Warm, soft and sweet, the note of incense is used as a fixative in perfumery to add a spicy, balsamic and even lemon-scented facet to amber and vanilla accords. It can evoke notes that recall myrrh or elemi, and is generally thought to evoke a deep, rich and woody aroma.
The divinely fragrant incense is native to west India, Dhofar, south Arabia and northwestern Africa. However, nowadays, it is most commonly harvested in the ancient, rugged lands of Ethiopia and Somalia. To extract the fragrant gum resin, cuts are made with a knife into the outer layers of tree trunks to make the trees “cry” a whitish resin that is ready for collection after 10–15 days. Once collected, the resin is either steam distilled to obtain its essence or extracted with volatile solvents to obtain a resinoid.
Incense is far more than a fragrant pleasure—enjoyed for millennia, incense is possibly the only immutable link between all religions. Incense found a place of notable significance in ancient ceremonies and rituals: the Magi offered it to Jesus, Solomon’s palace was perfumed with it, and, today, it is still used in Catholic and Buddhist ceremonies. Herod, the Greek historian, wrote of ancient Scythian women who would grind cypress and cedarwood mixed with incense to prepare a hypnotic paste which they massaged into their faces and palms. And in Antiquity, incense quite literally was more than worth its weight in gold—topping the market as the world’s most expensive material.
The incense from Somalia is here worked in chiaroscuro. Its dry, heady freshness rounds out with the lily and warms up on a base of cedarwood, white musks and benzoin.
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