Sonoma Scent Studio Incense Pure

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Sonoma Scent Studio is one of those awesome independent houses with an excellent selection of fragrances that are magnificently well-blended. I’m a big fan of independent perfume houses, and am happy to see them doing things their own way. The mass market and even the niche market can sometimes be restrictive. So independent is the way to go.

In Bottle: Incense Pure is like a sniff of incense heaven. It’s heady, it’s sophisticated, it’s sensual and deep. The first smell out of the bottle or vial is like an invitation you can’t refuse.

Applied: Incense Pure starts off with an airy but very detectable blend of–well, incense. The myrrh really gets me. Makes me grin from ear to ear even. Incense Pure isn’t like most incense fragrances I’ve tried. This one is tempered, easier to wear, still absolutely lovely with that oh so distinctive incense fragrance but it’s tempered a bit by a woodsiness that digs itself up and bunkers down. There’s a lovely sense of sensuality about this fragrance too and a hint of ambery musk infused with a gorgeous vanilla. This isn’t your sweet, synthetic vanilla either. The incense seems to do wonderful things to vanilla, bringing out its spicy personality instead of relying on vanilla’s surface sweetness. There’s even, to my delight, oak moss in this! And the oak moss does wonders to give the fragrance a beautiful mossy green undertone. As if the incense wasn’t enough, it gets me twice with the oak moss too.

Extra: Sonoma Scent Studio offers Incense Pure in a variety of sizes and for some very reasonable prices considering the quality of the ingredients. You can read up about Incense Pure on their website.

Design: I have a sample of this fragrance, but the bottling looks quite nice. The shape of the bottle is clean and neat. A tall squarish bottle with a gold cap. Keeping it simple is always a plus in my books.

Fragrance Family: Woodsy Incense

Notes: Frankincense, myrrh, labdanum, cistus, oakmoss, Indian patchouli, sandalwood, cedar, ambergris, orris, angelica, elemi, vanilla absolute.

If you’re a fan of incense, you really should try this. Even if you’re not sure whether or not you’re a fan of incense, you should try this. It’s quite the excellent experience.

Reviewed in This Post: Incense Pure, 2010, Eau de Parfum.

That Smell Going Forward

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I thought it would be fair to address That Smell’s first year online as a fragrance review blog and what my plans for this little piece of smelly internet will be. We’re growing slowly but I’m pleased with the progress. This is especially nice for me to see considering this is a blog that I keep up and write in for fun.

I’ve met some of you through the comments and have been happy to know you and see what you thought about fragrances and issues surrounding perfume. I hope 2011 and onward brings more of you fragrance fans out to the comment boxes. I would love to hear from more of you guys!

Let’s make a list of future goals and plans because I like lists!

1) Let’s address the elephant in the room first. I will be upfront about where I hope this blog will be headed. It is a small, slightly-amusing, dream of mine to one day make this little blog self-sustaining. Or, in other words, I would like That Smell to make enough money to pay for its web hosting and domain fees because I am currently footing the bill out of my sad and dilapidated wallet. That means, at some point (probably not soon), That Smell may display some unobtrusive text ads. I hope this is not a big deal for my current readers or future readers. For now, however, I am still paying for all this myself and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.

2) I’ve gotten used to the update schedule of 3-5 updates a week and my nose hasn’t slowed down any. I still have lots of notes and  lots of fragrance samples to go through and new perfumes are still being released at an admirable rate. So the update schedule has steadied out at weekdays with 3-5 per week.

3) Over the past year, I’ve mainly focused on accessible fragrances and neglected the niche and independent markets a little bit. It would seem that a lot of people don’t mind this and I do intend to continue focusing on mainstream and accessible fragrances with a couple of smatterings of niche and independent houses in there and the occasional cameo from hilariously bad fragrances that are hard to find or get a hold of (Here’s lookin’ at you, Bruce Willis). But ultimately, it still comes down to what I can get my grubby hands on so hey, the system works so why break it?

And now some possibly interesting statistics about this blog:

As of this posting we have 290 entries scattered across a variety of topics. 232 of these posts are fragrance reviews. The most popular post is The Dangers of Counterfeit Perfumes with 2731 views.