The Story
Why it exists.
The beginning
Incense Forest arrived in 2023 as JMP Artisan Perfumes pushed further into the space between woodland restraint and something more theatrical. Jakub Pietrynka had already established the brand's forest identity with Endless Forest and Mossy Soil, scents that smelled like the real thing, not a postcard version of it. Incense Forest takes that same instinct and adds smoke, but not the heavy, churchy kind. This is the smoke of a fire you built yourself, in a place where no one can find you. The name is literal: a forest steeped in incense, where the trees have absorbed centuries of resin and the air carries both things at once. Pietrynka wasn't interested in a fragrance that announces itself. He wanted one that builds a room you can inhabit.
What makes the structure unusual is the heart. Coffee, caramel, dates, and prune don't typically share space with spruce, fir, and frankincense, the first group suggests a warm café, the second suggests a cold forest. But Pietrynka uses the evergreen top and smoky base to frame the gourmand heart, so the coffee reads as grounding rather than sweet. It's the smell of warmth in a cold place, which is exactly what you'd want if you were actually walking through a forest at night. The dried fruit adds a slight tartness that keeps the sweetness from becoming syrupy, and the white musk in the base provides a skin-close finish that feels natural rather than constructed.
The evolution
The opening hits cold and sharp, spruce and frankincense arrive together, with black and pink pepper adding a clean bite that prickles at the nostrils. There's no softness here. For the first thirty minutes, this is all evergreen and resin, the kind of cold that makes you pull your collar up. Then the coffee begins to surface, and everything shifts. The heart doesn't overpower the top, it slides underneath it, warming the composition from within. Caramel and dates arrive next, sweet and dense, like someone brought a thermos of coffee and a handful of dried fruit into the forest. The prune adds a slight fermented quality that keeps the sweetness honest. By hour three, the evergreen has retreated to the periphery and the drydown takes over: fir, vanilla, and white musk, a warm close that stays within arm's reach. The entire arc takes six to eight hours on most skin types, with the drydown lasting longest on oily skin and fading faster on dry.
Cultural impact
Incense Forest sits in a curious position: woody enough for the forest-ward collectors who drove the brand's early catalog, warm enough to attract anyone who's been burned by heavy incense frags. The coffee-forward heart is what separates it from similar compositions in the niche space, not another smoky-wood exercise, but something with a specific, almost domestic warmth layered under the evergreen top. The 2023 launch arrived alongside Kraków, the brand's other that-year release, and together they signaled an expansion beyond the green-focused palette of the debut. For wearers who found Endless Forest too austere, Incense Forest offers a more habitable forest, one you can actually live in.
