I have been meaning to review the Yankee Candle Mountain Pine fragrance for a while, but never quite got round to it. The Mountain Pine fragrance was the first ever Yankee scent that I bought in the form of tea lights, although I have since bought others. It was my fiancé who really liked the scent of Mountain Pine - I can take or leave pine scents myself and of course there is always that association of pine and toilet cleaner!

The tea lights come in a box of twelve and the box is adorned with a picture of snowy mountains and forest pines as you would probably expect from something with a name like Mountain Pine! I've got the box in front of me and am quite surprised to see that this fragrance is actually part of the festive range. I had thought that it was just part of their normal, everyday range, as although I associate pine with winter, I personally don't feel that this is a scent that can only be used at Christmas.

On removing the tea lights from the box, they look rather unusual. For a start they come in little clear plastic cups, rather than the aluminium holders you would normally expect. I have also noticed that the base of the holders have teeny little 'feet' so that they don't actually touch the surface that they are standing on (although you should of course always place them somewhere heat proof). The wax in the candles is dark green and the shiny surfaces of the wax have lots of bubbles in them - something I have occasionally noticed with the jar candles I've bought from Yankee.

The wicks of the tea lights are flattened down slightly, so I have to pull them up before lighting. Once lit, I have found that the tea lights burn incredibly slowly - much slower than any other brand of tea lights I have tried and the gentle flicker of the flame helps create a cosy atmosphere. Like the Yankee Candle jars it pays to let them burn until all the surface wax is melted. If you don't, the next time you burn the tea light, it will burn straight down leaving a ring of un-melted wax around the edge.

I found the scent of the candles to be quite strong when removing them from the box. They have a strong pine fragrance, which has certain sharpness to it, but I thought it was reasonably pleasant and thankfully I didn't think it had that toilet cleaner aroma I had worried about! I actually thought it smelled quite fresh and natural - it was quite rural where I grew up and we had to walk through woods to get to school. The smell brought back memories of walking down those little pathways in winter.

When I first tried these candles, I lit two at once. I was incredibly disappointed to find that even after an hour of burning them I could barely smell the candles at all. There was a very faint hint of pine but I could only really detect that when I moved up close to where the candles were burning. The second time I burned these, I decided to burn three instead of just the two. This seemed to improve things and I could smell the aroma of pine in the whole room, however it was still quite weak, which is not what I have come to expect from Yankee Candle.

The burn time of each candle is 4-6 hours. I haven't been counting, but I'd say from those tea lights I've used so far, I've found that these have lasted towards the 6 hour mark, which is fairly impressive as tea lights go.

I paid just £2.99 for my box of tea lights from Boundary Mill in one of their sales. That wasn't a bad price really considering the RRP is £5.99. The fragrance is also available in the form of wax tarts, votives, tumblers and house warmer jars. Online buy from www.yankeedirect.com or Clinton Cards on the high street.

To sum up, whilst I do like the scent of Mountain Pine and think it is probably one of the better pine fragrances around, I would not buy it again in the form of tea lights. The scent was way too gentle and only clearly noticeable when I had multiple candles lit. So, whilst I wouldn't rule out using the fragrance again, I would choose another format.