Incensum Benzoin

 

This is a very pleasant masala incense made in "The Incensum Village", South India. There is a website, www.incensum.in, which in Oct 2022 was not working - however, it has existed on the internet since at least 2007, and there are glimpses of it available on WayBack. Incensum Incense appears to have been founded in 2000 as "Project Incensum" - an independent research project which became "a collective effort of many incense traders, retailers, fragrance professionals and scores of incense lovers from many countries", and then produced its own incense in Coimbatore, South India, with its own group of workers, shown here.  I am unsure if it still exists, and I can't recall where I got this packet of incense from.  There is an incense company, Vittal Lalitham Aashirvaad, who occupy the same premises in Coimbatore, but it's unclear what relationship, if any, there is between the two. 

There is a very pleasant scent on the stick which appears to be oil/perfume based, and is sweet, woody, musky, sexual, very attractive. This is a charcoal based masala, coated with a woody melnoorva to prevent the finished products from sticking together. Melnoorva is usually made from a mixture of charcoal powder and jigat (also called joss powder, jiggat, jiggit) which is fine powdered tree bark. 

The scent on the burn is woody and natural. It burns evenly and slowly, and gently informs the room with its clean, woody scent. This is a decent quality incense - solid, traditional, and without frills. It's calming and reassuring and comforting, with a refined and gentle sense of cleansing. It gives a long burn which leaves a gentle and pleasing aroma.  Decent stuff. 

Date: Oct 2022    Score: 32 

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