You want to know what is actually inside Harlem Candle Co.'s Speakeasy before you spend money on it, and the product page only gets you partway there. Here is the plain answer: it is 11 ounces of scented soy wax with a double wick, listed at about 80 hours of burn time, and the brand states its candles are vegan, cruelty-free, and made without phthalates or parabens. It is made in the USA, and the house was founded in 2014 by Teri Johnson, built around fragrance, jazz, and Harlem.
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The scent is a spiced, smoky, sweet build: cardamom, smoked incense, bourbon, and pimento berry up top, saffron, licorice, plum blossom, and tobacco leaves in the middle, then palo santo, patchouli, creamy vanilla, and dark chocolate at the base. That is a well built fragrance in a soy base, which is the one part worth reading closely if you are the kind of buyer who also compares it against single-ingredient beeswax candles poured in small batches before deciding.
The note list, exactly as the brand lists it
Top notes: cardamom, smoked incense, bourbon, pimento berry. Middle notes: saffron, licorice, plum blossom, tobacco leaves. Base notes: palo santo, patchouli, creamy vanilla, dark chocolate.
One thing to understand about that pyramid. On skin, a fragrance moves in stages, because your body heat evaporates the light materials first and the heavy resins last. In a candle, the melt pool holds all of it at once at a steady temperature.
So you do not really get a top, heart, and base in sequence. You get a single blended impression, weighted toward whichever materials throw hardest at that temperature. In Speakeasy, that means the spice and the sweet woody base do most of the talking.
That is also why some note lists for this scent include bourbon and others leave it out of the official pyramid. Which brings up the question most people actually type into search.
The bourbon is the part people ask about
Reviewers who have burned it report that the whiskey idea reads faint, and that the cardamom and the woods carry the scent instead. There is a simple reason for that.
No candle contains bourbon. A bourbon accord gets built out of other materials: vanilla for the barrel sweetness, woody notes for the oak, a little spice for the heat. Those materials are already doing double duty in this formula, so the whiskey impression sits underneath rather than on top.
If you were hoping for a candle that smells like an open glass of rye, this is not that. What you get is spiced smoke with chocolate and vanilla behind it, and reviewers describe it as softening as it burns, which makes it easier to live with for people who find heavy fragrance tiring.
Fragrance quality is only half of what you are buying, though. The other half is the wax it is sitting in.
The wax sets the ceiling on everything else
Speakeasy is soy wax. Soy is made by hydrogenating soybean oil into a solid, which is a real improvement over petroleum wax and a big part of why so many good indie brands use it.
Soy also has a lower melting point than beeswax. A lower melting point means the wax turns liquid faster, the melt pool gets deeper sooner, and the candle consumes itself at a quicker rate for the same flame. Soy is also softer, which is why soy candles are more likely to show frosting or a rough top after a few burns.
Beeswax sits at the other end. It has the highest melting point of any common candle wax, so it holds its shape longer and gives up its fuel more slowly. That single property is the reason an 80-hour beeswax candle is possible in a jar this size.
Here is where that difference shows up in real life. You have people over on a Friday, the candle goes on the console by the door and stays lit for four hours. Sunday you light it again while you clean. By the following weekend a soft wax candle has visibly dropped, and you start rationing it.
That is the exact spot where our Room Service beeswax candle makes sense as an alternative, and not only for the burn math. Its notes are saffron, white tea, purple peonies, orchid, tobacco, vanilla, almond milk, and tonka bean. Saffron, tobacco, vanilla, and tonka all appear in the Speakeasy direction too, so if that spiced hotel-lobby warmth is what pulled you toward Speakeasy, this is the closest thing we make.
Two wicks versus one wooden wick
Speakeasy uses a double wick. Two flames widen the melt pool faster, which helps a wide jar melt edge to edge and pushes scent into the room quickly. Two flames also burn through more wax per hour than one.
Our candles use a single wooden wick. A wooden wick has a wide, flat flame that spreads heat sideways instead of digging a hole down the middle, and it crackles quietly while it burns. That flame shape is how one wick can still clear the full surface of the jar.
Neither approach is a gimmick. They are two solutions to the same problem, and they trade off differently: faster scent build with two flames, slower fuel use with one.
Side by side, using only what each brand states
| MBur 80-hour beeswax | Harlem Candle Co. Speakeasy | Other luxury fragrance houses (Diptyque, Nest New York) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wax | 100% beeswax, single ingredient | Scented soy wax | Perfumer-led house scents; ingredient detail varies by line |
| Wick | One wooden wick | Double wick | Varies by collection |
| Listed burn time | 80 hours | About 80 hours as listed by the brand | Not stated consistently across lines |
| Fragrance | Non-toxic, phthalate-free fragrance oils | Brand states no phthalates or parabens | Signature fragrances; disclosure varies |
| Dyes | None | Not stated | Not stated |
| Made | Handmade in New York City | Made in the USA | Established international houses |
| Price | $65 for the 80-hour size, $32 for the 40-hour size |
Read that table and you will notice the honest verdict: Speakeasy is a genuinely well made candle from a brand that discloses more than most. The difference between the two columns is not quality of intent. It is what the wax itself can do.
What buyers actually notice in the room
Scent throw is the thing people judge a candle on after week one. Fragrance oil is a small share of a candle by weight, and patent filings on candle fragrance formulation describe loads running anywhere from a fraction of a percent up to the mid teens. That means throw depends as much on how cleanly the wax carries the oil as on how much oil is in it.
Beeswax carries fragrance without competing with it, because there is nothing else in the jar. Here is how one customer put it after burning our Retail Therapy scent, which shares the black tea, amber, anise, and tonka bean side of the Speakeasy idea:
"This scent has me in a chokehold. I burn it in my room and my living room and it fills my space SOOOOO nicely. I've tried quite a few scents from them and they all have different vibes and gives you something unique....and they all smell amazing. Theres nothing I hate more than a candle that can't fill the room and baby this is NOT that. This candle permeates every corner of the room. Cant say enough about how impressed I am with this company." Tiffany Gordon
If a smoky, fruity, spiced profile is what you want, our Retail Therapy beeswax candle lists red currant, black currant, jasmine, peach, black tea, amber, anise, and tonka bean. It is darker and fruitier than Room Service, and it is the pick for people who liked the plum and licorice part of Speakeasy most.
Another customer wrote about switching away from mass-market jars:
"I love these candles. No headache or feeling nauseous like the Bath & Body candles with all the extra chemicals. In addition, I love the package and how carefully everything was wrapped. Im saving the wrapping paper to utilize during the xmas holiday." Jason H.
Scent sensitivity varies from person to person, and if fragrance triggers symptoms for you, follow your doctor's guidance on what belongs in your home.
How to get the full 80 hours out of any candle this size
The maker's own care guidance for Speakeasy is worth following, and it lines up with what we tell our own customers.
Let the first burn go until the wax melts evenly across the whole top layer. Wax has a memory, and a first burn that only clears the middle will tunnel for the rest of the candle's life.
Trim the wick to about a quarter inch before every burn. A long wick makes a tall, flickering flame that smokes and eats wax faster than it needs to.
Cap each session at four hours, then let it cool. Keep it away from drafts, vents, and ceiling fans, because moving air pulls the flame sideways and burns one wall of wax down before the other. Store it between 50 and 85 degrees, snuff it instead of blowing it out, and stop when about half an inch of solid wax is left in the bottom.
One more small trick. Burn it for the first half hour with the door closed and the scent will build in that room instead of drifting off down the hall.
The objections worth answering
"It already says phthalate-free and paraben-free, so what is left to worry about?" Nothing about the fragrance disclosure, which is better than most of the market gives you. The remaining questions are about the wax and dye, which are separate line items from fragrance and rarely spelled out anywhere.
"Is not soy already the clean option?" Soy is a real step up from paraffin. Paraffin starts as the heavy residue left after crude oil is refined into fuels, gets bleached and deodorized, and comes out as candle wax, which is petroleum waste dressed up. Soy skips all of that. Where soy gets murky is blending, because plenty of jars labeled soy are soy-and-paraffin mixes, and the label does not always say so. Harlem Candle Co. lists soy wax for this candle.
"But beeswax candles smell faint." That reputation comes from unscented beeswax pillars, which smell faintly of honey and nothing else. A scented beeswax candle with non-toxic fragrance oil throws like any other good candle, and our reviews are mostly people saying it filled a whole room and kept smelling good after the flame went out.
"I like the smoky tobacco direction and I do not want to give it up." You do not have to. Room Service carries tobacco, saffron, vanilla, and tonka bean in a beeswax base, which is the same family of warmth reached with a different wax.
Questions people ask before buying
What wax is Harlem Candle Co. Speakeasy made of?
Scented soy wax with a double wick, in an 11 ounce vessel about 3.25 inches across and 4.25 inches tall. If you want a single-ingredient wax instead of a vegetable wax, that is the reason to look at 100% beeswax, which has the highest melting point of any candle wax and no blend behind it.
How long does the Speakeasy candle burn?
The brand lists about 80 hours, and one museum shop listing says 90. Our 80-hour size is also rated at 80 hours and sells for $65, which works out to about 81 cents per hour of burn time on the Room Service size chart.
Does Speakeasy actually smell like bourbon?
Lightly. Reviewers consistently say the cardamom and the woods lead, with the whiskey idea sitting in the background. If you want a spiced sweet warmth without a boozy edge, Retail Therapy takes the black tea, amber, anise, and tonka bean route instead.
Is Speakeasy a good gift?
Yes, especially for someone who follows fragrance closely, since the note structure is more interesting than most gift candles. If you want the gift to last longer per dollar, the 80-hour beeswax size at $65 gives you roughly twice the evenings of a typical mid-size jar.
Can I burn either one around kids or pets in the room?
Keep any open flame out of reach, ventilate the room, and trim the wick so it does not smoke. Beeswax is naturally hypoallergenic and burns without paraffin soot, which is why parents and pet owners often ask for it, and our full candle care guide covers safe placement in more detail.
What to do with all this
Speakeasy is a serious fragrance in a soy base, with a clear note list, a stated 80-hour burn, and a brand that puts its fragrance policy in writing. If the spiced, smoky, chocolate-vanilla profile is what you want and soy wax suits you, it is a fair buy.
If what pulled you in was that warm saffron and tobacco character, and you would rather have it in a single-ingredient wax that holds its shape, start with Room Service. Emotionally, it is the closest thing to walking into a good hotel at night. Logically, it is 100% beeswax with one wooden wick, non-toxic phthalate-free fragrance, no dyes, and it is poured by hand in New York City.
Across the 57 reviews on our product pages, the line that repeats most is about how far the scent travels. One customer, Paige, wrote: "They smell up a WHOLE room during the burn & even a while after blowing them out. I won't buy other candles anymore, they're just that good."
Before you buy anything, read the guide to what makes a candle non-toxic so you can read any label, ours included, without taking marketing on faith. Then start with the 40-hour Room Service size at $32, because that is the cheapest way to find out how the saffron and tobacco reads in your own room before you commit to the 80-hour size. Judging a scent in your living room beats judging it from a note list, so the sooner you test one, the sooner you stop guessing.
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