Do Not Disturb Candle

Bergamot is a small citrus fruit, green until it ripens to yellow, grown along a single coastline in southern Italy. The fruit is too tart to eat, so growers press the rind for its oil. Tea makers add a few drops to black tea, and the result is Earl Grey. As steam rises off the cup, you catch the scent from across the kitchen before the first sip.

A pear keeps for a week in the refrigerator door, its skin cold and beaded with water. The flesh cracks at the first bite, and near the stem it tastes faintly of water and is barely sweet. Like the bergamot, its appeal is quiet, a matter of scent as much as flavor.

Fruit begins as flower, and the peach tree shows this plainly. Its trees bloom in early spring, before the leaves open, and the petals are pink and carry a light trace of the fruit to come. In China, families once hung cut branches above the front door for protection.

Other blossoms save their fragrance for the dark. Jasmine opens after nightfall and closes again by morning. On a warm, still evening, you can smell a single bush from the end of the block. Gardeners in India plant it beneath bedroom windows, and its Hindi name, raat ki rani, translates to queen of the night.

Where nature offers single notes, perfumers combine them. They blend amber by hand from labdanum resin, benzoin, and vanilla. The raw resin is orange and sticky, yet the finished blend turns warm and sweet, ending with a soft, powdery trace. The cured vanilla pods that go into it are dark and oily, their black seeds packed inside.

Wood, too, can hold a fragrance for hours. Sandalwood oil comes from the heartwood of trees in southern India, cut only after twenty-five years of growth. A single drop on the wrist smells creamy and mild, and it lingers there until midnight.

Do Not Disturb gathers all seven of these notes into pure beeswax. Light it once the door is locked.

Notes: pear, bergamot, peach blossom, amber, jasmine, vanilla, sandalwood

40 Hours - 5oz
80 hours - 12oz