Natural Incense Company – Angels – Haniel

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.

Haniel is the most herbaceous of all the Angels varieties. They are tart-herbaceous-fresh, with a citrus-like top note that reminds me of lemon balm.
The almost ubiquitous sweetness present in Fiore products remains, largely in the background here, similar to Uriel, though it occasionally peeks through as a fine honey note. Again, like Uriel, I find Haniel relatively subtle, which makes this tart scent more pleasant for me. It never becomes too obtrusive.
But what do Haniel actually smell like?
The scent often triggered an indistinct déjà-vu for me and reminded me of bath additives or other cosmetic products. It wasn’t until I happened to find “scent: lavender” noted for Haniel in a shop, that it dawned on me…
I generally have difficulty identifying lavender in incense sticks, for some reason. Even despite having had a phase of 2 to 3 years when I loved and frequently used lavender soap, hydrosol, and body oil. One would think this would have attuned my nose to the scent – but no. 😐

Haniel is the variety out of this line that I like the least, and yet I can’t help but find them to be very enjoyable (just not quite to my taste).
I think they are very suitable as background fragrance during mental work, studying, or similar activities.