Compairing Vetiver Sticks (Part 2)

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Flourish – Khus

Another sample sent to me by Silver from India. ‘Khus‘ is the term used for vetiver in India. Flourish can be found with some UK eBay sellers. In India, at Flourish website, they cost ₹200 (about €2.25). I couldn’t find a German source.

In their raw state, the sticks smell quite interesting: a very deep, earthy, Geosmin-like scent.
I would have expected these thick sticks to show a similarly aggressive flame as those from Mereville, but they don’t. There’s just a little black smoke visible.
When lit, the scent immediately reminds me of perfume, leaning towards the masculine side. There’s hardly any sweetness; instead, it’s earthy, heavy, and deep, but interwoven with a cool, mineral-fresh, and somewhat sharp note.
For the first few minutes, this is quite interesting, but then the scent starts to overload and becomes very intrusive. The aspect that initially smelled cool intensifies into a penetrating sharpness that reminds me of solvents or even lamp oil. Additionally, another strange, stringent note builds up in the background, which I cannot define more precisely, except that it smells foul.
This volatile sharpness of the scent gives me a really strange feeling and makes me seriously doubt the quality of these incense sticks. It’s a shame because the actual aroma is quite interesting.

For outdoor use, Khus might be okay, but indoors – no, thanks.

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Phool – Vetiver

These five sticks also came from Silver. She (and others) warned me about Phool, but I just had to see for myself.

The Context

Phool is a startup in India, which appeals to a growing group of more affluent people there with their high-quality and beautifully designed packaging and their sustainability marketing.
Their thing is to collect the tons of flower waste from the temples in India and ‘upcycle’ it into incense. The flowers are dried, ground, mixed with ‘aromatic ingredients’, and processed into sticks and cones, which are then dipped in a perfume after drying.
The temple flowers are considered sacred and therefore cannot simply be thrown away. Instead, they end up in the Ganges, where the pesticides they contain pollute the water.
Yes, you read that correctly: Pesticide-contaminated flower waste is turned into incense and sold as a sustainable luxury product.
This information, by the way, comes from a Phool‘s own advertisement video. The video also mentions that these flowers are additionally contaminated with other toxic substances like arsenic, lead, and cadmium. To top it all off, the Phool website puts the tagline “Good For You, Good For The Planet & Good For The People Who Make It” above the video. I’m at a loss for words.

The Review

It goes without saying that I only used these incense sticks outdoors.
When smelling the smoke from a distance, it’s not unpleasant. It’s a very earthy smoke scent, like someone burning old, decayed branches from their garden.
The closer you get to the source, the more unpleasant it becomes. First, there’s a strange scent that reminds me of heavy construction equipment. As if you were standing next to an excavator that was just in operation, and you could smell traces of exhaust fumes, grease, tar, and bitumen.
Once, I lit Vetiver briefly in a semi-open area leading to the balcony. There, I smelled a lamp oil-like volatility. The ‘fragrance’ also reminded me of cemeteries; specifically, the wire mesh boxes typically placed there, in which people can dispose of their withered flowers.

Silver has tried several Phool varieties and told me that they spoil incredibly quickly. With Vetiver, it seems particularly drastic; it only took a few weeks before she noticed the first off-notes.
Another friend (here in the EU) also bought this variety and described it as ‘unbearable’. That was, by the way, the most positive thing he had to say about Phool incense.

Don’t be fooled by the high-quality packaging. Phool incense is, quite literally, perfumed waste.