This is delightful - a proper sweet and dreamy agarwood scent. The sticks are 9 inches with 7 1/2 inches of neatly hand-rolled black paste coated with a fine brown wood powder. The scent on the stick is fresh and volatile, despite being over three years old. It is rich and woodsy, and quite compelling, though with a touch of cool menthol and shoe polish. On lighting the flame burns brightly, with a modicum of black smoke, then, when blown out, the stick smoulders gently producing a pale grey ghost column of smoke. The burn lasts for around 70 minutes. The scent gently but firmly warms the room with a very reassuring and seductive agarwood. Quite a solid, clean scent. Very yummy. Quite divine. Moved up a few points into Heavenly. This is gorgeous stuff.
Date: Sept 2023 Score: 40
Another brand by N.Ranga Rao & Sons, who have enlarged their operations under the umbrella of NR Group to cover marketing and manufacturing. Rao's most famous incense brands are Cycle and Flute. The group tends to prefer perfumed incense, though do offer some masala incense, such as this Manmohak brand Oudh.
It's a decent woody scent, quite traditional masala with some sense of the wooly scent of halmaddi. The scent on the stick is quite gorgeous, and does have the subtle, sweet, oily, musky tones of agarwood. And there is a cleansing aura in the room afterwards. A subtle vibration that underlies the sweet masala incense aroma. It's less impressive when being burned. Not to say that it is in anyway unpleasant or disappointing, merely that it simply does the job without creating any sense of wonder.
I like this. A very decent masala incense with an oudh awareness.
Date: Dec 2019 Score: 35
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| The best agarwood incense |
Manmohak Oudh was my first Oudh incense and I love it. I tried many oudh incense eventually got my hands on real oudh (expensive but amazing) and I still go back to this Oudh incense. The blend has been really done well according to me.
ReplyDeleteI find Ranga Rao to be a very solid incense house. Very experienced. Decent quality incense at all levels. Varied and interesting. I can understand why they are one of India's (the world's?) most successful and best selling incense companies.
DeleteYes, this is also the reason for being the best selling incense companies but another reason is that they are the first ones to advertise incenses on television, according to their legacy page in their nrrs website.
DeleteGosh, they were advertising on TV back in the Seventies. Many incense companies hadn't even been born yet.
DeleteYup that was shocking. Most incense companies started advertising on Tv I think in early 90’s. I remember seeing Padmini Gulistan’s advert, Hem Precious ranges advert, Hari Darshan Adverts and Cycle Three in one advert back in 90’s.
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