My previous experience with Song of India has been their perfumed incense. This one is termed a "Premium Masala", which appears to me to be a modest everyday masala in which the main scent comes from a perfume into which the stick has been dipped, rather like the Green Tree Call Of The Shaman and Tulasi Nag Champa & Rose masala sticks which I have reviewed today, and which holds a faint relationship with the Shroff wet masala I burned yesterday. A charcoal paste has been hand rolled onto a slim pink dyed bamboo stick, then rolled in a finishing powder and dipped in a perfume or oil. The volatility feels more like a perfume than an oil. It is a pleasant perfume with light, candy sweet, floral notes. But it is not profound. It's simply pleasant.
There has been a certain similarity in the incense I have burned today, which appear to me to be a sort of style of "masala" incense (which may be geared more to the Western than Asian market) rather like a perfumed masala, or an upmarket perfume-dipped incense. These have not been traditional masalas where the fragrance comes from a selection of dried and finely crushed plant and resin ingredients, nor are they the heady or rich or alluring moist masalas to which are added a blend of essential oils, and which are known as floras or fluxos or durbars; these sticks appear to be modest masalas in which the main fragrance, rather like standard perfume-dipped sticks, comes from the liquid perfume. But, this is just speculation.
The end result of whichever method has been used to make these sticks is a pleasant everyday incense which burns for a reasonable length of time, giving the room a decent coating of light, playful, floral scent - a little bit jasmine, a little bit rose. Sometimes the stick burns a little hot and smoky, and sometimes the scent wanders to woody, but mostly it is a moderately pleasant light floral hinting at baby powder or talc. It's decent stuff. Not top end. but decent enough. Available in the UK from Just Aromatherapy at £1.45 for 15g, or from Spirit-Raeucherwerk [not available] in Germany, or SunDrops [out of stock] in Australia. [2025 update]
Date: Jan 2022 Score: 30
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| R. Expo / Song Of India |
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