My experience of Yankee Candles has been a fairly short one. I treated myself to a selection of different fragrances to try last December as an early Christmas present to myself while purchasing presents for other members of the family. My choice was a selection of votives that appealed to me by name and description only as my purchase was made from Yankeedirect.com.

I made a selection of 10 votives (also known as sampler) candles because it was cheaper as there was a promotion where you got 10 candles for the price of 8. The price of one was £1.65, so I felt this was a good way of getting an idea of what scents I might like.

Votives are small candles that are about the diameter of a tea light candle, but a couple of inches tall. On purchasing, each votive is shrink wrapped in plastic to preserve freshness, and each 49g candle is supposed to burn for about 8 hours in total.

The apple cider cadle appealed as I like the scent of apple usually. The red colour appealed to me greatly along with the description on the web site of 'hot cider, spiced with cinammon, cloves and nutmeg.' I have only recently started to use this candle, and had forgotten about the spices, and it was a welcome surprise to open the shrink wrap and be met with such a pleasant aroma. I could smell the cinammon as soon as it was out of the packet. In some ways I was reminded of my favourite yankee candle, Cinammon sticks, but this is less overpowering and a little more subtle.

The picture on the wrapping shows glasses of hot cider, and chopped up apples. The candle initially looked bright red, which is what most of my samplers look like in the packet, but a fair bit of red remains on the plastic, and to me the actual candle looks a bit more orange/red.

On lighting the candle, a very delicious aroma started to waft around the room, eventually reaching my husband. He was a lot more appreciative of this one over cinammon sticks as he found it less overpowering, and the addition of the cloves and nutmeg have definitely toned down the overall smell. I can't really pick them out, but I can detect some apple, and it is mouth watering.

The scent is released consistently while the candle burns. The wax is of very high quality, so it burns evenly, and solidifies again really quickly after use. The scent of the candle remains in the atmosphere for a long time after use. Not days like cinammon sticks, but it has earned a place as one of my favourite candles as I prefer the ones that have more scent and actually make a long lasting difference to the atmosphere of my home. I feel it is a waste of time if the smell is only ok, and fades as soon as you blow out the candle.

This is definitely one I would repurchase.