Tibetan Ensens

I was so intrigued by the name and complex formula for Tibetan Ensens that I ordered a sample despite it being twice the cost of most other perfumes. I've been a practitioner of Tibetan or Vajrayana Buddhism for almost 20 years, and smelled some amazing fragrances at teachings and in India where I lived for a couple months in the town that serves as home to the exiled Tibetan government. I primarily burn Tibetan incense, and there's a long history in Tibetan medicine of using incense as a method of delivery for herbs, so I wasn't off-put by the medicinal descriptions in reviews I've seen elsewhere. These reviews are accurate--the initial scent given off by a decant of this perfume is extremely medicinal. I'm a licensed acupuncturist, and it reminded me of nothing more than some of the liniments that are brewed for external application. Again, not off-putting to me. It make me hope for wonderous things in the dry-down, as I know firsthand how many ingredients go into a medicinal smell, and looked forward to exploring them in perfume form. However, as the anticipated dry-down happened, I smelled...cinnamon. A very nice cinnamon with some clove thrown in, but there I can't detect any fragrance that the name evokes in my scent memory. This is a warming, wintery fragrance that reminds me of the simmering pot of spices that we sometimes had on the stove to make the house smell nice. Bottom line, the exoticism of the name is misleading, and I feel that this perfume is vastly overpriced for what it ends up delivering.

Heavy musky woody aromatic scent that does smell a bit like Tibetan incense but has much stronger animalic vibes. The fragrance opens with spicy notes of cumin, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and saffron leading to a heart of cypriol, birch tar and labdanum. The perfume settles on a powdery animalic base of real musk, oud and leathery notes surrounded by myrrh, slight sandalwood, benzoin, cedar and frankincense. The masculine leaning scent has moderate to strong project and good longevity. Of note is that it does not deviate that much from any perfume offering of this brand - they all tend to have a similar vibe and can be easily exchanged with one another. Enjoy!

All I get is super loud cinnamon and cloves with deep down notes of soft woods and a slight benzoin. To my nose, it's definitely not as smokey or incensey as the name proposes.