Candle Reviews: D.L. & Co. Modern Alchemy Collection (Salem)

The D.L. & Co. Modern Alchemy collection is a super-luxury line of scented candles; the Salem candle that is at the center of this review is the highest end candle that I’ve reviewed on this blog.  Because of this, my expectations were high, and I’m sorry to say that while this candle is truly superlative in some respects, it does not measure up where it counts.

I’ll admit that you simply can’t mark the candle down on aesthetics.  This is what you expect a high end candle to look like–even the box that the candle comes in is elegant.  The candle smells strong in the box and is encased in a lovely black frosted glass container.

Unfortunately, the issues began pretty much immediately upon lighting the candle.  It sputtered and the candle simply would not burn to the edge of its container on its initial burn so I had to pour out some wax to keep the wick from drowning.  When I went to trim the wick after extinguishing the candle for the first time, I noticed a strange raised bump around the entire wick.  I presumed that this had to be wax, but I couldn’t remove it very easily.  I’m still not sure what it was, but when I lit the candle for the second time, I had to just light the wick without trimming it since the raised bump was covering most of the wick.  This necessitated more pouring out of wax in order to let the wick burn.  From the third burn on, the wick/candle behaved normally.

All this aside, the larger problem, as far as I’m concerned, is this candle’s weak throw.  I just wrote a post about how much I love the dead of winter, and I love autumn even more than the dead of winter, so a candle that is described as “New England maple, hickory and walnut are set ablaze in a ravenous bonfire consuming the imagination,” should be nothing but a huge winner for me.  (Indeed, I’m sure that some of the harshness of my review is due to the fact that I really, really wanted to love this candle, so keep that in mind.)  To be sure, the candle does smell like burning wood, but I had to have the damn thing about two inches from my nose to be able to tell!  Given the strong scent of the candle in its box, I’m just gobsmacked by the fact that it has such light throw.  I’m so glad that my friends at Candles Off Main had a similar experience, or else I’d honestly think I was going nuts.  I will say that by the third time I’d lit the candle the scent was more noticeable.  I wish it was stronger, because this is a lovely scent and there’s no awful brimstone/bitter tinge to the smoky bonfire.

By the way, did I mention that this candle looks really good?  Even as I was spending way too much time fussing over the wick, checking wax levels and muttering under my breath about how I couldn’t even smell the blasted thing, I could help but notice that the candle does a pretty good job of representing both its specific scent idea and the Modern Alchemy collection more generally.  There’s something very ‘autumn-winter night’ about peering into the container and watching the flame flicker against the wax left on the sides of the jar–it actually kind of looks like it could be a dirty lamp burning in some Salem home.

I like to try at least two different candles from any particular line before deciding that a particular collection is not for me, so I’ll (eventually) be giving the Modern Alchemy Opium Den candle a try–look for that review sometime in the not-too-distant future!  I hope it can be a more positive review than this one was; Modern Alchemy is a line that I really want to like!

2/5

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