Summer candle roundup: fruit, tennis balls, lies

Aromatique Agave Pineapple: This is my number one summer candle, four years going. I would drink this candle if I could; it just smells juicy. I have these in every room of my house, and I don’t do that with any other scent in any season — this guy is my number one boy. My brother walked into my house recently when I had these lit and shouted “Why does it smell like the best year of my life in here?!” This scent is available in an entire range, from potpourri to room spray to wax melts to diffusers to several sizes of candle, but do not buy the room spray. I don’t know how such a lovely candle got translated to such a bad room spray but someone dropped that ball big time. But the candle scent is beautiful! You can get the votive sizes if you want them for bedside or bathrooms or just to make sure you like them before committing to a bigger size. These babies are always stocked on the shelves next to the escalators at Macy’s or Dillards, or you can find them on Amazon. If you get them from a department store, they’re almost always included in some 50% off sale which makes them extremely affordable.

KOBO Wild Tomato Vine – I love a tomato scent, but it has to be just right — I like it a bit more sweet than bitter. I’d love to smell Boy Smells’ Gardener. Same with Apotheke’s Tomato Tarragon. There are so many candles I want to smell in person post-pandemic! Jonathan Adler also has a pretty good tomato candle, but my favorite tomato is this one by KOBO. It smells like an actual tomato, it’s $28, and it comes in a plantable package that will actually grow brandywine tomatoes! What?? I know! This was my go-to summer hostess gift for years. This is the ideal kitchen candle from April to August.

If you love tomatoes so much then why don’t you marry them?! Or just try CB I Hate Perfume’s Memory of Kindness, which is a spray or roll-on scent made by the same nose that created Demeter Tomato but has more depth, notes, and longevity. It starts out pretty green but grows into a sunnier scent. There’s an element of wet dirt in this one but if you like the way tomatoes smell, that’s probably a plus for you, not a minus.

Jonathan Adler Champagne: I think the Jonathan Adler Pop candles are for the most part overpriced, but I have to say that Champagne (and the discontinued Earl Grey) smells fantastic. It does not smell like champagne because how could it, but it does smell exactly like its scent listing, which is delicious: pink grapefruit, raspberry, French cassis, violet leaves, rose petal, grape leaf. It also somehow smells fizzy, but don’t ask me how. It’s crisp and zesty, a great frou-frou summer scent — like a party in an air-conditioned beach house that’s way nicer than your actual house. My friend Sarah once texted me from an art show afterparty she ended up at a stranger’s house in the Hamptons just to let me know they had those giant $300 Jo Malone candles burning in the bathrooms. I’d take this candle over those things any day.

Apotheke From a Rooftop in August: Every August rooftop I’ve ever been on smelled like hot tar, weed, sweat, American Spirits, bottom shelf vodka, Lancome Juicy Tubes, and Boca burgers, and I would bottle that scent and huff it because being young on a rooftop in the summer is better than almost anything in the world. This candle’s ingredients are white amber, crisp vetiver (get your soggy-ass vetiver away from me) and cedarwood balanced with wild lavender and green apple, and is “inspired by the artwork of sun and surf captured by Matt Schwartz (a.k.a. She Hit Pause).” Ok? They’re going with a beach thing but then why bring the building into it? This candle smells… humid. It smells like the apartment of someone who has made occasionally doing burlesque their entire post-college personality. I know these aren’t compliments I’m giving here but I’m also not blowing out this candle either. It’s really growing on me. It’s got a languid, smoky, sweet spiciness that I can’t stay mad at. It comes in an iridescent glass that’s giving me late 80s Cherry 7Up commercial vibes? Look, these are just facts. You can do with them whatever you have to do.

Otherland Matchpoint: Ahh, my old nemesis the Tennis Ball Candle. (You should read Kelly Conaboy’s 2018 review of this because her candle reviews are some of the very best things on the internet.) This candle has tempted me from all over the internet every summer for years, and last week I finally broke down and bought it — and promptly returned it. This candle claims to smell like cucumber, freshly cut grass, and tennis balls, which are all things I’m into, but I had severe doubts about its ability to deliver and I was right to be leery. Like Kelly Conaboy, I also love industrial scents; I don’t play tennis and I’m not a golden retriever, but I get that the whiff from inside of a new canister of tennis balls is an experience that makes you glad to be alive. It’s easy to rep cucumber, and while the scent from a freshly-sliced cucumber is one of the best and most simple scents on earth, it’s hard to replicate unless you’re Hendricks Gin. No one seems able to capture the actual, delicate scent of cucumber (or watermelon); instead they’re translated into some overpowering scratch-and-sniff sticker simulacrum. People always want to pair cucumber with snoozy melon or sneezy aloe, so tennis balls are at least an attempt at a new and fun partner. But sadly, this candle does not deliver, not on any of its three counts. I don’t get rubber or cucumber or wet lawn: I get 90s shower gel. Less Wimbledon, more Bath & Body Works. This is strike three for Otherland with me. Their candles are just more style than substance; a candle made for Instagram but not for your nose. I feel like Otherland is the Tana French novel of candles for me: they never give a satisfying delivery on their premise, and I’m always annoyed with myself for giving them another try. The packaging on this candle is very cute, but that’s the only good thing I have to say about it. It’s a “great to give as a gift but don’t care for my house to actually smell like it” situation. A gift for someone you don’t truly connect with, maybe? Just buy them a can of tennis balls instead.