Incense in The Wind: Best sandalwood incense

Sandalwood, one of the basic fragrant woods used in incense, is both fragrant and aids the burning. Most Indian incense will have some proportion of sandalwood. Chandan is Sanskrit for sandalwood, and is a common name for Indian sandalwood incense.

Sandalwood has been so widely used in India for perfumes and incense, that the true sandalwood tree is now a protected species, and most sandalwood comes from other trees and plants, or even from synthetic sources, such as the chemical IBCH. Sandalwood oil from Mysore is protected by the local government. Only the local government is allowed to purchase the local sandalwood. Until the First World War extracting oil from sandalwood In India was crude, so major users of sandalwood oil, first the Chinese, then the Germans, purchased the wood, and distilled it themselves. When the First World War started, the Germans stopped buying the wood, and other exports also suffered. So the local government sought assistance from two British scientists, who started up the first sandalwood oil production in India. Mysore sandalwood has attracted a positive reputation since then. Most sandalwood comes from Australia, with larger production, and the ability to use more of the tree than Indian sandalwood, Australian sandalwood is more economical. It is not uncommon that history and restricted access gives a product a certain appeal. Mysore sandalwood has that appeal.

Australian sandalwood has the largest production, but is considered of lower quality as it doesn't have a number of key ingredients, so is mainly used in incense production.

There are several well known and very effective synthetic sandalwood oils, such as Sandalore, Sandaxol / Sandal Mysore Core, and Bacdanol. Perfume makers discuss which one is best to use on Reddit forums; though it is generally considered best to use a variety of different synthetics along with natural sandalwood oil because people react differently to aroma compounds, and also because combining them gives a more rounded and complex aroma. Of the synthetic-perfume incenses I think I tend to get along more with the sandalwoods than I do most others.

The scent is warm and woody, often sweet and kinda sexy with elements of musk and amber, and may be earthy and leathery. There's also often a sort of creamy, milky association with the scent. It's generally a soft scent, not harsh or intrusive, and at its best will be genuinely beguiling.

From Wikipedia:
Sandalwood is the name of a class of fragrant woods from trees in the genus Santalum. The woods are heavy, yellow, and fine-grained, and unlike many other aromatic woods they retain their fragrance for decades. As well as using the harvested and cut wood, essential oils are also extracted from the woods for use. Both the wood and the oil produce a distinctive fragrance that has been highly valued for centuries. Consequently, the slow-growing trees have been over-harvested in many areas.

From Botanical.com:
The trees are felled or dug up by roots; the branches are worthless, so are cut off. It is usual to leave the trunk on the ground for several months for the white ants to eat away the sap wood, which is also of no value; it is then trimmed and sawn into billets 2 to 2 1/2 feet long and taken to mills in the forests, where it is again trimmed and sorted into grades. It is heavy, hard, but splits easily; colour light yellow, transverse sections yellow to light reddish brown, with alternating light and dark concentric zones nearly equal in diameter, numerous pores, and traversed by many very narrow medullary rays. Odour characteristic, aromatic, persistent; taste peculiar, strongly aromatic. Indian Sandalwood is a Government monopoly.

Excellent resource:
Fragrantica.com