Olfactory Rescue Service

The provenance of a few of this second quintet of incenses from Bhagwan Incense range from obviously Madhavadas-sourced to possibly. Just to reiterate in case you’re new or unfamiliar with Madhavdas, it is an Indian incense family and company that exports its incenses to a number of different companies across the world (it is possibly second to Satya I would imagine). It’s positive is wonderful top perfumes (some would be even described as premium), it’s negative is a very repetitive base made from vanilla, charcoal and sandalwood that tends to often outweigh its top notes and can become very fatiguing if used frequently (so like if you’re a guy who has had an incense blog since the 00s you may be a bit biased against it). Some of these with a Bhagwan label may have dialed down some of the base (or conversely upped the perfumes/oils) in a balanced way, but I’ve provided some notes on extra incenses that seemed definitively Madhavadas and how I think they fared. Both the Amber and the Lavender here in particular are likely to be familiar to those who have traveled through companies like Primo or Triloka, but they also feel a bit different, and it often can be hard to tell if it’s just the same incenses or new formulas attempting to create similar incenses. In these cases it might be best to consider them just part of classic incense “families,” variations, perhaps, but still attempting to attain the same goals.

Dragon’s Blood looks very much like the same stick (if a bit thinner and shorter) that used to be available in the Absolute Bliss catalog, a charcoal with some light red powdering, but it smells quite different to my nose. I’ve probably gone on record saying that dragon’s blood resin is probably too exciting of a name for the aroma you’re getting just from the resin, so I’m all for gussying it up with other things when it comes to sticks. And in the description, ylang ylang and vanilla are listed. It feels very possible for the base that this is a Madhavadas sourced incense, but in this case the oils on top have largely mitigated the vanilla, although not entirely. Now this doesn’t really scream to me as having a strong actual dragon’s blood oil or resin note on top but it does feel like there was an attempt to capture or maybe improve on it for an incense. It does feel a bit confused and maybe not entirely coherent, but that’s not at all to say it’s unpleasant. Maybe the ylang ylang is cutting into the spicier/hotter element you’d expect from a name like this, but ultimately I kind of dig the complexity of it, it almost feels like if you’re paying attention you’re sort of mentally running around trying to pick the combinations out. If you do like dragon’s blood I’d definitely take a shot at it.

The Fragrant Amber is the common red stick variation that I have seen for decades in various places and which tends to show up in more mainstream lines (I used to contrast this with the so-called “Royal Amber” which was a black charcoal and had a more powdery scent). I do seem to remember the “reds” being a bit more (dry) masala-like, this one seems to be a charcoal stick with some red powder, but it is of a definitely deeper red color that wouldn’t be matched up with the pinker variations that are usually rose or some other floral (like the Spring Blossom at the end of this article). The description is “amber wood with notes of musk and vanilla, honey and benzoin.” I’d keep in mind that amber is often a thing made from other things (thus the honey and benzoin) and amber wood is usually a perfume mix as opposed to a wood, but with those things in mind it’s probably not an inaccurate description. The vanilla, of course, does imply a Madhavadas provenance, although like the Dragon’s Blood, the Fragrant Amber feels new to my nose and not a repeat of something ORS has reviewed previously. But it also doesn’t smell like the red ambers I remember, it’s formulated both similarly and differently and yet ends up in roughly the same space. All of the incenses in this lineage, while often not the most premium scents, are still aromas I enjoy and appreciate and you do find your way through the combination to something you might take away as being an “amber” in the aromatic sense, so I’m glad to see this has not been lost. Frankincense & Amber, however, is straight up Madhavadas in the sense that whatever is on top doesn’t outweigh the base and it’s very difficult to pick out both ingredients in what ends up being a sort of confusing conglomerate. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a little bit of both in there, but it hardly behooves one to use, supposedly, high grade ingredients if they aren’t overpowering this sort of base. And once again the red color at the picture on the Bhagavan site isn’t particularly strong in my samples, so there may be variations depending on the amount of dusting lost.

In a similar way much of the same can be said for Lavender Bliss, except in recent years we’ve seen what I’d call vedic lavenders that largely leave incenses like this one superfluous. Lavender is just one of those herbs that can present quite different from one incense to another, but this incense actually doesn’t strike me as being all that on the nose. It’s possible that there just isn’t enough perfume to get above what smells like the usual Madhavadas base and so it’s hard to accept this as a lavender-fronted incense. It reminds me very much of the last time I tried the Triloka Lavender. There was a similar issue with a Madhavadas-sourced Lemongrass, but I was told there was a d decision was made by Bhagwan not to carry it. I imagine this was a bit of disappointment as the fresh stick actually had a really wonderful lemongrass top note, but it was almost completely submerged in the burn. The Orange Blossom has similar issues in that gentle oils fronting a powerful base doesn’t usually work out too well, but at least in this case the oil is detectable in the burn. I’ve occasionally seen incenses that marry orange with vanilla and end up smelling like an orange creme popsicle, but that doesn’t happen here. On the other hand, sometimes the Madhavadas incense is exactly the one you want to show up and Bhagwan definitely carry their really excellent Opium. I’ve previously reviewed a similar batch here and my initial impression was that they were both fairly identical. I would have compared them but I think my PI stock will likely have lost some of the oil strength two years later, so it wouldn’t be accurate or fair to do so. Needless to say whoever you source this one from, it’s highly recommended (and cheers to the reader who sent me samples of this a while back!). I don’t want anyone to forget that Madhavadas-sourced incenses can be wonderful too.

Since most of the incenses in this installment are a bit harder to determine if they are Madhavadas-sourced, my compass is basically to review those that I haven’t before and point to where I have. It’s difficult to tell if Saffron Sandalwood is Madhavadas sourced or from another company (there’s evidence that could go either way). Although I’ve reviewed both Pure Incense Sandalwood and Saffron, I don’t appear to have reviewed an incense with the ingredients together. While I am not sure that the sandalwood in this is really distinctive (it feels like it just falls short of this), it does mix nicely with the base and whatever is being used as the saffron, but there’s quite a bit more going on here. Saffron sandalwood mixes are often yellow-green colored masalas and don’t tend to be as sweet as this one, so this is at least a new variation to my nose. It’s almost like this has a bit of cookie spice in the middle you wouldn’t expect, a spice that floats pretty prominently on top. You would almost expect anything cookie to have the ubiquitous vanilla as well, and although I can feel it in there somewhere, it doesn’t really come across like it usually does in the Madhavadas stable. I should also mention here that the red coloring in my picture is not on the samples I received, similar to the two above, so based on my photo it could be a bit of where the light is. Ultimately this is quite nice even if it’s not the perfect match to the name, there’s a full-bodied feel to this that speaks of some strength in the oils. It’s one of those incenses that I might even need longer stock just to see how I fall with it later as I definitely enjoy it, while feeling somewhat hesitant to fully commit to a recommendation if that makes sense. You’d certainly want to sample it if the ingredients are those you gravitate towards.

There are infinite variations of the rose/floral, pink colored sticks that show up in numerous catalogs and so I wouldn’t even make a guess to the provenance of Spring Blossom except to say it fits nicely in this style. Part of me starts to think of 3D graphs where you can measure and compare the intensity of rose, cherry, bubble gum, and other aspects of sticks like this. So it’s not hard to recommend incenses in this range but if you’re really familiar with them and have many variations than it might be too close to what you already know. Like for me, I think of Bappa Morya (it’s probably easily and safe to say this is a Vedic Vaani mainstay, but it shows up in a lot more than one place in their catalog) as a favorite in this style, but I would think favorites would vary from person to person depending on whether you like the mix. So Spring Blossom? Well, this one is definitely surprisingly high with an actual gorgeous rose note and maybe the cherry is a little farther down in the bouquet. The description also gives musk, pine and vanilla and they’re all much more noticeable than in other pink sticks I’ve tried, giving this a bit of extra breadth. So I think most will find this to be a really beautiful incense and certainly if you’ve never tried one of these pink sticks it’s easy to recommend this one.

So in the next installment I will be moving to Eugene’s other line at goodincense.eu. Unlike the Bhagwan line, these come in wrappers, but I wouldn’t take that to be a corresponding drop in incense quality at all, there’s still quite a few goodies to be found, some of which appear to have the same provenance as the wonderful Balsamic Amber in the previous installment. Until then, I hope everyone who had one had a good Thanksgiving!