Ten candles, four regions, three tiers. The tier is not a quality ranking and it is not a price ladder. It describes how many things are happening in the jar.
Tier 1 is one note, held for as long as we can hold it. Nothing to hide behind. If the material is wrong you find out immediately.
Tier 2 is two notes in conversation, where the point is the relationship between them rather than either one alone.
Tier 3 is layered, three or four materials arranged so the candle does not smell the same at the end of an evening as it did at the start.
Here is the whole range, written out.
North
Royal Rose. Tier 1. Rose, single note. Named for Kannauj, where roses are cut in the cool hours before sunrise and carried to the stills while they are still damp. Deep at the start, softer as the wax opens, never powdery.
Kashmir Bloom. Tier 2. Rose 60, sandalwood 40. The valley rose grows slowly and holds its scent longer, so it smells less of sugar than of the cold air around it. Rose arrives first, sandalwood comes up underneath and stays: cool at the top, warm at the base.
Ganga Aarti. Tier 3. Naag champa 40, sandalwood 30, lavender 20, vanilla 10. Varanasi at dusk, when the lamps go up together and the smoke sits over the water before it lifts. Naag champa leads, sandalwood holds it down, lavender opens the top so it does not sit heavy, and the vanilla at the base keeps it warm rather than solemn.
South
Madurai Jasmine. Tier 1. Jasmine, single note. The flower market opens before dawn and jasmine arrives in sacks, weighed by the kilo and strung into garlands while the air is still cool enough to hold the smell. This is jasmine in quantity rather than on a single stem: green at the top, heavy and sweet underneath.
Kerala Calm. Tier 2. Coconut and lemongrass, balanced 50/50. A backwater village in the afternoon. Coconut from the groves and the kitchen, lemongrass from the ditch beside the path, released when somebody treads on it. Soft and green rather than sweet, which is why it reads as clean air and not dessert.
Mysore Deva. Tier 3. Sandalwood accord, cardamom, amber. Sandalwood behaves differently from other woods: it does not announce itself, it settles. Cardamom lifts it at the top, amber holds the base. One thing said plainly: the sandalwood grown around Mysore is a protected species and its oil is a registered geographical indication, so we do not use it and we do not claim it. What is in this candle is our own reading of that warmth, built from materials we can name.
East
Puri Temple Air. Tier 2. Naag champa 60, jasmine 40. Naag champa is the smell of a temple courtyard in Puri, incense that has been burning long enough to be in the stone. The jasmine cuts through it from the flower sellers at the gate. Quiet and resinous, the one to light when a room needs to settle.
Bay of Bengal Breeze. Tier 3. Oceanic Bloom accord 50, jasmine 25, sandalwood 25. Where the sea meets the shore and neither wins. Salt air first, jasmine carried in on it, sandalwood underneath holding it steady. Marine at the top, floral through the middle, woody at the base.
The East has no Tier 1 in this range. It is a real gap rather than a design decision, and we would rather say so than pretend the map is finished.
West
Nagpur Pineapple. Tier 1. Pineapple, single note. Nagpur sits in the middle of the country where the fruit trade passes through. Pineapple cut open: sharp first, then sugary, with the faint green bite of the skin still in it. The brightest thing we make, and the one that works in a kitchen.
Palace Nights. Tier 3. Rose 40, sandalwood 30, pineapple 20, vanilla 10. The most layered candle in the range and the one that moves most while it burns. Rose first, sandalwood underneath it, a thread of pineapple through the middle, vanilla holding the whole thing down. Built for an evening with the lamps low.
The West has no Tier 2 yet either. Same answer as the East.
How to read the list
If you want to know whether you like a material, start at Tier 1, where there is nowhere for it to hide. If you want a candle that keeps your attention across a long evening, go to Tier 3. Tier 2 is where most people end up living, because two notes are enough to be interesting and few enough to stay recognisable across a whole room.
Every one of them is poured to order in Indore with a wooden wick. Trim it to about 3 mm before each lighting, and on the first burn let the melted wax reach the edge of the vessel.