CANDLE SPOTLIGHT: Harvest Gathering 2015

Products: candle and wf bulbs 
Area used in:  living room 
Time Period: mid-October - Thanksgiving

Description: Transport yourself to a hilltop winery during harvest with a blend of cinnamon leaves, crisp apple and touch of tart cranberry

Missing note: pumpkin

Trivia: this first appeared out of nowhere late in fall of 2013 and was named "Harvest Gathering No. 4"

I'll be honest, I flatout ignored this scent for the longest! With such vastly superior fall scents like Leaves and Pumpkin Carving and Cranberry Woods, I just didn't see the need for HG. I pretty much wrote this scent off as a generic knockoff of Leaves from a low-tier candle company that you find at Target or Marshalls. Had my bf not sniffed this in the store and expressed some interest, I probably would've continued ignoring it. But as I said in my last candle review, I've been trying to be open-minded and branch out and so here we are.

Performance-wise, it was kinduva hot mess. The flames were wimpy and stubby and it was a crapshoot as to whether it would fully pool out or not. It canyoned a handful of times and left cliffs of hard wax on the sides. Twice I even had to to do the infamous cottonball trick (I've had to do that with my Leaves too) which I haven't had to do in ages. Its past mid-range at this point and it seems to have corrected itself. Throw-wise, it's medium-ish; on scale of 1 to 10, it's about a 6 maybe 5 3/4. Same with the wf bulbs, they're medium-ish.

And now on the scent. In the past, I wrote this off as being a mix Leaves and Pumpkin Carving with a hint of Cranberry Woods and I still sort of stand by that. The overall blend just seems to be a hodge-podge of generic "autumn" notes. You get a generic red apple note a la Leaves and a sharp cinnamon bark note a la Cranberry Woods. There is some cranberry but there is neither any juiciness or tartness that you would associate with the fruit; it's almost similar to the cranberry in Cranberry Pumpkin - an artificially sweetened dried Craisin. And though it is no longer mentioned for whatever reason, there is definitely pumpkin which adds a deep and almost dark earthiness. Overall, it is a little craft store-smelling, a little Michael's-ish, and kinda generic fall poutpourri-like.

HG isn't a bad scent by any means but it is far exciting. I don't really know why this fall BBW decided to place it in the Cork & Vine collection (and I'm torn about the green color) cuz it doesn't fit; it should've been in one of the fall collections cuz it is very much a fall scent! Anyway, I'm neither blown away or in candle love nor have I seen the errors of my ways for underestimating HG however I have come to appreciate it. Despite it being very generic, it does capture the essence of fall and the autumn harvest albeit in a dull and cliched manner - I mean you can't get more more fall-ish than apple, cinnamon, cranberry and pumpkin. Still this is a "nice" scent - it's safe, it's unassuming, it's guest-friendly. If it were to disappear, I certainly wouldn't be upset. For the moment, I appreciate it for a what it is - a nice, calm, unassuming fall scent.