Epika Earth / Rare Terra / Bacchus, Blue Ice Pine, Cocoa Pods, Inspirecense, Maui Coconut and Sandalwood

January 27, 2024 at 11:17 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Amyris, Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Blueberry, Cedar, Chocolate, Coconut, Copal, Dragon's Blood, Epika Earth, Incense, Labdanum, Lavender, Mike, Myrrh, Pine / Pinon, Quassia, Sandalwood, Shatavari Root, Styrax Liquidambar, United States, Vanilla)

I spent some time early in the year searching through Etsy shops for new incense. I had the usual filters on, avoiding the usual things we don’t tend to review at ORS, the commercial level charcoals like Hem and Gonesh, many sticks dyed in color, most cones, and dipped incense. But it’s in the doing of this that sometimes you’re met with the conundrum that some of these styles occasionally break the rules in an interesting fashion. Epika Earth (Etsy shop) is one of those companies, an Akron, Ohio-based small business with an imprint that is quite original and unique, a company that seems to have invigorated a dipped, largely essential oil-based incense style. What I noticed first was that a lot of their visuals were arresting, second that their naming conventions were both familiar and a little different and third that occasionally in the catalog you’d turn up a completely different style of small batch incense such as dhoops. While I realized that many of their stick incenses must be dipped, it was the descriptions and ingredients that reeled me in, they were often mixes that sounded interesting and not just dialed in. So I made an order on Etsy for about seven items and then invited the company to send anything they’d like to see reviewed and they sent quite a few extra packages, most of which I was really glad they did as there were some really unique and wonderful blends in there that I might not have instinctively picked. Every incense was a new voyage, often I would have to reorient just to experience very new styles or combinations in incense that I have never tried before. So I’m going to break these down into roughly three different installments, mostly by what seem like the name of series, in the first installment’s case the Rare Terra series.

So the first two in this list were samples from the company. And the first of these, Bacchus, is actually a good indication of the direction some of the Epika Earth incenses go in. The essential oil mixes of these scents are not at all obvious and often smell like aged wines or other libations. The listed materials include styrax resinoid, labdanum resinoid, dragon’s blood, golden copal, and agarwood. So it’s probably not a surprise that this is an aroma roughly in the vicinity of some of Mermade’s heat-ables except in stick form, especially those with summer to fall themes. The mix is described as “Fruit Orchards at midnight in the fall with fresh fallen leaves and musk in the winds. Musky and sweet.” It feels like a vintage wine, a heady mix that really goes in a mythological, dreamy direction. This appears to largely be from the mix of laudanum, styrax and copal, all of which give it something of a liquid feel and, perhaps, a touch of alcohol. But on top the agarwood (dusting? oil?) provides something of a contrast to the Dionysian wine and a bit of balancing dryness. Any incense like this often comes with subnotes that are like the harvest or grapes or even raisins, all of which also overlap kyphi sorts of subscents. So it is indeed a heady and appropriately named brew and a fascinating, and a quality one at that. My only slight caveat is that many of the stick incenses appear to use a similar base, they have a similar aroma and often when you first light them you will only get this for 20-30 seconds before the actual aroma kicks in in force.

Really surprising was the Blue Ice Pine because in an American incense you expect this to be something heavy in piñon pine, like, say, Fred Soll’s incenses, but this one has a remarkably Japanese-like profile. It’s not a deep, resinous incense so much as it has a gentle and refined top end that has an almost langorous resolution to it. It actually reminds me more of like some more nebulous conifer incense than pine itself (both Nippon Kodo Mori-no-koh Conifer and Shoyeido Xiang-Do Forest come to mind for different reasons), but this might also be because there’s a secondary layer of spice that is even more subtle than the resins. This sort of mellow scent in the mix is probably why there are some tea comparisons as it’s similar to a spiced herbal tea in a way. It’s a really beautifully designed incense. I’m so used to dipped incenses often being loud and glaring that to try one with this sort of subtlety really changed my opinion on the possibilities here, and I can’t think of higher praise than that. And in the morning, it’s almost a perfect burn. The final three items were those I chose to order…

Cocoa Pods is also very impressive, in fact more so with every stick. On my first stick I didn’t automatically get chocolate, and I thought the creator was going for something a lot more distinctive, perhaps. However, on my second stick I moved it to my upstairs burning station where it really opened up including a rather refined and original chocolate subnote. Chocolate isn’t always accurate in incense, it’s usually approximated by other ingredients and can often feel a bit synthetic or off. Third stick, you really start to notice what a beautiful job is being done here. If your expectations for chocolate have been set low from other incenses, you probably would just be happy to get the aroma alone, but this is even better than that. If Bacchus was a wine, and Blue Ice Pine a tea, then Cocoa Pods is obviously a very decadent cup of hot chocolate if a bit of some expensive spirit was added. This is described as a lighter version of their Ridiculously Sinful incense, which I have not tried but now absolutely want to. However they have put this together it really feels high quality and unique and it was hard not to keep waving the entire stick over to experience ever millimeter of it. It’s an absolute must for a shopping trip.

Inspirecense was a bit of a challenge at first. It’s a dhoop incense and it sets a record in that it’s the first incense that has set off my smoke detector in at least ten years (two beeps though and that was it). So it’s obviously self-lighting and pours out enough smoke that I was thinking it might be better used outside. However, I could tell there was something really yummy going on with it, but it was also overwhelming to burn. But after putting out the dhoop and saving half of it, I put that second half on a Shoyeido heater on a low enough heat not to ignite and oh yeah that was right adjustment for sure, it turned from overwhelming to extraordinary. It’s got a pretty lengthy ingredient list: sandalwood, shatavari root, quassia wood, golden copal, benzoin, organic blueberries, atlas cedar, and organic lavender and lives up to the complexity that it implies. I’m not even sure how to describe it because the orchestra of ingredients plays quite an amazing symphony with different “instruments” playing at different moments in the mix. At first I was thinking confectionary, like a chocolate cake or wait maybe that’s more like a chocolate meets a fruity sort of mix. Then the fruity note really grabs your attention until you realize it’s a perfect blueberry note, utterly splendid in the mix (seriously, just jaw-droppingly yummy). Later it feels more like the sandalwood and other woods come out as the dhoop heats a little more. I’m not sure this incense was intended to be heated given it can be lit, but it is a magnificent bit of art heated and the dhoop also goes much longer, I’d imagine you could get at least six could heats out of a piece that last hours (I also crumbled it as it got hotter). This was one of the two incenses that really caught my eye in the catalog, I’m generally drawn to the unique and deeply artisan and the description was more than I could overcome. Maybe I have a fifth sense about these things, but if anyone is interested I’d jump on this one immediately – make it the centerpiece of an order! Or maybe the second! It is inspiring indeed.

Maui Coconut and Sandalwood is probably the one incense in this bunch similar to the dipped incenses I have tried in the past. Coconut is one of those scents that can be done pretty poorly, but fortunately Epika Earth have managed to make sure the scent isn’t too sweet or cloying. For a two-note incense it has an impressive list of ingredients: coconut, vanilla planifolia extract, santalum spicatum (sandalwood) oil, santalum austrocaledonicum (sandalwood) oil, cedrus deodora (himalayan cedarwood) oil, amyris balsamifera (amyris) oil, commiphora myrrha (myrrh) extract, myroxylon pereirae (balsam of Peru) oil, abies balsamea (fir balsam) extract, and caprylic/capric triglyceride (this also originates from coconut oil). The cedarwood oil is pretty noticeable in the sandalwood mix, but these types of oils seem like a fair mix in the modern age and while I wouldn’t expect Mysore level notes, it clearly does smell like reasonably sandalwood thankfully (both oils appear to be Australian sourced). So the question is really whether or not you’re going to enjoy the combination. For one thing the overall incense is surprisingly dry, it’s not the sort of coconut found in charcoals or even the sort of coconut creme pie scent of the Temple of Incense stick. The matching sandalwood is similarly dry, somewhat surprising given so much of the scents come from oils. Overall, it feels carefully crafted and put together, but as of the writing of this I haven’t quite decided if I enjoy the mix or not and that’s not all a criticism of the formula. Coconut is usually what I consider a “food incense” which tends to be more of a mood thing, but sandalwood sort of pushes that half way out if that makes sense. Definitely one of those your mileage may vary type of scent.

Coming up in February, the next installment…

2 Comments

Yamzho Tibetan Incense Company / Putian Tibetan Incense

January 17, 2024 at 8:24 pm (Incense, Mike, Pine / Pinon, Rhododendron, Sandalwood, Terminalia, Tibet Autonomous Region, Yamzho Tibetan Incense Company)

(posting this a little bit earlier as I might not get to it tomorrow)

Putian Temple Incense is probably something of a cousin to the Golog Tibetan incense in style. While the list of ingredients “include Medicine Terminalia Fruit, sandalwood, pine and rhododendron,” I’m still getting something like nutmeg in the mix and possibly some agarwood at the base as well.

The way a lot of these ingredients come together on this is quite beautiful, it almost feels like a spiral up from the base into some rarified top note. It’s fresh and clear all the way and the sandalwood content doesn’t feel as much as buried as it is more prominent than usual. The pine isn’t obvious at first (maybe because it’s something more like red pine than pinon), but it definitely weaves its scent through the sandalwood. Usually agarwood is named in these recipes and even though it isn’t named here, if it were to be found in small quantities, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least. There is also a scent I find hard to describe except for something like fresh walnut shells, it’s probably a bit adjacent to the pistachio shell note I talk about in the same category Incense Traditions puts this one in, Therapuetic and Relaxation Incense. And speaking of this, that’s supposedly where the Terminalia fruit falls as it’s supposedly the “King of Medicine” in Tibet and something far more obscure in the West, as I would have no idea what it smells like aromatically. I also want to borrow a bit from my Golog review as well, because this has this sort of brown, nutmeg softness that reminds me of milder brown ales. It’s all rather nicely done, very Western friendly, no harsh or pungent notes. Just a relaxing, mildly spicy and prominently woody incense of careful creation.

Leave a Comment

Gongzi Monastery / Red Amrita Incense Grade 1 (with a thought or two on Grade 2)

January 9, 2024 at 1:16 pm (Gongzi Monastery, Incense, Mike, Pine / Pinon, Tibet Autonomous Region)

According to Incense Traditions, Red Amrita Incense Grade 1 incense “consists of 40% green leaves and 60% powder from the red pine trunk.” Grade 2 “consists of 65% green leaves of the red pine and 35% powder from the red pine trunk.” Whew talk about a 50/50 proposition! So I rolled the dice and went for the Grade 1 over the 2 (During the writing of this, the Grade 1 was out of stock, so I delayed the review until it was back in, so I was likely not the only one who made this choice). I think I was just talking to someone about how Tibetan incenses are rarely one ingredient incenses and then I come across one that is virtually red pine alone. But this is fascinating in the sense I’ve never been around one of these trees before.

Like I-T, I do think this is a really mild incense, this isn’t the same kind of pine that’s going to be evocative of crushed needles or pinon resin, it’s probably somewhat analagous to what red sandalwood is like compared to the regular. This is true for both grades as I requested a sample of the 2 along with the 1 and if you compare them it does indeed seem like the wood shifts to a more leafy aroma on the former (ultimately though you really only need one or the other). Red Pine seems a bit closer to mesquite than the pinon does, I wouldn’t have imagined this to be a Himalayan tree if I hadn’t been told earlier. However it does have a pretty unique signature, there are some subnotes to this you would never think of in pine wood or resin, one or two which I even struggle to describe as they’re probably only inherent in this particular tree. It is indeed quite complex as mentioned in I-T’s description, even after a few sticks I found myself using it just trying to put in words in some way this sort of delicate tangy and spicy sweetness. One thing I found to help this aroma, is a bit of a cooler temperature, I found this really opened up the scent more. With more heat I get the mesquite-ish sense in the mix and less of the cooler sweetness and mild spiciness. I usually try to average around 3-4 sticks before I put down this review but I had easily surpassed this in listening time and it still didn’t feel quite finished, which speaks to the wood’s innate complexity.

3 Comments

Mermade Magickal Arts / Demeter’s Bakery, Pomander, Winter Wreath + Espirit de la Nature / The Light Mothers

January 3, 2024 at 2:49 pm (Anise, Artemisia (Mugwort, Wormwood), Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Bitter Orange (Neroli), Black Currant, Camphor, Borneol, Canada, Carnation, Cedar, Copal, Esprit de la Nature, Fir, Frankincense, Galbanum, Hay, Incense, Juniper, Labdanum, Larch, Massoia Bark, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Orange, Ornifolia, Pine / Pinon, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, Sweetgrass, United States, Vanilla)

So first of all, Happy New Year to all, this is the first review of 2024. I am happy to report that I got a lot of review work done and so expect to see reviews every third day until sometime in February. Thanks also to Katlyn Breene of Mermade Magickal Arts who has always been a big supporter of ORS, this will hopefully be the first of two reviews of her recent incenses, which are as good as they always are, if not better.

I can’t really imagine a holiday/Winter Solstice season without the incenses of Mermade Magickal Arts,, Katlyn’s wintery blends have been among my favorite heatable incenses for the last decade or two, in fact if you look at the reviews index you’ll see a whole lot of them have gone by. Some like Wild Wood are now perennials, if not classics. While you can get greenness in stick incense, I’m not sure you can ever get it in the sort of resolution where different kinds of evergreens – pine, spruce, fir, juniper etc – actually contour the whole palette of an incense. And even beyond these green wonders, Katlyn has experimented nearly every year coming up with all sorts of treats in the winter tradition. And like with my review on Dimension 5, I really should mention that I don’t think Mermade has steered off of making great incenses ever since I first discovered them, before I even started ORS, so if you’re picking up a bias, then yeah I will gladly own it, in fact I’d suggest if you’ve tried any of her incenses you may have also picked it up too. Katlyn is the premiere artist of these sorts of incenses in the US and this group is another bunch of quality scents. In fact what really impressed me this time was how long lasting they were. I accidentally left my heater on high with Winter Wreath sitting on it overnight and I swear it was still emitting a great scent the next morning, so these are also incredibly long-lasting scents.

But before we get to the winter incenses, let’s pop back to the autumn for Mermade’s Demeter’s Bakery. As soon as I had this heating, I started getting a sense of nostalgia about the scent. Over time I realized that it was reminding me in some sense of an old Nu Essence blend that I think was the Pluto. I scrambled back through our archives and realized Ross had reviewed this one many moons ago; however, I think I only matched up the benzoin as being overlapping. But the thing is, the longer you heat Demeter’s Bakery, the more it sort of transforms and modulates over time and so it even began to move past this later in the heat. The incense has a huge, yummy list of goodies in it: Omani black frankincense, Kua myrrh, Yemeni myrrh, ornifolia resin, massoia bark, anise seeds, Saigon cinnamon, benzoin, hay absolute, vanilla, Peru balsam, and black currant absolute. Once I gave this a second heat at the suggested temperature of about 230C, I noticed once again that similarity to Pluto, but where it felt like that aroma was created a bit by the sandalwood and bitter almond, here it’s much harder to call except that this is very much like a heated bakery good all the way through with that bit of yeast to get the bread to rise. Of course part of this is all the spices and the vanilla, but it seems almost facile to just talk about the cinnamon when there is so much going on at the spice level here, it’s like a rainbow of scent. But that sugar spice smell is right at the center of this and makes it oh so friendly. It’s funny with incense I often don’t even think of how important baked good are to our olfactory senses, how important cooking memories are to our olfactory experience. What’s clever about this one is it seems to start with those memories but then runs in a whole new direction with them. The second phase of the heat, feels like some of the moistness of the scent gives way to a more austere dry quality almost as if your baked good is finishing up. I think some of this is dependent on how much resin is in the heater cup and much later in the heat when its exhausted, some of the frankincense and myrrh remains give it a different quality as well. All in all this is some really fine work and somewhat different for Mermade as well.

I have probably brought this up before (I seem to remember doing so recently with the Temple of Incense Festive Kiss which is certainly in the same spirit) but one of my early memories was a recipe my mom made called “spiced tea.” It was a very 70s sort of thing with Tang powder, Lipton tea and spices. It had loads of sugar and smelled amazing so of course I loved it. Mermade’s Pomander is an almost 100% accurate representation of how I remember it smelling so this one moved pretty quickly to one of my very favorite incenses this year. In an environment where the most prized scents are rare woods or ingredients it’s always good to know that something a lot more conventional can do the trick as well. However the trick to this is that it’s not created conventionally but with a whole lot of artistic skill to make sure this is a real delight. If I have the list right, I read the ingredients as Carmel benzoin; labdanum absolute; Peru balsam; aromatic winter spices; Saigon cinnamon; clove; carnation absolute; bitter orange essential oil and orange zest; green, honey and silver frankincense; kua crimson; Yemeni myrrh; Mysore sandalwood; styrax liquidambar; and vanilla. What I love about all of this is just how it all coalesces into a simple but powerful spiced orange incense. It is just utterly perfect and I can’t recommend it more highly.

Winter Wreath is another classic winter green mix, Katlyn has gotten so good at these over the last couple of decades that I don’t expect anything less than top notch. This mix seems to have a bit of an herbal component to it that mixes it up a bit (it may just be some of the cedar touches), but it just ends up enhancing the increasingly high resolution mix of the usual wonderful ingredients: fir balsam resin and needles, Aleppo and Sweet Pinon pine, arbor vitae (Thuja cedar) and red cedar – you can nearly pick each one out in the mix, an amazing thing with evergreens all this close in family. These scents are all magnified by the resin mix of copal blanco, Oman frankincense sacra, and kua myrrh in the usual manner, giving that real depth to the top green scents. One thing I love about this resin mix is a lot of lime is coming out of the bottom which I assume is probably the quality of the copal blanco in the mix. It makes me think back to some of the older winter blends in the sense that this quality has shown up before, but this is probably one of the first times I’ve really noticed it, it’s such a powerful note that I’m reminded of key lime pie. It blends absolutely perfectly with all the wonderful evergreen notes as well. The myrrh seems to be more in the mix later in the heat, transmuting the blend into something different, almost wistful and poignant. It’s hard to say more, if you’re a long time customer of Katlyn’s then you probably know this kind of thing very well and if you aren’t it’s a perfect way in. Like I mentioned earlier, this a blend that heats for ages too, I can imagine getting at least 12 hours of a heat if you fill a foil container about half full or so.

And not terribly far from Winter Wreath is the Espirit de la Nature offering The Light Mothers, an incense offered as a pair with The Dark Mothers, both presenting different winter energies for the season. Unfortunately these two sold out right before I posted this, but I’m leaving the review for posterity (and a reminder that EdlN incenses often go really fast at Mermade!) This incense has a really sizeable list of ingredients including balsam fir resin, larch wood, juniper berries, cedarwood, larch needles, balsam fir needles, cedarwood, mugwort, sweetgrass, tree mosses, pinyon pine resin, pinus sylvestris resin, mastic resin, galbanum resin, camphor flakes, amanita muscaria mushrooms, as well as extracts of balsam fir, juniper berry, and cedar. As you can tell in the picture these come as pieces, although it looks like the mushrooms are in there as larger chunks. Those versed in Bonnie’s intensely personalized style of incense will be familiar with her careful and gentle approach. But while all of her creations are really subtle and widely resonant, this one is a bit louder in the mix, which is good for my oversaturated olfactory organs. While this incense shares some ingredients with Winter Wreath, it definitely goes in a different direction without that resinous backdrop, creating a similar aromatic depth with the extracts. To the fore are the larch ingredients and this might be only something I got by trying a couple of EdlN’s earlier blends with this magic scent involved, but it’s an unforgettable scent, one I almost immediately purchase anything with it in it. As always even this wide variety of ingredients can usually be detected with some guided sniffing, I’m always impressed with the way Bonnie puts so many voices together until it feels steered by one greater entity. Utterly brilliant work.

Leave a Comment

Temple of Incense / Bulgarian Rose & Oudh, Festive Kiss, Portobello, Tulsi

November 28, 2023 at 11:42 am (Amber, Bayberry, Benzoin (Loban), Bergamot, Geranium, Halmaddi / Mattipal, Incense, India, Mike, Musk, Oakmoss (Lichen), Orange, Oud, Pine / Pinon, Rose, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Temple of Incense, Vanilla)

Please note that if you are new to ORS, we have done a wide-ranging number of reviews on the absolutely fabulous Temple of Incense line, all of which can be found by either clicking on the Temple of Incense link under Incense>India or checking out Incense Reviews Index. Please note that Temple of Incense has provided ORS readers with a 10% off coupon since February 2022 by using the code OLFACTORY. The current review is a bit of a catch up as for the most part the Temple of Incense line has remained largely stable. These four are among the newest of their line.

The Aydees announced their new Bulgarian Rose & Oudh incense recently, and if we can encourage the well from which great ideas come from, then we’d have to encourage them for more pairings like this one, it’s quite frankly one of the most stunning incenses I’ve encountered not only in their catalog but outside of it. And like a lot of good things it comes from a simple pairing of two notes both well-famed in the incense community, Bulgarian rose absolute and oudh (they also mark notes of oakmoss, sandawood, amber and geranium, all of which I imagine would make two good things go a long way). It is a HUGELY brash and powerful incense and their suggestion to burn half a stick at a time is a good one. To explain this better, I could burn a stick of this in the evening, wake up, go downstairs, do a bunch of things and go back up in the early morning to still smell the main note as it hovers in the room many hours later. This would be a bad thing if it wasn’t such a good incense, but it is a tremendous thing for an incense as well-crafted as this one. It’s difficult to go much farther than to say it really is an equal combination of these notes, but in an era where both of these ingredients are expensive, and often too expensive for incense, the way the creators managed to still get some great and real smelling rose top notes out of the mix, not to mention a deep oudh base, should be congratulated. It will be sticks and sticks before I can really suss out the complexities here, but the main combination is absolutely top notch. An absolute classic, this one!

Festive Kiss is an essential oil blend on charcoal (I’d imagine the incense in the photos at the TOI link must have been the first vintage, what I have here does not look dusted) that Temple of Incense provides for the holidays and it’s a wonderful, cheery and perhaps surprisingly British-themed incense that certainly brings some nostalgia back for me from living there in the 70s. The list of ingredients is pine, cinnamon, orange, bergamot, and bayberry. The cinnamon and orange in the middle are a combination I have loved since a child in spiced tea, the pine gives everything a yuletide grounding, but I think it’s the bayberry here that gives this a nicely original twist on this sort of holiday scent. I asked the rhetorical question in one of the articles I wrote recently about which ingredients tend to do well in a charcoal base, and well here’s one of the answers right here. This is a lovely treat for the holidays and just from an incense perspective it’s completely unlike almost anything you have tried before.

Portobello is the Temple of Incense import of the great Meena Supreme. I have probably sampled a half dozen of these incenses and they all vary just a little bit (and some more than a little bit) but I am always particularly happy when you can get Meena Supreme out of those old carboard boxes and weak inner wrappers and into something a bit more protective that will hold the aroma longer. So of all the variants I’ve tried this is probably the best by probably the slightest of hairs, there is a bit of a thickness in the middle of the aroma that makes it a bit richer than I usually experience (as always the question here is just how fresh it is and based on this batch everything feels at a peak). Oh and hey we get a nice list of ingredients here, halmaddi, a vanillin base, gum benzoin and a touch of musk. It’s something of a simple list of things that come together to create a classic incense for sure, certainly the base itself is something that grounds several of the Meena line. If you haven’t tried the Meena Supreme, I highly recommend it, it has an aroma that you won’t find outside the company (well at least done properly), it has something of an almost creamy sort of base, with something of a light feel contrasted by a lot of complex notes in the middle. It’s absolutely one of a kind, and there’s no better place to start than with the Portobello.

I nearly went to publication with the above three, but the arrival of a couple sticks of Tulsi in my last package from TOI was a nice (eventual) reminder that this one was released a year or so ago right after Stephen was wrapping up the catalog. But it is absolutely one I wanted to add to our reviews as it’s a brilliant incense, easily in the line’s top 10 or 20. Tulsi is basically “Holy Basil,” and in a lot of incenses I’ve tried that claim to use it, it’s the herbal side of the basil that is usually accentuated. However, this incense sweetens it up in an absolutely beautiful and extremely arresting and user-friendly way that I’d imagine you’d never expect. I loved it the first time I tried it and have ever since (I’ve tried several variations of it and the more halmaddi the better). It has this sort of fruity-green middle (part of this is sort of like fresh kiwi fruit), quite attractive and friendly with the herbiness just being a slight component of this. It is in no way a pesto sort of basil scent and it made me wonder if the holy basil essential oil went in the direction of the major notes or if the creators moved it in this direction with other ingredients. Needless to say this one is brilliant, and well worth picking up, it’s certainly an incense that will go on my list to reorder when I’m close to running out.

So, overall I can enthusiastically recommend all four of these scents the next time you visit Temple of Incense. To wrap up here I also want to bring attention to the Temple of Incense Three Kings sampler, this is a nice way to sample the line’s Nag Champa Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh, all of which have been previously reviewed here, it’s nicely holiday themed. I see that it’s not the only sampler that TOI have added since I last visited, and they have also added quite a few incense and holder combos that should be of interest as well. You can scan their list of goodies here and elsewhere on the site for more information.

Leave a Comment

Bhagwan Incense / Dragon’s Blood, Fragrant Amber, Lavender Bliss, Saffron Sandalwood, Spring Blossom + notes on other fragrances

November 25, 2023 at 9:28 am (Amber, Benzoin (Loban), Bhagwan Incense, Cherry, Dragon's Blood, Honey, India, Lavender, Mike, Musk, Opium, Pine / Pinon, Rose, Saffron, Sandalwood, Vanilla, Ylang Ylang)

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!

Leave a Comment

Mermade Magickal Arts / Bacchant, Sandalwood Dragon, Luthier, Tangerine Dream

July 3, 2023 at 7:11 pm (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Benzoin (Loban), Black Currant, Calamus, Camphor, Borneol, Copal, Dragon's Blood, Frankincense, Grapefruit, Honey, Honeysuckle, Incense, Juniper, Labdanum, Lily, Mandarin, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Orange, Pine / Pinon, Raisin, Rose, Sandalwood, Sandarac, Tangerine, Tobacco, United States, Vanilla)

Before I took a look at the ingredients list of Bacchant, my initial impression was that it was something of a cousin to Holy Woods, as it seemed to hint a bit at the same minty notes on top. But then when I did look at them and then reheat the last piece in my sample, I felt like maybe the similarity was more the labdanum resin as there is a really obvious and clear-in-front black currant note (it reminds me of the pastilles I used to love when I was a child in England) that is the incense’s dominant front, ahead of that uniquely resinous labdanum center. This middle is something more caramel-confection sweet and I would imagine the vanilla has a lot to do with this, due to its use in cooking. There is a feeling that this is a bit close to some aspects of the Mermade kyphi (the raisins and honey I’d imagine), but I would also think the black currant is doing something analagous here to that almost wine-like scent you get in kyphis; when you tune into this the overall impression does seem quite Dionysian but equally as autumnal and season-related. There are also some similarities with some of Mermade’s green blends, although it isn’t one on its own. Overall, this has something of a feel of a fusion of a number of different directions of late, but the center of it feels quite decadent and sweet, a feeling of a wild party in swing. I also noticed on one or two occasions that the herb and flower mix the pieces come in can impart wholly different qualities on top that are quite fascinating, So certainly a unique new Mermade direction here.

I reviewed a previous vintage of Sandalwood Dragon here. The current vintage still seems pretty close and has about as much to do with the camphor as it does the sandalwood, it’s a pairing that really brings out some unique notes. It was interesting reading my thoughts on the previous version with the lime and citrus as this one has struck me separately as more in the orange/citrus range so I am not sure if this just a new and different take on it or there’s been some different character imparted by the frankincense and myrrh mix. But if you can imagine a sort of three-way conference among the sandalwood base, the picture-perfect camphor scent and the resin mix then you’ll get some idea of where this blend is coming from and how intricately everything interacts. I have yet to get the balance right with the heater on it as it seems like a lot of the top notes go too fast if you put it up high (which you may naturally do with sandalwood), but that initial mix is extremely beautiful, amd I hope to get the hang of it soon!

When I was young I used to bike to a record store that was next door to another store that sold stringed instruments. I wasn’t reminded of it until I first heated Luthier. On the face of it, this is an incense that actually looks almost exactly like a traditional catholic blend, but it seems mostly based on a mix of pine resin, copals and mastic, and you can actually smell all three of them quite clearly. You can find a description of the scent Kat was inspired by with this one and it really does capture an “incense [that] is created from the resins traditionally used in the crafting of violin varnish.” It’s a bit quieter than a resin mix that is catholic based which is pretty typical of these resins, but their scent really seems to match the smell of a classic instrument store. Part of it is that the resinous qualities of the wood really lean more to the sorts of turpentine-like scents you get in a wood shop, something that always makes me feel a bit nostalgic. A really wonderful and unique incense, something I am not sure if anyone has introduced to the market to date.

I would have probably liked Tangerine Dream whatever the blend was, let’s be honest, I’ve been a fan of the group since I was a teenager, so I love the tip on this one (and I had a neat synch reading Alastair Reynolds’ Redemption Ark, where a planet is also named Tangerine Dream, the night before I posted this!). And where I would normally argue how hard it is to get anything fruity in an incense right, Katlyn absolutely nails the tangerine scent in this one (the essential oil really does work here) and then marries it with a unique floral-fruity background into something very pretty and quite uncommon on the market at the moment. It reminds me of art where you have one central color that dissipates into other colors, all remaining complementary of the center. Also, in case you think I know what I’m doing, on my first two heats I didn’t even notice that the incense is actually the little kyphi-like pieces, because they were quite buried in the mix of flowers (in fact in this case it seems like there’s more floral than pieces)! The ingredients here are Crimson Kua myrrh, Sultan’s Green frankincense, Mysore sandalwood, benzoin, dragon’s blood resin, calamus root, oils blended with Nepali anthropogen flowers, tangerine, ruby grapefruit, blood orange, red mandarin, rose Anatolian, ginger lily, and honeysuckle melange (White Lotus). Much of this gigantic list I noticed as I added it to this review, for sure the dragon’s blood, the florals, the grapefruit, blood orange and others. It’s a very complex fruity-floral and really strikingly beautiful – you don’t just get a general tangerine scent, but it feels like you get the peel and the juice and then a whole bunch of additions that help play off the central notes.

Leave a Comment

Happy New Year (including Gokula and notes on Mermade Magickal Arts)!

January 5, 2023 at 10:47 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Anise, Balsam, Benzoin (Loban), Camphor, Borneol, Cardamom, Cedar, Chamomile, Cypress, Fir, Frankincense, Galbanum, Herbal, Incense, Incense Notes/Samplers, Jasmine, Juniper, Kyphi, Labdanum, Lotus, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Pine / Pinon, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, Sweetgrass, Tea, Tobacco, United States, Veronica)

I just posted the last two articles for my Gokula series today as Gokula is running a 20% off sale through 1/8, so I figured if you hadn’t checked the line out yet now is a perfect time! There are some definite goodies in their gigantic line and there’s actually a whole back half I didn’t review that are Mahavadhas sourced, so if you come across any of those that are good, do let us know in one of the Gokula post threads! Anyway, this takes us nearly to the end of the reviews stored up from last year, there may be a couple more to trickle in. More on this in a sec…

As I’ve been taking it easy over the holidays, I haven’t had too much of a chance to review or evaluate anything, but I did want to mention a few more Mermade Magickal Arts goodies. These aren’t intense reviews as I basically love all Mermade incenses which definitely all deserve deeper dives, but Katlyn tends to always be really busy during the holiday season and releases quite a few new vintages and I wanted to get in my thoughts before they’re gone. It was really nice to see Baccy Claus again, it’s at least the second vintage but I would guess the batch I had previously was before we started ORS up again. This one seems an improvement, never a surprise with Katlyn’s work, almost as if the middle had been brought up to match that peppery herbal note that makes this a scent unique in her catalog (think a mix of tobacco and herbal with the greener evergreen notes cradling this top scent). This one even has some unique elements in the mix with a touch of Amanita and Sativa, I’ve had the pleasure of an incense or two in the long past where Kat will mix something like this in and the results are always special and a bit different from the normal catalog. So certainly this is one to add to your cart right away.

Also checked out was her latest vintage of the Classic Kyphi, as I have long stated on these pages the Mermade kyphis are always well worth checking out, although I have been really unable to plumb the depths of this one quite yet. It’s really impossible to evaluate something this complex after just a sitting, but this will certainly be out right next to the heater over the next month. Some of the most recent kyphis strike me almost like drier wines compared to the sweeter ones, if you need an overall take. Forest Honey seems like a new experimental merging of two of her lines (say Sweet Medicine and Wild Wood for example) and is quite a bit different from Kat’s usual green holiday mix and a welcome variation. As always you get that great balance that allows you to experience both sides of the scent. But once again, I still need to dig out the time to really sit with it. Similarly with the Jasmine Dreams. I spend a lot of time both reviewing and evaluating and largely getting really fatigued by jasmine incenses over the last year, so it was great to get back to one that really highlights how good it can be. Perhaps part of the reason is this has a lot of green frankincense and repeat customers generally know how high quality this frankincense can be from Mermade. But this has a real nice peach note (resin seems to help bring this out) that you can often get out of the better jasmines and it seems like a perfect match with the better frankincense. So overall and as usual, it’s impossible not to recommend all these new treats, not to mention that it looks like Mermade has several Esprit de la Nature goodies in as well which always go really fast. I haven’t tried any of these but they’re always great as well. I would bet Bonnie probably has more at her site!

So with that said while there are probably a few more reviews in the wing to go, we’re reaching the end of the current “season.” This year is unique particularly in that there’s also very little in the current queue to review as well. I think we’ve debating internally that there are things like Satya incenses that I’ve sort of had on the table, but with less time to really review things of late it can be difficult to force yourself to take a look at incenses better worth avoiding. There’s a Review Information link at the top left if you’d like us to review your incenses, just let us know. Happy New Year everyone!

1 Comment

Mermade Magickal Arts / Goddess Temple – Katlyn’s Kyphi #2, Moon

October 19, 2021 at 6:11 am (Agarwood / Aloeswood / Eaglewood, Frankincense, Galbanum, Incense, Jasmine, Kyphi, Labdanum, Mastic, Mermade Magickal Arts, Mike, Myrrh, Okoume, Pine / Pinon, Sandalwood, Spice (Cinnamon Clove Nutmeg etc.), Styrax Liquidambar, United States)

There’s a virtual history of Mermade kyphis being reviewed at ORS going back to 2011 (and a much longer tradition of Mermade making them) if you take a look at our Reviews Index. The Egyptian Temple incenses known as Kyphi are not only some of the world’s most famous historical blends but they are some of the most involved, complex and fascinating as well. One of the things I find most fascinating about them is that in the right hands a kyphi incense can be both simple and complex, creating a composite aroma out of a large ingredients list. The amount of preparation that goes into one of these incenses can be daunting and based on Katlyn’s words at the incense link, she has devised a new way of blending Kyphis to save both time and energy, which will allow the incense to be made more available. Anyone who has tried a Mermade kyphi knows this is a very good thing indeed.

Reviewing a kyphi may not be as difficult as making one, but it’s a scent that is kind of hard to pin down. I’ve always used something like a fine wine or whiskey because the overall bouquet of a kyphi can be so rich and multi-faceted, usually with a distinct sense of age. It rarely feels like something you can just pick the elements out of, it’s more like the elements come together into something new. There are definitely similarities from one kyphi to another (usually for me it’s whatever the raisins and honey do, if they’re in there). However, I think this vintage, Goddess Temple – Katlyn’s Kyphi #2, is a bit different than previous years. It feels like this is more resin heavy overall. The ingredients listed are frankincense (Hougary, Black Sacra, and Honey), Yemeni myrrh, Pinon pine, labdanum, Chios mastic, Saigon cinnamon, Turkish galbanum, and styrax liquidambar, all dusted with agarwood powder. It’s interesting because this feels more like a modern reformulation of a kyphi, one I wouldn’t be quite as sure of if we weren’t in safe hands with a creator who has spun out years of brilliant kyphi vintages, not a one I didn’t love. While it does feel somewhat different from previous Mermade kyphis, and I’m assuming the #2 is marking the occasion, the feeling that this is still in the style with a lot of depth and creativity is still in place. The notes tend to loom larger than the listed mix with quite a bit of interesting floral activity and heavy spice content that becomes even more noticeable as the incense melts on a heater. I’m not sure if there are raisins or anything like that in the incense, but that sort of defining kyphi note is still in the mix somehow, it’s a scent that reminds me of anything from plums to prunes to raisins. I very much like the idea that this is now an “all year around” kyphi as if you’re a fan of loose incenses kyphi is really one of the first incense types I would recommend. So it is a very cool thing indeed that the availability of this has widened. It is still complex, releases all sorts of subnotes along the timeline of the heat, sings with really quality ingredients, and still has that lovely feeling of fine spirits about it.

Katlyn has done a lot of what I would call lunar blends as well (Temple of the Moon, Mermade Moon, Moon Goddess, and Luna all come to mind). These have what I would call western magical correspondences about them, which means they tend to have some up front jasmine notes. Mermade has done a lot of fine work with jasmine and you may not be surprised that Moon is another solid entry of the type. For this blend she has used Tamil heartwood sandalwood and Jasmine Grandiflorum in a base of Yemeni myrrh, kua, black frankincense, and rare okoume resin, with some Chios mastic drops mixed in. The sandal and jasmine mix is really what is out in front on this one, although it’s perhaps not quite as overtly floral as previous lunar Mermades, and I would guess the okoume resin is giving the entire scent an intriguing subnote, a little bit of a slight gravel that I might liken to some copals and that helps the scent not to get too safe. So overall it’s a bit of a different direction for a lunar, a bit more fruity floral overall with some intriguing wood and resin subnotes to top it off. But I think in the end you will want to visit it for the sandalwood and jasmine mix.

Oh and before I close, there’s great news on the “restock” front in that Sweet Medicine is back in stock. I know I’m incredibly happy to see this beautiful honey and sweetgrass scent become a mainstay, it is one of my favorites in a great line up of goodies, so be absolutely sure to pop off and grab some.

2 Comments

Temple of Incense / Tulsi, Desert Sage, Dragon’s Blood, Frankincense

August 31, 2021 at 6:29 am (Basil / Tulasi / Tulsi, Cedar, Eucalyptus, Frankincense, Incense, India, Mint, Pine / Pinon, Rosewood, Sage, Stephen, Temple of Incense)

Temple of Incense Part 7
Temple of Incense Part 9
The entire Temple of Incense review series can be found at the Incense Reviews Index

While the plan was to go in alphabetical order, the fine ladies at Temple of Incense decided to send me two samples and they said they are coming to the website soon so this is a sneak preview of Tulsi and then we go back to the alphabetical crawl through the ToI catalog.

Tulsi arrives as a thick extruded agarbatti that looks to be a mixture of charcoal and aromatics, finished with a brown powder. It lights up into a warm, mildly sweet scent that is dominated by tulsi. My caveat to talking about this is most of my tulsi olfactory experience comes from the tea, which steeping in boiling water is different than extracting the oil and combusting it. What I get here is something that comes across as warm and fresh, with a herbal note that almost pushes into the lavender/fabric softener range. The soft sweetness could be a touch of halmaddi or similar binder/sweetener.

As I mentioned, being relatively new to Indian Incense, I don’t have the experience to talk about the stuff from 10 or 20 years ago and compare, but one thing that I can do is mention that in the 100s of sticks I’ve sniffed that have mentioned tulsi as an ingredient, none of them were as pleasant as this one, in fact, until this stick, I had started to think that tulsi was a note to avoid in incense, as I was starting to associate it with a Ivory Soap type of smell. But none of that is here. What I like so much is how fresh this is and how it seems to freshen a room and brighten it.

Speaking of cleansing, Desert Sage is one of the entries from ToI that follows on the tails of the likes of ‘Big Cleanse’ in that many of the ingredients are used as space cleansing for intentional work. They list eucalyptus, sage, mint, rosewood, cedar and pine on the box. Coming out of the box, unlit, the scent is like a sage bundle. But when you light it, you get more of the other ingredients in a shifting interplay that sometimes combines into a minty, cool, refreshing sort of scent and other times you just get a whiff of cedar or eucalyptus.

You can tell they are using high quality oils both because it smells great as it burns but also because it lit up like a torch soaked in gasoline. There are moments when the pine shines through it all, and others where the cool mint can be felt, but mostly this is good for anyone who likes ANY of these scents because they are all rather in the same ‘school’, they all come across cool, clean and refreshing. I’m going to mention that initially, when I got all the samples and had 1 of everything, this was the first stick I didn’t like. Now that I bought a box of it, I can tell the first one was contaminated by nearby samples because of how much more this smells like the ingredients and not like a bar of soap.

Dragon’s Blood is an extruded agarbatti with a red powder finish that stains the bamboo stick. Absolute Bliss sells this same stick as ‘Red Blood Dragon‘. This is a very fruity and sweet interpretation of the resin, and the stick format is similar to the other resin sticks in this lineup; like Amber, Myrrh, Frankincense, all have similar extruded resin-agarbatti though this one is a bit thinner. The masala is charcoal heavy because it is very black under the red powder.

This is almost like having a cherry soda or similar kind of treat. I would call it a ‘nose dessert’ because of how sweet it is. The nice thing is that it has a lot of class. Some sweet types of incense get too cloying, but this is one of those things that reminds of one of my weird friends who asked if I’d ever had microwaved Kool-Aid. This is what the microwave smelled like after we boiled a few cups of ‘berry’ Kool-Aid. It was delicious, by the way, hot Kool-Aid. I’m fairly sure that this incense will titillate anyone who loves sweet but also needs a bit of class, like choosing Tiramisu over a Snickers Bar.

Frankincense opens up with a nice serrata/frefreana citrus note. This is a thick extruded agarbatti with a soft coating of powder and it burns a bit slower than average. If you’re familiar with Happy Hari’s King of Frankincense, this is the same stick coming from the same maker, even the bamboo core is the same color and size.

One of the things as I was getting introduced to Indian style incense is that many times if frankincense appeared in the name it was never available in the scent. Even the high end Pure Incense Connoisseur Frankincense doesn’t actually smell like frankincense. But this one does. There isn’t actually much else competing with the scent other than maybe something salty that I can occasionally detect as possibly one of the binders. This is easily one of my favorite frankincense sticks, if you like the Tennendo Frankincense, you will most likely like this and it burns for an hour or so, too!

1 Comment

« Older entries