Bluecorn Candles: Keep a Little Colorado, Wherever You Are This Fall
With Fall around the corner, it’s time to cozy-up your lifestyle game with five-star quality scented candles. Let’s take a closer look at Bluecorn Candles.
There are candles you can put on a shelf that smell like something, and then there are candles you can light that are so complex in their scent that they truly transport you. Bluecorn Candles belongs firmly in the second category: these fragrant, handcrafted candles are essentially little wanderlust machines, designed to transport you to the mountains, forests, and desert landscapes of Colorado without requiring a plane ticket.
The story began in 1991 in a tiny, one-room cabin in Telluride. Founder Jon Kornbluh had no electricity and learned to dip beeswax candles with a friend, working by candlelight and hanging hundreds of freshly made tapers around the cabin. That off-grid beginning became the philosophy behind Bluecorn: simple ingredients, mountain living and the idea that lighting a candle can be a small ritual of slowing down.
Today, Bluecorn handcrafts its candles in Montrose, Colorado. Its original candles are made from 100 percent beeswax sourced from American beekeepers, while the Aromática scented collection uses a vegan coconut-wax blend, cotton wicks and phthalate-free, Prop 65-compliant fragrances. The candles are poured in small batches, with careful attention to wick selection and burn testing.
Three New Ways to Escape
Among the newest Aromática offerings are three scents that turn the changing seasons into fragrance.
Ponderosa Pine is the olfactory equivalent of walking into a Colorado forest. Pine, fir needle, and cypress essential oils evoke the fresh, bracing, resinous, unmistakable scent of the state’s iconic ponderosa trees, with bergamot adding brightness and complexity. This is also a wonderful choice for Winter and Christmastime, but avoid all the cliches, being so authentically rooted in nature.
Pumpkin takes pumpkin spice beyond the usual sugary candle. Pumpkin-maple notes are layered with ginger, cardamom, cassia, and nutmeg, creating something warm, rich, spicy, and distinctly autumnal. The blend triggers powerful brain responses tied to memory, emotion, and seasonal comfort, and so it’s always an annual favorite. You’ll even swear you can smell the slightly savory notes of freshly baked pie crust! This one’s a keeper!
Then there’s Arroyo, inspired by the red-rock canyon country stretching west from Bluecorn’s Colorado home toward Utah. Pepper, nutmeg and citrus mingle with frankincense, jasmine, cypress, amber, cedarwood and patchouli. It is warmer, earthier and more atmospheric—a desert evening rather than a mountain morning. We were certain we smelled a new leather saddle and our favorite aftershave!
This is a perfect choice if you’re the kind of person who fears scented candles are always too floral and fussy. Nope, this is an intriguing scent that will appeal to the males and gender-neutral folks in your life—or anyone who is reassured by grounding aromas rather than heady scents.
Made for Nomads—and Homebodies
For frequent travelers, Bluecorn has a particular appeal: fragrance is one of the easiest ways to make an unfamiliar room feel personal. A small candle can turn a hotel room, rental apartment or Vrbo into something more familiar, bringing back the scent of a forest hike, a desert road trip or a snowy mountain cabin. And for those who are nomads at home, Bluecorn offers the inverse journey. You don’t have to be in Colorado to conjure Colorado. But isn’t it nice to think you have all that the Centennial State offers?
There is also a satisfying sustainability story behind the magic. Bluecorn says it uses recycled, reusable, and compostable materials whenever possible; its scented candles are available in 50-percent recycled-glass vessels, with refill options, while its beeswax comes from cappings wax—a sustainable byproduct of honey harvesting that leaves the bees’ comb intact. The company also says it participates in tree-planting to offset packaging and carbon sequestration efforts related to shipping.
The result is a candle that does more than smell good. Bluecorn’s real luxury is portability: the ability to pack a little piece of the landscape with you—or, when the next adventure is still months away, bring the landscape home.
There is a huge range of candles to choose from. Shop at the Bluecorn beeswax store on Amazon.
