Nag Champa

Note Profile

Prepared

About

Nag Champa is the Indian incense accord built from sandalwood, a champaca or frangipani flower and halmaddi resin. It is a prepared blend with no fixed recipe, not a single raw material.

Scent Profile

Amber_resinous leads and both sources put the resin first, Premiere Peau calling the smell 'sweet, resinous, musky-floral incense smoke'. Sweet_vanillic is the halmaddi, named as 'the key differentiator: sticky, slightly humid, almost marshmallow-like in its softness'. White_floral is the champaca, which the same source says provides 'lift' through a 'fruity-floral sweetness'. Creamy_woody is the sandalwood body, held below sandalwood's own 0.72 because the source says Nag Champa is 'less woody than pure sandalwood'. Smoky is literal: the material is described burning on charcoal. Clean_musk comes from the word 'musky' in 'musky-floral', and powdery from the soft, settled character of temple smoke rather than any single ingredient. Below the naming line sit fruity, dry_woody and a fresh_spice that rests on one Wikipedia sentence: champak is related to star anise, which 'gives the scent a little spice'.

ScentWheel

Breadthbroad

EnvelopeBase · ~18h lasting

Family Amber · Musk · Leather, Sweet & Gourmand, Floral, Woody & Earthy

Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.

Origin

Hand-rolled incense of the Indian subcontinent. The usual build is sandalwood powder, champak (Michelia champaca) or frangipani, and halmaddi, the sticky grey resin tapped from Ailanthus triphysa. Wikipedia records that formulas vary by manufacturer.

Usage in Perfumery

Used to signal temple or head-shop incense: a warm, room-filling resinous smoke with a sweet floral lift. It reads as a whole accord rather than as one ingredient, so perfumers reach for it when they want the memory of burning incense rather than a raw resin.