I like oud, so I am predisposed toward this. And I like incense made in and around the holy city of Vrindavan. There are a number of outlets - Rasbihari Lal's shop is one of them, Vrindavan Bazaar is another. Ashok Kapur, owner of the excellent German online shop, Padma Store, bought a bunch of sticks from the Rasbihari Lal shop, and that is where I got these sticks from - they are part of an 18 Euro sample set of two sticks of each of the 15 scents that Ashok bought. Ashok calls them "Absolute Oud", while Rasbihari calls them "Absolutely Oud". Ashok sells them at 20 grams for 5.45 Euros plus 18 Euros for postage. Rasbihari sells them at 250 grams for $12.50 plus $24 for postage. Doing a conversion, it costs £20.50 for 20gm from Padma, and £27.50 for 250gm from Rasbihari. Buying 250gm from Padma would cost £73. If you want to buy a large amount, it works out cheaper to buy direct from Rasbihari, but if you want to try out a small amount first, then it makes sense to go to Padma Store and get the sample set. Also worth noting is that Padma store has a fixed postage price, while Rasbihari has a sliding scale, so that the more you buy, the more expensive the postage (a rather discouraging approach!).
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| Rasbihari Lal box of Absolutely Oud |
The sticks are machine extruded with no external coating of masala/melnoorva powder, though they have the appearance of being masala. There is a pleasant and attractive sweet musky scent on the stick. The profile suggests that this is a perfume-dipped incense using wood powder rather than charcoal. Some folks are prejudiced against perfume-dipped incense - the superficial masala like appearance of these sticks may go some way to reducing the prejudice of those folks such that they may light up and enjoy without anxiety or guilt. ;-)
The scent on the burn is very pleasant - warm, sweet, woody and musky. It is a brown, enveloping, seductive scent typical of basic oud perfumes and scents. Clearly synthetic, it works well, but lacks depth and range, and is quite safe or commercial. I like it, and at the price would be happy to get a large stock to burn as an everyday room freshener, though it's not an interesting or evocative scent. It pretty much does what one expects it to do. I'd like to see some contrasts, and some challenges in the profile. But, hey ho, it's very likeable, and very cheap. Good stuff.
Prejudiced lol. I suppose I fall under that designation when it comes to dipped incense, but then again I do sometimes miss these old strawberry cones I used to burn as a teenager!
ReplyDeleteI think many people, me included, early on experienced bargain basement perfumed incense which hadn't be made well, and hadn't been stored well. But it was cheap and it was readily available. And then we bought some Satya Nag Champa, and suddenly incense was a whole different place, and we didn't want to go back to the world of perfumed incense again.
DeleteSo I think many of us are in that prejudiced camp.
I sway to and fro, and have done since I started this blog . I think pretty much none of my really highly rated incense is perfume dipped. But, having said that, there is some good stuff out there. And this is one such example. Though I would class this as perfumed masala rather than perfume-dipped. I think there is more in the charcoal base than just charcoal dust and joss powder.
Absolutely. I remember some ghastly supermarket stuff in particular! This post has actually inspired me to write a bit of a tongue in cheek review of some dipped stuff; keep an eye out next week!
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