Shroff Channabasappa Pearl

 

Ah! This is my sort of incense: sweet, sensual, playful, beautiful - a blend of woods, musks, florals and resins. The scent on the stick is divine. There is so much happening. It is highly perfumed (more like a top end perfumed incense than a traditional herbs and barks incense) and quite gorgeous. I now understand the term "wet" as Shroff's descriptor for this group of their incenses. I am more familiar with flora/fluxo incenses being moist with oils, so I expected Shroff's "wet" incenses to be similarly moist. However, they don't need to be moist to be perfumed. Indeed, most perfumed incense (or "perfume-dipped", the common term used in the West) is quite dry, because the charcoal absorbs the liquid of the perfume. So my speculation is that Shroff's "wet" incenses are perfumed masala - in addition to the dried ingredients - the finely crushed flower petals, roots, resins, tree bark, etc, there appears to be a delicate and subtle use of oils and perfumes. Not heavy as in a flora/fluxo style incense like Sri Sai Flora, but lighter, more playful. 

The stick is a standard bamboo stick, hand rolled with a generous fragrant charcoal paste, and then rolled in a finishing powder. With some flora/fluxo type incenses it can be detected that the finished stick is dipped in fragrance oil, as the outside of the stick is glossy and moist; I suspect with this stick, the perfumes and/or oils were mixed into the charcoal paste before being rolled onto the stick. The benefit of that is there are less of the volatile ingredients on the outside of the stick,  so there is less of the petrol or neat alcohol scent, and much more of the fragrant perfume/oil ingredients. The scent on the stick is predominantly baby powder or talc. There is some rose, some jasmine, some clay, some benzoin, and a touch of spicy red cedarwood. I love it. 

The burn is a little more woody and spicy than the stick. Certainly less sweet. I often find that the heavier scent elements, such as the woods and musks, are more prominent during burns than the lighter, generally sweeter and more floral scents which are more prominent on the stick. This scent is not powerful, though it does spread and inform a room. I tend to like this sort of incense. I am usually not after noise and intrusion - I want a scent that I can detect, for sure, but I don't want it to swamp out all else.  In this case, though, because I liked the scent on the stick so much, I want more of it on the burn than I am getting. As it burns, some prickly warm wool comes forth, suggestive of a relatively modest amount of halmaddi. 

I like this incense. I find it quite modern in its perfume, and quite modern in its discrete dispersal through the room. The balance here seems more tipped toward flexible and beautiful oils and perfumes, giving a light, sweet, and sensual feel, than to dried plants and resins, which tend to be more woody, dark, serious, insistent and prickly. This feels delightfully feminine. 

I would like the lighter scents which I found on the stick to make themselves more known during the burn, and, though I like the gentle dispersal, I would like a tad more presence. But, all in all, along with the Orange Blossom, this is my favourite Shroff so far. It costs 7.95 Euros (about £6.65) for 50g from Padma Store in Germany.  Shroff incense can be bought in America from EssenceOfTheAges. 

Date: Jan 2020   Score: 39 

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Shroff Incense

Reviewed on ORS