Bengal

[Ajila]

A sultry and unruly blend that emulates the ambient scent of the markets in ancient Bengal: skin musk with honey, peppers, clove, cinnamon bark and ginger

 

In the bottle - Cinnamon and something of that bakery smell that I get in Sugar Cookie.

Wet on me - Very similar, but also with an edge of what smells like candle wax to me.

Dry on me - Aaargh, it burns!!! Fortunately this doesn't last very long. When it stops burning it fades to an oddly metallic scent. I don't think that this is for me.

Edited November 7, 2005 by Ajila

[Rosabella]

Mmm, this smells like the original recipe Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice tea! (Which has been slightly changed over the years and now it's called Bengal Chai or something, but I digress.) I love the bite of ginger and pepper in this that balances the sweeter base notes. Different than the usual cinnamon-dominant spice scents you find in all manner of products for the holidays, it's more exotic. It's really quite delicious, and as a room scent for Fall and Winter would be so warm and welcoming.

I love to smell it but I don't want to smell like it; it's so spot-on to the tea (to my nose and scent memory anyway) that it strikes me as a little odd to wear it on my skin. Since I was looking for a really wearable spice I'll put this in swaps. It's a fabulous spice scent though!

[Capriquarius]

Mm...Bengal is delicious!!! It smells dead-on like sugared chai tea (but without the milk). Wet, on: lots of honey in the foreground, with a complex tapestry of spices woven together in a red/gold shimmer. After a while, it dries down and the honey mellows out. At this point the pepper and ginger come out to play, but it still retains some of the initial sweetness and is really well-balanced. For me it is very wearable, although I definitely don't apply this too soon after a bath or shower due to the "burn" factor. Just have to say also that Beth could probably, with her immense talent, make even gasoline smell like a sophisticated perfume on a woman! I will cherish my bottles of this!

[lookingglass]

This is another one that I sniffed and put back. I thought I had my love of spice with Sin, and my love 'o honey with O. Bengal was initally sour on me (the honey?), so put her up for swaps. No takers. I have brought her out on this dreary, rainy day to sit and have a cup of tea with me.

 

She is a delight, and is settling in. She is like Sin's daughter...spicy, but not as sexual, and not as much depth. That is not to say that she is shallow or uninteresting...not at all. She just develops as far as her flowery honey spreads, lays out all her spicy cookies, and shares them nicely.

 

She'll be joining me tonight for dinner with the family...You really ought to meet her.

[perfumediva]

very soft subtle scent that does smell like chai tea

 

 

its too soft and subtle though..

 

and i think i'd get sick of smelling like chai after awhile but thats just me--i am not too into super foody stuff..

 

 

this is rather warm and soothing though but not a wow!!!

 

lemme spend some more time with this scent

 

[Fefferbella]

Bengal smells exactly like homemade chai tea. Not the cheap mixes from coffee houses.

 

Warm spicey cinnamon and hints of sweet honey.

This is a very exotic yet comforting blend.

[Wench457]

ITB: This is really warm and rich. I don't usually get colors from scents, but this one gives me a strong impression of a piece of deep golden amber with sunlight shining through it. The way the light plays through the amber and warms and brightens it.

 

On: As usual, I am amping up the spice, but the honey and other notes seem to be keeping the clove and cinnamon under control.

 

Dry: Wow, this is just - wow! On me, it is a close skin scent, although admittedly I was quite sparing when I applied, since I was expecting the spices to amp out of control. I'll have to throw caution to the wind next time and see if a heavier application increases the throw. Bengal is warm and spicy and comforting somehow. The final drydown is a very softly smoky honey on my skin. A perfect fall and winter scent, I'm so glad I got a bottle of this!

[shayelea]

I LOVE this scent.

 

Except for the part where it dries down to something weird and powdery and not nearly as nice as the initial stages.

 

In the bottle: Seriously, this smelled like spicy cocoa. No idea why. Later, I can definitely pick out the cinnamon and the peppers and all that good stuff, but at first I swear I could smell chocolate.

 

Wearing: Wonderfully warm, with the honey sweetness on top, just at first. It did dry down to a powdery scent which sort of pricked my allergies.

 

The weirdest part? This oil totally pass the wrist test, but when I reapplied for the full experience, the insides of my elbows and my neck turned RED and started burning. Ow. Guess if I decide to keep this one I'll have to remember it's a wrist- (and oddly enough, chest-) only scent for me. *g*

[Thursdae]

Bengal on me is cinnamon spice that stays civilized, with a candylike drydown. One of my top ten favorites. Bengal gives off a restrained warmth that is far more come-hither than I expected, having had to wash Wrath off (one drop was enough to fill two rooms and a hallway with its pungency). Wrath is a trumpet. Bengal is a sinuous clarinet.

[Miss Lynx]

I've been wanting this one since it first turned up in the catalog, and finally scored an imp. I'm not sure I like it as much as I thought I would, though. I was hoping for something like a more complex version of Chimera, but if anything it comes across as a bit less complex, despite having more ingredients.

 

It's also way sweeter than I expected. I guess the honey note is a lot stronger than I thought it would be. I smell like a Cinnabon! Wasn't quite the effect I was after.

 

The interesting thing is, it smells different on different parts of me. On my wrists, it's syrupy sweet, but in my cleavage, it's a lot richer and muskier, more what I wanted it to be. Maybe I could still love this scent if I'm just more careful about where I apply it...

 

Grade: B/B+

[xith]

One of my favorite things lately is Celestial Seasonings' Bengal Spice tea (which gets really strong and spicy) loaded with milk. The tea is similar to chai but stronger than others I've tried, and it's got a sweetness of its own. This stuff makes me really happy, so I was hoping Bengal would be like it, and it is! It doesn't have the same scent as the tea, but it does have the same feeling--deliciously spiced, with honey for sweetness, and even without a milk note it's got a lovely creaminess to it. This is just the scent I've been looking for, and it makes me walk around with my arm glued to my nose (and it's so hard to resist doing that in public! I don't always beat the compulsion...).

 

This is spicy, sweet, creamy, and absolutely lovely at every level from wet to dry.

I'm not a very experienced sniffer, but of the 27 oils I've tried, this takes the cake. Or the tea. Now I have to stop typing so I can glue my wrist back to my nose.

[wichapi]

For me, Bengal is very similar to Morocco, only it has MUCH more spicy-heat in the bottle, on the skin at first application, and through the first hour of wear. About three hours later (max,) my skin does its usual thing with hot-spice scents and swallows Bengal whole, leaving only a whisper.

 

It moves rather quickly from "ferocious fangs" to "soft-paws." Undaunted, I slather on more! I love it, and have two rapidly dwindling 5ml bottles. I foresee a growing collection of Bengal 10ml bottles in order to keep up with the demands of my nose and skin chemistry.

 

I shall, however, persevere.

[karikazo]

Wow, this a beautiful cinnamon-gingery sweet smell, but it doesn't strike me as terribly foody. I love it because it's not too musky or "like perfume" though. Really delicious and beautiful!

[Nepthys]

An immediate new BPAL love. After being half-hearted about so many famed cinnamon scents on here like Eclipse and Three Witches, Bengal truly rocked my world. The honey and cinnamon come through the strongest, but the ginger is audible enough to amp up the heat and save it from being too sweet. Oddly I got an aquatic note for the first minute before it dried down into glorious, blazing fiery spice. This is sexy, exotic and zestful, and probably one of the most perfect scents for me I've ever had the pleasure of trying.

[merebrillante]

This was a lovely and unexpected frimp.

 

Description: A sultry and unruly blend that emulates the ambient scent of the markets in ancient Bengal: skin musk with honey, peppers, clove, cinnamon bark and ginger.

 

In the vial: Mmm.

 

On the wrist: Warm and delicious, very sweet without being floral. Me likey.

 

Later: When it settles down, it settles way down, but does a thing on my skin similar to Chanel No. 5, one of my old stand-bys. I really like this scent. Tricksy and precious!

[AlaskaSnows]

Wet: Honey, clove and cinnamon.

 

Dry: Honey, clove and cinnamon, but mostly cinnamon, a bright red-hot candy type of cinnamon, though, not the dry woody cinnamon of some blends. Sometimes I get a whiff of pur straight out of the jar honey which makes this totally worthwhile. I will keep trying this and see if the cinnamon ever mellows, and if it does, this is big bottle time.

[Rhowan]

For some reason I didn't see "honey" in the fragrance description until I recieved the imp -honey no like me!

 

In the imp: mmm! Cinnamon! Not a red hot cinnamon like a lot of others smell, this is more of a cinnamon roll cinnamon, it's a sweet version.

 

Wet: On my skin, right off the bat, I feel like I am smelling cinnamon out of the little tin in my cupboard. It's a dry, spicy, just sitting in it's tin spell. No sweetness yet and no cloves.

 

Dry Down: The longer this is on my skin the more it morphs. The cinnamon sweetened and then gave way to ginger/clove. This was the wonderful warm cinnamon roll scent that I got out of the imp. After about 15 mins. it gave way to honey - Darn it! Here comes the honey! Honey does really unusual things on my skin, mainly turning into powdery, sickly sweet old lady smell.

 

Conclusion - If you can wear honey, and your skin chemistry holds your oils pretty true to scent - this is wonderful oil for you - especially if you love cinnamon!

If this would have just stayed where it was at the 15 minute mark - it would have made my favorites. Unfortunately by 1/2 it was really smelling powdery/ old lady yuck. Hopefully, Three Witches will give me what I am looking for!

[yellowrose]

A gift I have been petrified to try because of the honey and cinnamon. Tested on fingertips because I am a big chicken.

 

In the bottle: Conjures up the sensation of being in a spice market with lots of bodies pressing against each other.

 

Wet: Ditto. Honey and cinnamon.

 

Drying: Almost exclusively honey with cinnamon. A touch of musk and cloves sneak through. Becomes more powdery over time and surprisingly light, which may be a by-product of where it was tested (heavily callused fingertips), but I don't want to risk welts. Having dodged that bullet, this is off to swaps.

[Shollin]

First sniff: Dark Christmas spice.

 

Wearing: Ah. I saw musk and honey in the description and failed to note the “spice, spice, spice and more spice” that followed. I’m learning that my skin amps the hell out of cinnamon, and seems to be doing the same here.

[Meg]

In the bottle: Honey and spices, including cinnamon and pepper, perhaps even mint.

 

Wet: Pure dry spices, very powdery and strong, with the honey going to the background (probably won't stay there long, knowing my skin). I think I can smell cardamom in there, as well as peppers. And I smell skin... not my skin, someone else's. This is very weird.

 

Drydown: Okay, so the spices are really powerful, as in, I'm on the verge of sneezing and feel that my sinuses have cleared up nicely. The cinnamon is violent and dry. There's honey there, but it's not doing much to stop the spices - it just adds a sweet background to them. I think the spices are pretty complex, and there's still this scent that reminds me of another person's skin - leathery and slightly musky.

 

Overall: A fascinating blend, it really reminds me of a chokingly hot market in a desert with people bustling by and the smell of their skin mixing with the spices. However, wearing it, I have the impression that I've eaten a really hot curry and am both sweating and getting shivers from the spices. And I'm developing a rash, first time in 40 imps that this happens to me (and cinnamon usually works okay with me, so I'm accusing the peppers). Oops. *off into the swap list* Pity, I was curious to know how sweet it would become on me, but it never had time to develop as my skin seems to amp spices up like mad.

[chapatti]

Oh goodness, how is this even possible?

 

First whiff: all the spices jump up at your nose at the same time; the cinnamon is really detectable, but it's deep and almost woody, not Red Hots at all; the rest of the spices is so well blended that they're hard to tell apart, with a little waft of something resembling a sharp... chamomile, to my nose?

 

Drydown: the spices go on and on, perfectly blended, while the honey develops under them, without ever taking over or becoming cloying - if anything, it feels "dry", absolutely not syrupy. It does remind me of a rich, delicious chai tea, that wafts around you for hours. It's delicious, exotic without getting over-the-top, gourmand but not strictly foody, lush and hot and intoxicating and CAN YOU TELL I'M IN LOVE, PEOPLE?

(oh, and, since we're between us - sexxxx in a bottle, y'all, I swear. Talk about things that make you go hmmmm )

 

Verdict: what could I add? Top 5 material, and 10ml-worthy, no doubt!

It's amazing and it's catalog - what's not to like?

 

9.5/10

Edited December 21, 2005 by chapatti

[Voleuse]

On first application this is strong cinnamon and musk. It reminds me of Blood Moon, actually. As it dries, however, it becomes much drier, much spicier. The pepper and ginger make an appearance, and they grow more dominant over time. I can detect the honey as well, but it isn't very strong--it lends a sweet note to the blend, but I have to sniff closely to identify it as honey.

 

I'd say this is a sexy scent, except it reminds me of the chai tea I drank the other day. Sensual would be a better word, I suppose, as this isn't quite foody, but richly sweet and spicy enough to qualify.

[Chantarelle]

I love this. Fantastic. Very cinnamon on application, then it becomes almost almondy on drydown, and the other spices peek through. Like a sweeter, more mysterious version of the original Three Witches.

 

The only problem was that the cinnamon made me red and welty on my neck, so I'll just have to be careful where I apply it.

[SeaMonkey]

erm........in the imp, its the great honey and spice scent.

 

When it dries, it smells like stink bugs???

 

Cinnamon never goes right on me and Ginger is always iffy. I guess together, they don't work at all on me. This is straight stink bugs.

 

*sighs*

Why does cinnamon hate me so?

[shadowsong]

i was hoping for a more complex version of three witches. on me, three witches smells like a stick of cinnamon bark. i was expecting bengal to smell like a blend of spices.

 

unfortunately (even in the bottle, but more so on my skin) it smells more like a scented candle that's supposed to smell like a spice blend. very... waxy. i think it might be the honey - the sweeter a scent is supposed to be, the more waxy and fake-candle-scent it ends up being on me.

Edited January 14, 2006 by shadowsong