Who doesn’t love cinnamon? No one that I know of, but I doubt that this offering from Hem is going to be love at first sniff for those legions of cinnamon lovers. In the package it smells wonderful. Evocative of cinnamon buns, cinnamon toast and those cinnamon twist things you get from a certain pizza chain.

Satya Patchouli Forest is from the Oriental Series by Shrinivas Sughandalay. I have to say that of the series that includes Celestial, Midnight, Sandalwood and Sunrise, this scent is the clear winner and my personal favorite. All of the Oriental Series are built on a base of sandalwood and vanilla and in this case the base components blend wonderfully well with the patchouli and other ingredients.

Overall it is an excellent representation of amber. Sensual, warm, sweet and well, delicious actually. The warmth and sweetness works as a tremendous mood elevator and in my case, creates a desire for rich, sweet foods. Of course scent is highly subjective and you may not experience the same craving, but you will find this scent lives up to the adjectives usually used to describe it. Lightly musky, sensual, warm, exotic and very faintly sweet.

This Nandita fragrance oil lives up to the marketing speak typed on the included instructions for use sheet. Although based on Lavandula officinalis there are several other notes and tones that become apparent after careful consideration. I noticed just a faint whisper of Gardenia somewhere near the bottom note and it works out great.

The sticks themselves are very dry and very unlike Durbars and Champas that feel slightly damp to the touch. So I thought that when I applied flame to the tip it would fairly whoosh into flame. That was not the case. In fact it was more like lighting charcoal as no flame ever presented itself to be blown out. Instead the tip glows after a moment or two under a match or lighter and then remains glowing. Very simple and a little surprising.

If my first thought was “delicious” upon initially opening the package then my first thoughts upon smelling the smoke were (strangely) Al Stewarts “Year of The Cat” and a music store I frequented in the late 1970′s that also happened to sell incense and accessories

I was a little suspicious of this particular Nag Champa because in the box it has a very strong scent. Not as powerful as Satya’s Super Hit incense, but quite strong just the same. It was a wonderful surprise to discover that when burned the scent is sweet, alluring and complex