Fiore D’Oriente – Reiki – Reiji

Fiore D’Oriente is one of my favourite upscale brands. That’s why I take a lot of time with the reviews. With brands (or scents) that I perceive to be of higher quality, I usually feel the need to take more time to do them justice.

The Reiki line includes 7 scents, so far, I only know Reiji. The names of the others are: Gassho, Chiryo, Shimping, Sho Den, Oku Den and Koo Myo.
As I often do, I bought the pack from the Ephra Word Shop for €4.45 – it contains 10 sticks or 20g. Their burning time is stated to be 60-70 minutes, in my experience they burn even longer. At 23cm they are also slightly longer than the standard (20-21cm or approx. 8″).
The brand is one of the few that lists ingredients:
Coconut shell powder, plant resin, essential oils, honey and vegetable oils.
Unfortunately, more or less the same ingredients appear in the description of all their incense sticks, so this appears to be their base blend, or a generalized list.

Reiji has a very sweet scent, its “Nose Candy”. My impression of it has changed slightly over the course of the year, but that is the constant.
I don’t find it to be complex or multi-layered, but not one-dimensional either; there is definitely something to discover.
At the beginning I found the scent to be powdery, soft, warm and vanilla-sweet, but at the same time deep and balsamic. In my notes, I mention amber and meringue.
The sweetness then developed more towards honey. At first, it was the gentle smell of beeswax, then it occurred to me that the sticks might contain tolu balsam, whose aroma always reminds me of honey.
In addition, a floral-sweet note that is difficult to grasp reappears.
The balsamic, deep component combines with a slight spice and tartness. I wonder if the spice comes from halmaddi (Ailanthus malabarica). I keep smelling something resinous, but it’s so far in the background that the next moment I’m no longer sure whether it was really there. The slightly tart aspect combines with the sweet notes and makes the smell very round.
For a long time, I would have said that Reiji were the sweetest incense sticks I had, until I compared them with Manipura from the Chakra line (which I got as a sampler set a little later).
In direct comparison to these, I found Reiji to be significantly more complex than when I smelled it on its own. I smelled an almond-like note and a cool spiciness that I otherwise didn’t notice. – If only they always smelled like that!
Manipura are actually even sweeter. I compared the two because I found them to be quite similar, which is why Manipura is also among the ones that I didn’t buy a whole pack of later. That’s really the only criticism I have about Fiore D’Oriente: some of their creations seem like slight variations of each other, and they generally have a significant family resemblance, which causes the scents to blur together in my mind, especially when I burn several of them within a short time.
At the same time, everything I’ve tried so far is wonderful, and it’s hard for me to believe that I would rate anything they make below 3.

My conclusion is that Reiji are very yummy incense sticks, sweet, with a pleasant, relaxing effect. However, they don’t have a very distinct character and seem somewhat interchangeable. It’s possible I’ll buy them (or Manipura) again at some point, but I’d rather use my budget to explore the rest of the line first.
Rating: 3.6