---
title: "Incense Review: Faircense Vanille-Benzoe"
description: "Reviewing the Vanille-Benzoe incense sticks from Faircense."
date: 2025-12-13
tags:
  - Incense
  - Incense Review
synopsis: "Reviewing the Vanille-Benzoe incense sticks from Faircense."
mastodon_id: "115714827196492988"
---
These sticks appear to be made of masala hand-rolled onto a rather thick bamboo splint. The scent on the stick is fairly muted for an Indian-style stick. This usually indicates more of a reliance on whole-botanicals rather than oils and other concentrates. In the burn, the benzoin is very prominent, revealing a bit of that plastic note that benzoin can have at high percentages. There is a warm vanilla note also, but I wish it was stronger against the benzoin. I do tend to like vanilla incense, but vanilla really isn't the focus here: there's none of that tobacco and dried-fruit richness that can come with vanilla-forward sticks. I also detect something of a nutmeg, stale-cinnamon, and general baking-spice note, a play-doh note, and, although quiet, the scent of the rather thick burning splint that supports the masala.

The fragrance strength is reasonable; strong, but not so much that I can't share a room with it (although I do have the door open and the ceiling fan on low); the fragrance strength is probably on par with Tennendo's vanilla sticks. I prefer benzoin as a supporting player, so I don't know that I would choose to buy this stick myself, but I'm not mad at it either.

This stick was kindly sent to me by Irene of [rauchfahne.de](https://blog.rauchfahne.de/en/), whose review  [can be found here](https://blog.rauchfahne.de/en/2024/08/24/pema-of-tibet-faircense-amber-vanille-benzoe-en).

