Incense for the Soul

If Avignon is a Catholic church in a bottle, then Kyoto is Zen Buddhism distilled. This isn’t incense for the altar - it’s incense for the soul.

The opening is simply beautiful: cool, transparent incense wisping effortlessly through a crisp forest of smoky cypress trees. There’s mist in the air, and the rooty forest floor is still damp from last night’s rainfall.

Following the sound of wind chimes, we make out a temple emerging from the haze. Its teakwood exterior has been recently varnished, giving a lacquered sheen to something we know is far more ancient at its core.

Entering the sacred space, we’re embraced by an atmosphere of sheer tranquility. The air is cool and mineralic, radiating an austere purity, with a subtle hint of honeyed herbs rising from timeworn woods.

It’s within this ambience of minimalist serenity that we find Kyoto. Like a thin, flowing robe woven from sparkling crystals of sheer incense, it possesses an ethereal transparency that never demands attention, but instead invites contemplation.

This was love at first sniff, but sadly, it wears far too close to the skin for my liking and vanishes entirely not long after spritzing. If your pockets are deep enough, Gaiac 10 presents a similarly pristine form of incense, but contains within it an ineffable magic that even the beautiful Kyoto cannot quite replicate.

Gaiac gets a bad rep for performance, but in my experience, it remains detectable for 5–6 hours, lingering as a skin scent for some time longer. For Kyoto, I'm hovering around 1⭐️ for projection and sillage, but the fact that it does project, however briefly, makes 2⭐️ feel more appropriate.