Elbenzauber – Green Champa
This is another pack from ‘Arkanum des Lichts‘ an affordable online retailer that I unfortunately cannot recommend. I paid €3.90 for a 15g pack, while the regular price for is €4.50. Since the thickness of the hand-rolled sticks varies, the number of sticks in the pack can range between 9 and 14. I received 12. The burning time is stated as 40-60 minutes.
For more information about the Elbenzauber brand, you can read my main article here.
“The scent of the young champaca flower in a playfully floral variation that invigorates the senses.”
So it says on the brand owner’s page.
These are my first ‘Champa’ incense sticks that are not ‘Nag Champa’ (apart from a few Satya samples). Nag Champa is a genre of Indian incense sticks, typically composed of sandalwood, champaca, and/or frangipani, and (nowadays rarely) halmaddi, though other floral scents and ingredients can also be used. Champa incense sticks, however, should always refer to Magnolia champaca. There is an overlap between the two genres, but they are not quite the same.
You can find various ‘colour variants’ of Champa incense sticks, such as Green, Orange, Red; even Black Champa. The flower indeed comes in different colours, but I doubt that most of these incense sticks actually relate to that.
Green Champa definitely fits into the Nag Champa genre. They start quite woody, but after a short time, a vibrant, sparkling, fruity and sweet floral scent spreads. I find it straight-up juicy and, in a way, actually green. This intensely fruity character reminds me of exotic fruits like mango or pineapple. Alongside this, there’s a certain spiciness that again reminds me of mango.
Additionally, I find a light note of vanilla or tonka bean, warm and a bit creamy.
I also smell a kind of caramel note, which can become slightly too dominant if the scent doesn’t have enough space to spread. It then starts to smell bitter and a somewhat piercing, rather like burnt sugar. In this instance, the woody note also becomes more present, or even a bit smoky.
Green Champa are very delicious incense sticks that need space to unfold their full potential, like so many others do as well. If you give them this space, they reward you with the olfactory equivalent of an exotic fruit cocktail.
Off-Topic-Extra:
Cocktail Recipe
I know this cocktail as ‘Hemingway’s’, though various other recipes show up under this name as well.
Ingredients:
- 30ml grenadine syrup
- 20ml lemon juice
- 40ml gin
- Mixed fruit juice (mango-pineapple-orange)
- Additionally: Ice cubes, cocktail glass / Caipirinha glass – approx. 300-350ml
Instructions:
- Fill the glass with ice cubes.
- Mix the grenadine syrup with lemon juice and gin, and pour the mixture evenly over the ice cubes.
- Slowly top up with the mixed fruit juice to create a beautiful colour gradient. 🙂
I think the original recipe asked for orange or pineapple juice. At some point, we used mixed juice because it was all we had on hand, and we stuck with it.