The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Frankincense & Jasmine is part of Ein Gedi's Scents of the Bible line, a catalog built around raw materials mentioned in ancient Near Eastern texts. The collection gathers ingredients with deep roots in religious and cultural history. Frankincense carries centuries of liturgical weight, burned in temples as part of sacred ritual. Jasmine carries its own kind of devotion, cultivated in gardens celebrated in ancient poetry, including the Song of Songs. The pairing draws on materials that already carried meaning long before modern fragrance ever codified them. Each note in this composition was chosen for the resonance it already held, the kind of resonance that doesn't need explanation, only recognition.
What makes this composition unusual is the olive. Not a perfumery olive accord built to suggest fruit or leaf, but actual extra virgin olive oil as the carrier, the way ancient anointing oils were made. That single choice reshapes everything about how the fragrance behaves once it leaves the bottle. The jasmine and frankincense dissolve into that oily base, sinking into it rather than hovering above it. The oily notes aren't a metaphor. They're the medium, and every other element in the composition has to work within that constraint.
The evolution
The opening is immediate and unmistakable: olive oil, warm and vegetal, with a greenish-yellow weight that sits on skin. Within the first few minutes, jasmine cuts through, not the indolic kind, but a cleaner white-floral sweetness that feels sun-warmed rather than sultry. Frankincense enters as a smoldering resin, slightly bitter, with a camphor edge that catches in the nose. By the 30-minute mark, the jasmine softens and recedes. The frankincense takes over, growing smokier, more austere. The olive oil base anchors everything with a faintly waxy, almost candle-warm quality that persists well into the drydown. The overall arc moves through distinct phases, each one handing the composition off to the next material with a quiet inevitability.
Cultural impact
Frankincense and jasmine each carry extensive histories of ritual and devotional use across the ancient Near East, and Ein Gedi's 2015 blend draws on both materials in their traditional forms. The composition belongs to the Scents of the Bible collection, and its formulation places frankincense alongside jasmine in an olive oil carrier rather than a conventional alcohol base. Frankincense has long been associated with temple incense and sacred anointing rites, appearing in ritual contexts that stretch back through centuries of recorded practice.
