This is lovely incense. Cinnamon has a gorgeous fragrance - warm, spicy, inviting, and uplifting; that it makes a wonderful ingredient for incense. Mankind has been beguiled by the fragrance of cinnamon since the dawn of civilization. It was known to the Phoenicians - the great early traders and city builders of the Mediterranean; indeed, the name cinnamon comes from the Phoenician language. And it was known to the Ancient Egyptians, who, according to the Ancient Greek historian Diodorus of Sicily, used it during mummification: "they carefully dress the whole body for over thirty days, first with cedar oil and certain other preparations, and then with myrrh, cinnamon, and such spices as have the faculty not only of preserving it for a long time but also of giving it a fragrant odour." It is sometimes named as one of the ingredients of Kyphi, the legendary incense of Egypt. It was a such a prized product that dealers concealed where they obtained it, leading to fantastical stories of the Cinnamon bird which built its nest out of cinnamon sticks.
Cinnamon is made from several related trees: true cinnamon comes from the bark of Cinnamomum verum, also known as Ceylon cinnamon; though there are other cinnamons from the related cassias trees, giving Indonesian, Saigon, and, the most common, Chinese cinnamon, which accounts for almost half of all cinnamon sold. Cinnamon is mainly associated with food flavouring, especially in things like milk puddings, apple pies, pastries, curries, and Chai tea or coffee, though also has various health properties. The active ingredient in cinnamon, and the one mainly responsible for the familiar scent, is cinnamaldehyde, which can be synthesized, but natural cinnamaldehyde is cheap and easy to obtain via steam distillation. If an incense house wanted to cut costs, they would more likely dilute natural cinnamon oil or powder with something like DEP rather than use a synthetic. And they would likely use the cheaper Chinese cinnamon rather than Ceylon, and also use an oil that was distilled from other parts of the tree, like the leaves, rather than the bark.
I find this Balaji Cinnamon so attractive, that I feel cinnamon should be used for often as an incense ingredient, and if I didn't have such a mind-boggling back log that MUST BE REDUCED, I would go off and investigate more cinnamon incenses. I have tried around 11 so far, with HEM Cinnamon Masala Incense, being the one I enjoyed the most. Many of the cinnamon incenses I've tried so far have been fairly basic perfume-dipped, though HEM seem to specialise in cinnamon, as their perfume-dipped example I've also enjoyed: HEM Cinnamon.
Anyway - back to the Balaji. The paste on the sticks has been crudely hand applied - it looks like dried sandy mud. It's a hard and crumbly paste. It smells gorgeous - warm and spicy with some apple notes, clove, and a very mild, faint volatility. I love it. It's a warm, mature, sexy aroma. There's a confidence about it, like an older, more experienced sexual partner; and also something slightly intimidating and off-putting, but not in a negative way. The scent on the burn is absolutely heavenly. I love it. It's an exotic, erotic, warm, spicy, attractively and sexily sweet aroma which for some reason puts Arabia in my mind. It's not a perfect burn - it can be a bit crude, suggesting that this isn't true cinnamon but the cruder Chinese. The uneven rolling means there is an inconsistency in the burn - some sticks have a sort of backflow experience with darker smoke emerging from little cracks lower down in the paste. There's woody elements to the fragrance, which though a little harsh, add some variation to the scent experience, which otherwise can be a little overbearing. Those little quibbles aside, I adore this incense.
Cinnamon is made from several related trees: true cinnamon comes from the bark of Cinnamomum verum, also known as Ceylon cinnamon; though there are other cinnamons from the related cassias trees, giving Indonesian, Saigon, and, the most common, Chinese cinnamon, which accounts for almost half of all cinnamon sold. Cinnamon is mainly associated with food flavouring, especially in things like milk puddings, apple pies, pastries, curries, and Chai tea or coffee, though also has various health properties. The active ingredient in cinnamon, and the one mainly responsible for the familiar scent, is cinnamaldehyde, which can be synthesized, but natural cinnamaldehyde is cheap and easy to obtain via steam distillation. If an incense house wanted to cut costs, they would more likely dilute natural cinnamon oil or powder with something like DEP rather than use a synthetic. And they would likely use the cheaper Chinese cinnamon rather than Ceylon, and also use an oil that was distilled from other parts of the tree, like the leaves, rather than the bark.
I find this Balaji Cinnamon so attractive, that I feel cinnamon should be used for often as an incense ingredient, and if I didn't have such a mind-boggling back log that MUST BE REDUCED, I would go off and investigate more cinnamon incenses. I have tried around 11 so far, with HEM Cinnamon Masala Incense, being the one I enjoyed the most. Many of the cinnamon incenses I've tried so far have been fairly basic perfume-dipped, though HEM seem to specialise in cinnamon, as their perfume-dipped example I've also enjoyed: HEM Cinnamon.
Anyway - back to the Balaji. The paste on the sticks has been crudely hand applied - it looks like dried sandy mud. It's a hard and crumbly paste. It smells gorgeous - warm and spicy with some apple notes, clove, and a very mild, faint volatility. I love it. It's a warm, mature, sexy aroma. There's a confidence about it, like an older, more experienced sexual partner; and also something slightly intimidating and off-putting, but not in a negative way. The scent on the burn is absolutely heavenly. I love it. It's an exotic, erotic, warm, spicy, attractively and sexily sweet aroma which for some reason puts Arabia in my mind. It's not a perfect burn - it can be a bit crude, suggesting that this isn't true cinnamon but the cruder Chinese. The uneven rolling means there is an inconsistency in the burn - some sticks have a sort of backflow experience with darker smoke emerging from little cracks lower down in the paste. There's woody elements to the fragrance, which though a little harsh, add some variation to the scent experience, which otherwise can be a little overbearing. Those little quibbles aside, I adore this incense.
I love cinnamon scented incenses, like Cycle Lia’s Spice World, Hem Masala Cinnamon, Tulasi Masala Cinnamon and Pradhan’s Tantra Canela Incense.
ReplyDeleteI want to try this but I can’t find it anywhere. When I searched this on google, I can only find their zipper cinnamon incense, not this one.
DeleteI've written to my contact at Balaji to find out what the situation is.
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