Dhe-Tsang Monastery / Dhe-Tsang Golden Essence

February 8, 2024 at 7:20 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Dhe-Tsang Monastery, Frankincense, Incense, Mike, Rhododendron, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Tibet Autonomous Region)

I consider Tibetan incenses that reach the $20 mark or go over to usually consist of ingredients that denote a more premium incense and certainly more so if the box is half the size of a usual roll as is the case with Dhe-Tsang Golden Essence. This, I believe, is the third imported incense from this monastery, after the flagship Dhe-Tsang Monastery Incense and the Dhe-Tsang Sacred Mountains Incense.

The Golden Essence comes in a very nice box, something that says premium from the get-go, especially with inner gold colored foil wrapper, which is quite a change from the containerless Sacred Mountains roll. The notes here are “frankincense, nutmeg, agarwood, rhododendron and other precious ingredients.” While the frankincense is not particularly obvious in the mix at first, it absolutely blends in to create a very different vibe from the usual incenses with nutmeg and agarwood. The base does smell like there may be some sandalwood in there mixed in with the agarwood, but on top of the wood the frankincense seems to intensify the herbal and spice mix – it comes off a bit tangy and a touch brassy. It wasn’t until my fourth stick that I actually started feeling like the agarwood in this was pretty good and actually contributing to the quality of the aroma rather than being a milder base wood. It is absolutely a vital part of the scent.

I do notice quite a middle to the incense although this may change with the temperature, it seems a bit more apparent when it’s warmer. On my current stick, I noticed that right before the heater came back on from the thermostat that I sort of lost this middle. Of course, there’s also a pretty big musk hit, a fairly ubiquitous note in most monastery incenses. Overall Golden Essence keeps you guessing in the way any finer Tibetan incense does. This was the first incense I attempted to review that had just come in (just about all the previous reviews were incenses I had sat with over months in 2023) and it took about a half dozen sticks before some of the gentle subtleties started to make themselves known. Some of this is just that this is a bit of a different formulation to other Tibetan sticks. You find frankincense in a lot of Tibetan incenses but it’s a much stronger note in this one than in the usual and it kind of pulls everything else together in different ways than I expected. But it’s also an incense with a high-quality wood presence, maybe working closer to the level of the Agarwood Heart of Shamballa. As always don’t expect a Japanese agarwood incense here, but this is about as close as Tibetans get to some low to mid ends. It’s likely an incense a connoisseur will want to check out.

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Dhe-Tsang Monastery / Sacred Mountains Incense

September 9, 2021 at 5:05 am (Dhe-Tsang Monastery, Gadan Kyenba, Incense, Mike, Tibet Autonomous Region)

Dhe’s Tsang Monastery’s Sacred Mountains incense is a skinnier stick than their flagship blend incense. The one ingredient listed is gadan kyenba, which Incense Traditions describes as a mint-like herb. It is notable to mention this ingredient because the scent profile is definitely a little bit different in this one, but I would go into it expecting it to be multiple ingredient nonetheless. But this ingredient does seem to give the incense a bit of a similarity to the wormwood found in many another Tibetan incense except it doesn’t hint at the funkiness you may often find in incense with this herb in it. Instead the gadan kyenba seems to interact mostly with the more evergreen and woody notes you usually find, which is a nice balance with the usual high-altitude notes. There’s a sort of autumnal leafy scent in this one that I’ve mentioned in some previous reviews like there’s probably a touch of rhododendron in there and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a little sandalwood or agarwood in the mix too. It’s a pleasant stick, somehow both powerful and gentle at the same time and very different from the flagship scent. Maybe the only downside of this one is that the packaging is basically a big bundle of easily breakable sticks wrapped only with a couple of the red strips. I think this is probably too natural-ingredients based to worry about it losing strength any time, but it would have been cooler in a tube. Then again, knowing how often the packaging changes with Tibetan incenses, maybe this is just down the line a bit!

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Dhe-Tsang Monastery Incense

August 4, 2021 at 5:50 am (Dhe-Tsang Monastery, Incense, Mike, Tibet Autonomous Region)

In my virtual tour of Tibetan incenses, I’ve clocked a lot of styles from the deep salty and musky sticks of Holy Land and Nectar, to the green high altitude scents of Quinrun, Huiyou and Spirit of Shambhala on to more autumnal and herbal goodies like Ba’er Qude Si and Feng Ma Bao Highland. Dhe-Tsang Monastery incense feels more like a lateral step from some of these other incenses with a sweetness to it that tends to be a bit more uncommon with monastery incenses. It has a pretty healthy and more obvious mix of sandalwood in the blend. Often with Tibetans the wood is on the list but tends to be subsumed. Here it’s actually part of the top note. In some ways this would make it more reminiscent of a Nepali incense except unsurprisingly there’s still a bit of musk here, it’s just not the at the usual strength you would expect. The box is a bit smaller than comparable monastery boxes while remaining at about a comparable price which I would likely think has something to do with all the sandalwood in the mix. It’s nicely done, user friendly and doesn’t really fit into any other grouping I can think of with other Tibetan styles.

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