s popularity, has essentially made it close to impossible for Japanese companies who deplete their stocks to make the same incenses. The response to this has been either to discontinue the incenses, permanently or temporarily, or use lesser quality woods. It is perhaps somewhat surprising that Baieido, a company well known among aficionados for using the least amount of oils or perfumes in their natural sticks, would choose the latter approach. Simply because it means Baieido, of all the great Japanese companies, has taken the biggest hits in quality in the last decade or so. And some of the evidence comes from the five aloeswood incenses in this assortment set, a set bought last year. ORS reviewed all five incenses in this line by Ross here and here many years ago, and I would only add that around this time I owned full boxes of all five of these and got very familiar with them and largely agree with Ross’ take on these incenses. They were almost entirely great through the line and matched perfectly at their price points.

And this is why the Kokonoe Aloeswood, at the most inexpensive point in the line, seems like a completely different incense than it used to be. Baieido have long claimed that they essentially present the actual woods with just enough binder material, so the usual oil or perfume trickery to help modify the scent just isn’t here on these incenses. In fact one of my first impressions is this smells more like the binder than the aloeswood. There is really very little in this stick to commend for it and while the 00’s version of this scent wasn’t really my favorite in the series, I seem to remember it having much more personality than it does now (not to mention it used to match up with the actual aloeswood Baieido used to sell as well). And Ross’s review, where he says he burned this one more than the other two featured in that review, really underlines the differences here. Honestly my feeling is that if you were to have me smell this incense in a blind taste test I’d probably tell you it was a low quality aloeswood without a lot of personality. But at a guess what may be happening is that there may still be a small amount of the better Indonesian wood it’s just that there is either other wood and or/more binder in this. I just walked in and out of the room while this was burning and did get some notes that reminded me of the older version. But then when I sat down next to it, not so much. And $48 for an actual roll of this seems well above its worth, but keep in mind it’s hard to get unstuck from the lower prices to better wood ratio of a decade or so ago.

So how does the Thai wood stack up? Honestly, the Ho Ryu seems very similar in that the issue could be a higher binder to aloeswood ratio. Of the sticks from the original boxes that lasted the longest I believe this may be the most recent I had sampled. Fortunately this one seems to have some level of presence left. It’s interesting because if I was to reasonably guess which countries come up in aloeswood discussions, obviously the most prized Vietnamese woods be first and then probably the Indonesian woods. I don’t see Thai aloeswood spoken of quite as often, but I do love how its scent profile tends to differ from the others and you are not missing that display even with the current form of the wood. It made me wonder if this was the wood in the Kai Un Koh for example as it shares some of the more perhaps leathery or “masculine” spiciness in the woods. So honestly if all you’re paying is $2 more for a box than the Kokonoe, you are getting a much more interesting woody stick here and not feeling so much that the price is too high for the resinous content or level of quality. The resin is here, if in slightly less dense thickness than it might be in a more expensive stick. But ultimately Ho Ryu is still a very enjoyable stick. I don’t quite remember how much this differs from the last version, but it’s not striking me as all that different.

So after such a hoary, dense treat as the Ho Ryu, the Cambodian aloeswood Kun Sho seems to dial back the energy a bit, but the resin content and overall high quality presence do take a leap both quality wise and price wise. So certainly, and this was true both a decade ago and now, this is where the aloeswood jumps up to a higher grade and you start to feel a true, deep aloeswood presence. This is also where latent floral qualities and subnotes start to abound aromatically. Now my impression in general is that the Kun Sho of a decade ago was a better wood. I don’t have a lot to prove there as my box of it was yummy enough to burn up a long time ago. But looking at Ross’ review again I am reminded that this was and probably is one of those incenses you really want to spend time with. Any good aloeswood really deserves this kind of meditation because initial smells will throw the scent into your face and your brain needs work to pick out all the sub-elements. Right now I am particularly bowled over by what Ross calls the “exotic fruit” subscent. It is absolutely the hallmark of a great wood to have this sort of note in it. It is what sets one regional wood apart from another. So even when you read my impression that this might have been better, it’s certainly different as I don’t remember the herbal qualities quite as much from my initial box. But I genuinely do feel like this earns the price of $80 a box, especially considering all the shifts in pricing.

From my experience Koh En may be the biggest change in the series. This was actually one of my favorite incenses back in the 00s because the aloeswood really had this wonderful cherry blossom note. There are a lot of incenses in more inexpensive realms where they do a cherry blossom scented aloeswood, but the wood here is much finer than the wood normally used in these types of incenses and in many ways it made it one of a kind. The new version of it seems to have some sort of herbal note in front with maybe a touch of the cherry blossom scent a little farther back. As always, the stick follows the wood and it certainly does here but there’s no question this is a different aromatic bundle. The aloeswood is still quite nice, there’s no lack of resin and there are some interesting camphor and floral notes around the side that really get your attention. Honestly as you go through the stick, it’s so impressive that you actually start to forget that it isn’t the same Koh En as you remember. I was told by a venerable vendor once about a fairly popular incense which was something like when incenses change it’s usually the old hands that have an issue with it, but not so much those who are new to it. Keeping that in mind then I think you’d only have an issue with this one coming from an older version. But then you’re looking at a $140 price tag. Is it worth that? Well it’s definitely an aloeswood with some great notes. It might even be somewhere in the top tier of what you can get from Vietnamese aloeswood now. It’s still a very good incense, complex, multifaceted and deep. But hey that’s where the premium assortment is really helpful.

Finally there is the great kyara incense Koh Shi Boku. For a long time this was a very affordable and yet completely legitimate kyara incense. It had a distinct green kyara note down the middle and even if there was binder or maybe other aloeswood mixed in, it always felt like a classic and truly great kyara incense, in fact only the line’s Kyara Kokoh is a better incense and that’s because Kyara Kokoh may be one of the best incenses anywhere. So the first thing I do when I burn a stick of this is to look for that green, camphorous and complex note. The strange thing, like I discussed with some of the earlier incenses, is this feeling that some of the better notes in these incenses have been dialed down a bit. And without having a stick from 2009 it’s hard to be completely objective about this, but indeed my memory is it was a bit sharper in the 00s. But generally the front facing wood is still a kyara fronted aloeswood with a lot of denseness in the center. There are truly some beautiful notes in this, some floral notes that make me wonder if a little of the wood used in the Koh En is used here. But I do remember when I first pulled this out of the sampler feeling like this was a completely different mix to the one I remembered. But there is no question this is still great incense, there is enough going on here to take many sticks to learn. And even though it showed a sale price at Japan Incenses when I wrote this, this is still the same price it was many years ago so at least there’s been no appreciation on this account.

So really the moral of the story is that woods change and so do the incenses, but at least in these cases it feels like there was some reformulation or changes needed. Maybe only the Kokonoe here suffers from the changes even if 2 or 3 of the rest are really quite different incenses than they used to be. If you’re coming in fresh the Baieido Premium Assortment Set is a really good way to sample them all. If you’re only familiar with the older versions then it’s still a good way as Japan Incense does not appear to carry smaller samples, but then again all the deep cuts in this lovely box are all worth exploring for many sticks. Keep in mind there are very few other high end aloeswood incenses out there that don’t formulate the blend with oils and perfumes so these are quite special even if you need to nudge up really close to them.

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Lopen Tandin Dorji Poizo Khang / Flower Incense, (A) Quality, Gift Incense

December 1, 2022 at 12:57 pm (Bhutan, Lopen Tandin Dorji Poizo Khang, Mike)

So after a while you really do start to run out of ways to describe Bhutanese incense as so much of it is traditional and created in a similar fashion that mixes up a number of ingredients that end up drying to a somewhat different tensile strength that other Tibetan incenses. All three of these are that red to purple color that 80% of Bhutanese incenses I have tried have, I’m not sure if this is the saffron doing it or a mix with other ingredients or dyes. None of these really list the ingredients, but most incenses like this have red and white sandalwood and spices like clove and cinnamon and we assume a whole host of unnamed herbs, woods and spices. The blending doesn’t really lend itself much to specific notes anyway, what you tend to get is a conglomerate sort of scent.

I would guess different wrappers show up for the “(B) Quality” or “Flower Incense” as my roll showed up as the latter name. White wrapper, deep maroon red stick and a bit more woodiness and smokiness (like in the actual aroma not how much smoke is produced) than I usually see. I don’t know if the intent was to use a lot of actual flowers in the blend but this isn’t really what I’d think of as a floral incense. It’s more of an earthier variant of the usually Bhutanese red scent, maybe not quite as sweet, but still maintaining the general essence of the main tradition. Which really means that sort of red berry top note, the mixed in spice, and a touch of an almost tobacco-like herb. It’s quite a visceral take on the formula.

While it’s indicated at the above link that the use of letters isn’t related to actual grades of quality, I would think the difference between the Flower Incense and the (A) Quality is something of a step up, or at least it is if you prefer a more polished traditional red scent, with the earthiness of the (B) stepped back quite a bit. For the same price you feel like you’re getting more incense per weight with the B. To my nose they are similar scents, but taking a step back to Bhutanese incense in general, you would largely be thinking the same thing. I feel like I’ve tried so many of these incenses that there isn’t a specific type that is the runaway favorite or at least I’d probably have to go through them all again. But for sure it feels like (A) Quality has a higher grade of ingredients and certainly has a mix that leans towards the better versions of this incense. The sandalwood seems to be a bit more present and I love the way it merges with the berry front end.

While the (Gift Incense) (I have no idea what the parens mean in any of these incenses, but all of these incenses have them in some way) has a similar dark maroon color, I think this one largely leaves behind the traditional mix that we usually see in Bhutanese incense. I would guess that this is more akin to the A Quality price range as it’s about half the price range and around half the sticks. That front berry smell has disappeared for something that is a bit tangier or at least not as sharp. That brings the woodiness of the incense forward but in a way that feels like the sandalwood has been infused with oils that mute the impact some. Like the A quality this has a feeling of being close to top grade for Bhutanese incense, but the herbal and saffron mix with the woods, makes it a bit less close to my personal taste.

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