Naturveda (Aromandise - Les Encens du Monde) Haute Tradition Oriental Musk

 

Musk is an animal product, and can still be bought - but it is expensive: 12ml Siberian musk - £1,000. For financial and ethical reasons, hardly any perfume company has used animal musk for years. I don't know for sure, but given that alternative or synthetic musk is widely used, reasonably priced, and very good, I doubt if any incense company uses real musk. Naturveda use the plant labdanum, which is commonly used as an amber substitute, plus ylang-ylang, which is generally used to give floral and/or oriental notes.  That sounds quite promising.  However, my experiences so far with Naturveda, who are based in Pondicherry, and are the company responsible for putting together these incense sticks for the French shop Aromandise, has not been positive. Indeed, my experiences with all incenses made in and around Pondicherry (such as Cottage and One Aromatics) have not been positive. I tend to find them to be dry, peppery, old fashioned, and boring. I regard them as brown twigs. I don't find them to be awful - they are decent, well made incenses with a focus on being as natural as possible - just that they are not my thing. I like sweeter, livelier, more colourful and modern scents and accords. Each to their own. Anyway. I'm curious as to how I'm going to respond, because from the ingredients this sounds like it should be my sort of thing. 

   

Ingredients: Wood powders, natural honey,
labdanum gum, Ylang-Ylang essential oil

Scent on the stick is a little muted. A bit of sandalwood. Little else. The traditional masala style of making incense is to enfold the fragrance ingredients (dry and wet) in the paste before rolling out. This tends to result in a low aroma on the stick (unless scents have later been added to the outside of the stick either with oils or a fragrant melnoorva/masala powder). 

Scent on the burn is pretty much in the same field as the others in this range. It's dry and woody. It's kind of savoury. I think mostly of cedarwood. It's OK, but it doesn't excite or please me. 

Available from Aromandise, or Padma Store, or other outlets. 

Date: March 2025    Score: 25 

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Naturveda