Incense Review: Faircense Vanille-Benzoe

These sticks appear to be made of masala hand-rolled onto a rather thick bamboo splint. The scent on the stick is fairly muted for an Indian-style stick. This usually indicates more of a reliance on whole-botanicals rather than oils and other concentrates. In the burn, the benzoin is very prominent, revealing a bit of that plastic note that benzoin can have at high percentages. There is a warm vanilla note also, but I wish it was stronger against the benzoin. I do tend to like vanilla incense, but vanilla really isn’t the focus here: there’s none of that tobacco and dried-fruit richness that can come with vanilla-forward sticks. I also detect something of a nutmeg, stale-cinnamon, and general baking-spice note, a play-doh note, and, although quiet, the scent of the rather thick burning splint that supports the masala. The fragrance strength is reasonable; strong, but not so much that I can’t share a room with it (although I do have the door open and the ceiling fan on low); the fragrance strength is probably on par with Tennendo’s vanilla sticks. I prefer benzoin as a supporting player, so I don’t know that I would choose to buy this stick myself, but I’m not mad at it either. This stick was kindly sent to me by Irene of rauchfahne.de, whose review can be found here.