Satya (Mumbai) Patchouli Forest

Third review - scroll down for earlier

I've just reviewed a Mumbai Rain Forest from around 2015. It was predominantly a synthetic-perfume incense. Out of interest I grabbed a couple of other Satya packets to compare, and this was the first that came to hand. This box has the second Nagaraj Mumbai logo - which is somewhat different to the original Satya logo and the first Nagaraj logo. 

  

Top left: original logo - Top right: Mumbai 1st
Bottom left: Bangalore - Bottom right: Mumbai 

It also has the address of Nagaraj's factory in Bangalore. The premises in Mumbai were not a incense factory - they were offices, warehouse and distribution.  It is likely that Nagaraj was commissioning the early incense he sold after the brother's split up in 2014. A number of those incenses, such as the  Rain Forest, predominantly use synthetic fragrances, and have few characteristics of what people associate with a masala incense. The inner sleeve has an opaque whitish appearance. 

The sticks area standard 8 inches long with around 6 1/2 inches of hand-rolled paste on a plain bamboo splint, and covered in a fluffy melnoorva powder - which is a tree bark or other wood powder used to stop the sticks from gluing together as they dry, and also to give an attractive and appropriate appearance. Some melnoorva powder may also be fragranced - and may be called masala powder.  The stick has a mild scent. The scent is fresh and natural and woody - quite delicious. On the burn there is a warm prickly peppery scent of raw sheep's wool, which I tend to associate with the use of halmaddi - a gum resin used as a binder and diffuser of the scents in the incense. The fragrance in the burn is not clearly defined, and there is a more a general impression of "masala incense". Warm, woody, earthy, natural - slightly herby, slightly floral. Some sweat. The sweat is a warm, mainly fresh sweat on a natural garment such as a wool top. The whole is moderately sexy, moderately masculine.  Pleasant and relaxing, though with just an edge of unease from the sweat and prickles. A decent though not delicious incense. 

Date:  Jan 2024    Score:  37

Second review

After reviewing Balkrishna's Patchouli and  Nagraj's Patchouli Forest side by side, and getting more familiar with Nagraj Patchouli Forest I find it to be sweeter and muskier and more pleasant and more like patchouli than I had originally thought. As of this moment (and that could change), I am more inclined toward the Patchouli Forest than Balkrishna's Patchouli, and I'm upping my score.

Date: Aug 2019    Score: 38

First review

I'm alternating between the latest offerings from the Satya brothers - Nagraj Setty in Mumbai, and Balkrishna Setty in Bangalore/Bengaluru (BNG), and casually, just burning them individually, I'm not finding any significant differences. I don't think, at the moment, I could tell them apart on a blind testing. This was not true a couple of years ago, when Nagraj's incense was of a clearly inferior quality, but today (2019) the brother' output is pretty much the same. I've not yet done a side by side of the same fragrance, as they appear to keep themselves just a tad apart. So Balkrishna (BNG) has a Patchouli, while Nagraj has a Patchouli Forest.  Nagraj has a Jasmine Blossom, while Balkrishna (BNG) has an Egyptian Jasmine. Etc.

This is a pleasant through fairly generic masala incense. I'm not really getting much in the way of patchouli scent, it's more of a sweet sandalwood informed by a gentle awareness of halmaddi. It's good stuff, and figures reasonably high in my list of incense reviews,  but it's not really standing out from other decent quality masala. So, it's there in the middle of my Decent Everyday Stuff.

I'll review Balkrishna's Patchouli next, and then do a side by side comparison.

Date: July 2019    Score: 35 

***

Satya (Shrinivas Sugandhalaya)

Patchouli

Satya (BNG) Frankincense

This is very pleasant. Sweet, slightly vanilla like, and with a mild sense of halmaddi. It is a traditional masala incense, so if you like traditional masala, you'll like this. It's fairly middle of the road, there's nothing special about it, but nothing bad either. Some masala halmaddi enthusiasts may find it a little bland, but nobody should actively dislike it. It has a pleasant oily quality - a warm sensual essential oil scent, sweet, woody, and more toward sandalwood than frankincense, though it has some orange oil and church incense notes as well, which for me are key ingredients in frankincense. It smells better on the stick than it does when burned, though I find this is fairly common to most incenses. On the whole I find this "very nice" rather than "wow!", and while a pleasant example of frankincense,  not for me a defining example, which tends to be the resin itself.

This is made by Balkrishna Setty, the brother who has the original Satya factory in Bangalore, and uses the original Satya production methods and recipes,


Date: July 2019    Score:   39

***

Satya (Shrinivas Sugandhalaya)

Frankincense

Padmini Clove Incense

Third review - for earlier reviews scroll down

A simple stick - cheaply and crudely made with hand-cut bamboo splints of varying thickness, yet the scent is sublime. Musky sweet, with an intoxicating depth. This is my original stock, so is over four years old, yet the scent still feels fresh and resonant, yet also subtle and complex. Whatever oil has been used in this stick it works for me. The middle to top notes are warm and spicy with memories of nutmeg, cinnamon, and clove - like a Christmas biscuit, and this informs and keeps alive and interesting the hearty base which is woody, sweet, and musky. 

I'm not one to consider the intentions of a perfume maker - I enjoy the thoughts of Roland Barthes as expounded in The Death of The Author, which formed the basis of reader-response theory, which can be summed up as "the meaning of a text is not determined by the author's intention, but rather by the reader's interpretation".  Each of us bring to a scent our individual experiences, memories, emotions, hormones, and each moment we experience a scent is different to the next, subject to the room's atmosphere, the time of day, what we have just smelt, our mood, etc. I'm interested in the background of an incense - how it was made, who made it, etc, as that can be informative and interesting, and will often add to my personal experience. But the main enjoyment will be my personal and individual response to the scent at that moment. So while it will inform my understanding to know what the Balaji perfumer was intending as they created this fragrance, I suspect they were simply looking to make a pleasant scent based on clove. And in a private moment of inhaling the scent, which may link me to the perfumer or not, I am simply relaxing into the moment and enjoying the unfolding of this clove perfume. 

Yes, I like this. Very much.  

Date: Oct 2023  Score:  40 

 

Second review

I just noticed that this Clove Incense was my highest rated perfume dipped incense, and was in my Top Drawer. But I couldn't recall much about it. So I've dug it out and tried it again. Now, notwithstanding that it is a perfumed incense and is nearly three years old, this doesn't strike me as an incense that should be in my Top Drawer. Though it does deserve to be in Decent Stuff. It's a pleasant and slightly different perfumed incense with an attractive and unusual scent of clove. I suspect I was a bit carried away by the uniqueness of the clove aroma. It was my favourite incense for a brief moment back in the summer of 2019, but as of now, is more of a modest, low cost, but pleasing incense and something a bit  different.

Date: Jan 2022    Score: 33 

First review

O gosh this works for me - it's my current favourite incense, and I have almost finished the packet. 74p for a pack of 10 from JustAromatherapy.  I don't think I've had a clove incense before, but "the dried bud of tropical myrtle"  does indeed produce "a fragrance that's warm, tranquil and everlasting". It is sweet, floral, spicy, woody, exotic, sensual, relaxing, earthy, natural, and really quite wonderful.  Totally yummy.

Date: July 2019   Score:  45 

***

Padmini