CANDLE SPOTLIGHT: Fresh Balsam

Products: candle and wf bulb
Area used in: main and guest bathroom (wf bulb in main bathroom)
Time Period: Thanksgiving - New Year's Eve (wf bulb)

Description: Bring the beauty of the outdoors inside with this elegant fragrance that blends evergreen woods, crisp eucalyptus and cedarwood

Missing notes: apple, pine and musk

So for the longest time, I avoided straight pine scents; I much preferred pine notes to be blended with other notes, like Winter or Tis the Season or Chestnut & Clove (btw I did a whole Youtube video on this subject so go check it out!). That said for the looooongest time, I straightup avoided scents like Evergreen and especially Fresh Balsam. But this year I decided to go out of my comfort zone and give pine scents a try; that said I bought both Evergreen and Fresh Balsam to try.

Performance-wise, FB was kinduva a hot mess!

It tunneled and canyoned like crazy for several burns. Finally once it reached midpoint, it corrected itself and has been burning ok ever since. The flames were never super high and dancing but they managed to get the job done. The throw on this bastard is STROOOOOOOONG! The cold throw alone will knock you out but the warm throw will dropkick you right in the face.

And now the scent. *sigh Even though I said I was gonna give pine scents a try, I was more hesitant to try FB than Evergreen only because the piney aspect was sooo intense and in your face. The balsam note , obviously, is the most prominent. Combined with that eucalyptus, it's a double whammy of intenseness; it's an instant "whoosh" of fresh, crisp coolness. The cedar gives it hint of outdoor woodsiness and further intensifies the piney aspect. Now I hold no earthy idea that apples were a part of the equation until I looked at Slatkin's old notes of this scent. It's no sweet "apple/apple cider" like Tis the Season, it's more like a "fresh apple still on the tree" similar to Autumn. It livens up the blend and makes it more bright. That said, if you don't have a heightened or sensitive sense of smell, you probably wouldn't make out anything appley at all.

Now how does FB compare to Evergreen? Two different vibes in my opinion. While Evergreen is more cozy and inviting, FB is more cool and invigorating. I describe Evergreen as a Christmas tree that you just brought inside and is waiting to be decorated whereas FB is a tree outdoors still in the ground covered in snow; FB is more crisp as well more earthy and outdoorsy. Evergreen has more of antiquey good ol fashioned Christmas feel to it while FB captures the winter season period; it's a scent you can burn from the end of November straight thru to March (I still don't understand why BBW continues to market FB as an autumn scent cuz it isn't)

So what's my verdict on FB? It's aiight. It's a very crisp, fresh and invigorating scent;I think it's a good scent for the bathroom. I personally like to burn it when I'm taking a bath. That said it's a good scent to perk you up and rejuvenate you. It's also a powerful deodorizing scent guaranteed to knock out any funk/stank you have in your domicile. However personally I don't think this is a candle I would want to burn everyday, this is definitely a once in awhile scent. I'm glad I bought it and tried it and while I may use the wf bulbs in the bathroom in the future, I don't think I'll ever buy another candle of it again.