Natural Incense Company – Angels – Chamuel

Mid-2022, I bought a bunch of packs from the Angels line on kleinanzeigen.de. The regular price is between €4-6 per pack. They are also sold in a slightly different packaging design by Fiore d’Oriente (who own the Natural Incense Company), which are more expensive. A pack contains 20g/10 sticks of 23cm/9″ length. The burning time is stated as 60–80 minutes, but in my experience, they burn even longer.

Chamuel puzzled me for a long time. The raw scent reminds me of lemon balm or citrosa geranium.
The scent when burning also smells herbaceous-fresh, but also floral. This distinctly green aspect gives the fragrance a certain robustness; it feels pristine, lively, and powerful.
Over time, the floral aspect comes into the fore, becoming more defined, and the sweetness develops. It’s both the ambery-balsamic scent, which is almost omnipresent with the Natural Incense Company, and a fine, soft, powdery-sweet part of the floral scent.
Over several months, my perception of Chamuel has changed and deepened significantly. The floral character has come more to the forefront. I now think it is geranium or rose. The aforementioned herbaceous freshness is something I’ve also found in other rose incense sticks. Most notably in Weihrauch & Rose by Jeomra’s, which uses Bulgarian rose absolute. In those sticks, it’s very obvious, and I perceive the green aspect as part of the rose profile; with Chamuel, however, the rose seems so intertwined with the base that I initially could only pick out individual building blocks of its scent, so to speak. I first had to put these together to recognize it as rose. I find this absolutely fascinating, and it made the process of getting to know Chamuel all the more interesting.

I never thought I could be so enthusiastic about a rose scent like I’m with Chamuel. It’s not overwhelming in any way; on the contrary, it entices you to give it active attention to explore its facets and observe how one after another sparks in the spotlight. If you engage with it, this fragrance can be almost hypnotic.