I drive my girlfriend a bit crazy sometimes with my patchouli addiction.  Like sandalwood, patchouli is a perfect classic scent.  Warm, earthy, slightly spicy and earthy.  She isn’t a fan of most patchouli offerings with the exception of Satya‘s Patchouli Forest.  However, all of that changed with one sniff of Morning Star’s Patchouli.  Far from being “oily” and lingering in the air for far too long, the scent is delicate and wonderful and that is before you even light the stick!

Morning Star includes a small square ceramic burner in each box of incense and it is a nice gesture, but the stick does not match the diameter of the hole and so it leans in one direction or the other.  Unless you put a small plate underneath it the very fine powdery ash can make a mess.  I would seriously recommend a small bowl full of sand as a perfect alternative to the included burner.

The unlit stick smells amazing and once lit, improves on that.  It is a tremendously good version of patchouli.  Nippon-Kodo managed to capture all of the nice things about patchouli with their Morning Star offering without any of the bad things.  The smoke output is far lower than in other incense sticks and the scent never becomes oily or cloying.  Instead the scent is warm, spicy, earthy and yet delicate at the same time.  If you like patchouli but thick clouds of oily smoke put you off, then you will enjoy this stick very much.  If you have never liked patchouli before and for precisely the same reasons, this is a wonderful introduction.

You can purchase a box at a very good price here.