Incense in The Wind: Ancient Wisdom Bulk/Loose Incense (assorted fragrances)

Stopping for lunch at the Salt Cellar cafe at the top of Gold Hill in Shaftesbury (famous for the Hovis advert), we popped into a hippy shop, and my daughter and I were taken by a display of loose incense with an offer of 10 sticks for £1.75. We had a few moments of fun picking out the ten sticks we preferred.

The incense is made by an unknown incense house in India, and imported by UK wholesalers Ancient Wisdom who sell the sticks in bulk for a 1p each. I'm just going to burn a little bit of each one, and then hand them back to my daughter.

Fooling around on Gold Hill

The sticks vary in length from 10 to 10 1/2 inches. The thickness also varies. All appear to be hand rolled. And all are coloured. All have a dry, hard paste with a covering of powder. The scents on the stick are gentle, perfumed, pleasant. Mostly quite minerally and dry. Some soft fruit notes with an edge of sweetness. These would be widely regarded as perfumed dipped. Leaving them open in the shop makes them vulnerable to evaporation of the scent. I have little expectation that these will be good incenses.

The sticks

Lemongrass

Scent on the stick is green, herby, soapy, touch of sea salt, faintly, modestly pleasant. The scent on the burn is herbal - quite green, like cannabis. There is some burning sawdust now and again - an indicator that the scent has largely evaporated. Fresh this might be acceptable, but as it is now it has faded a tad too far.
Score: 18

Hemp flower

Soapy notes seem to be quite common on these sticks. This has a musky base. Some sweet sandalwood. Herby indications. A little candy sweetness. Some of that comes through on the burn, but faintly. More clear is the burning of damp sawdust, some dried cow pats, and then a faint low end musky/patchouli scent. This is borderline.
Score: 20

Ancient Times

Soapy, mineral, faintly sweet, floral, bath oils. All these sticks have a generic synthetic perfume fragrance - the sort of thing you'd find on cheap soaps, bath oils, room refreshers, etc. They are very similar, modestly pleasant, and ultimately unsatisfactory. They are not awful. But they don't impress. This one, being a little fatter than the others, have a good volume of smoke, but the scent is lesser - the aroma on the burn is inclined more toward the sawdust than the perfume. But when the perfume wins out, it's an acceptable blend of florals, musk, and wood which points towards sandalwood.

Score: 21

Witch Doctor

This is quite warm and sultry. There's coconut, rose tea, musk, warm sand, sex. This one should have been called Sex on The Beach. It has a tropical island feel to it. It's quite a fat one - one of the fattest. lots of smoke on the burn, and goose grease, burning sawdust, along with memories of the scent on the stick - especially the coconut. Yeah, this is promising. I think if this were fresh it would be quite acceptable.
Score: 23

Frankincense & Myrrh

A gently sweet, soapy, scent on the stick. A curiously fishy scent initially on the burn which settles into somewhat softly musky, gently sweet, which I could be convinced points in the direction of Frankincense & Myrrh. Hmm. This is actually reasonably pleasant. Low end, but not abysmal.

Score: 23

Apple & Cinnamon

There's an apple scent - no awareness of cinnamon. Some sweetness. Some floral - roses. Another chunky one - the bamboo splint is a square hunk. On the burn there's some sweet sawdust. It's like apple juice soaked wood being burned. Inclines toward sweet. Borderline.
Score: 20

Spices

Soapy again. Marine. Some fruit. Faint wood. Not much in the way of spices. Of course, it's possible we got some of the sticks mixed up. And it's also possible that the sticks got jumbled in the shop. Who knows. And who really cares? There's not a significant difference between these scents - they all hover around gently pleasant, inoffensive, slightly soapy, everyday synthetic room and product fragrances. Nothing really bold and interesting, such as with Juicy Jay's or Wild Berry, who have the same marketing approach of putting loose perfumed sticks in jars or holders, but the end result is the same. An invitation on the stick, and a disappointment on the burn. This one ends up a little too sawdusty.
Score: 18

Seagrass Ocean

This is the fattest stick of those we chose. It has a mineral and marine scent. It is the most volatile of the sticks - probably the freshest. It is mildly citric with bergamot and lavender. The aroma on the burn is warm, slightly smoky with notes of fresh onion and artificial bacon smoke. The perfume struggles to remain on top against the intruding smell of burning sawdust. The fattest sticks do seem to the ones that have the most difficultly retaining the perfume, which is the opposite of what I thought might be the case. But, I suppose, if they're all dipped in the liquid perfume for the same amount of time, then they'll probably absorb roughly the same amount of perfume, with the perfume not fully penetrating to the centre of the fatter ones.

Score: 21

Patchouly

It's kind of sad how all these different scents, albeit they are fairly generic anyway, end up smelling so alike. I do enjoy patchouli, it's long been my favourite scent, but this bears little resemble to that scent. I wonder if, because of the spelling, it is meant to be a copy of the perfume, Patchouly - which apparently contains more wood and amber than patchouli. This does present as more distinctly wood and amber (with some of the mineral and soap, which seems to be endemic to this range of sticks) than patchouli.

Score: 20

Sex On The Beach

Quite a fruity name, and quite a fruity scent. There's peach and cranberry, so it's clear that the scent is intended as a copy of the famous cocktail invented by barman Ted Pizio in the Confetti bar in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. As with the others, the perfume struggles on the burn, and there's a little too much of the smell of sawdust for comfort. Shame, as the fruity aroma is otherwise quite pleasant.

Score: 22

Date: Dec 2023 Score: 21

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