Time to Bust Out the Best of Yankee Candle’s Early Fall Candles

"Early fall" is here, and it's time to get those Earthy, spicy fall fragrances out of the closet!

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It may still be hot outside, but like I told a lady at Bath & Body Works a few weekends ago, fall is just a mindset, baby! With Labor Day in our rearview mirrors, you all have my full blessing to start burning those early fall candles. Now…you might be asking, “what is an “early” fall candle, Stoney?” I’m glad you asked. Longtime supporters of my Yankee Candle content know that I’m on a pretty strict fragrance calendar. By Labor Day, I’m tired of the fresh fruity fragrances of summer, but I’m not quite ready for the warming pumpkins and cinnamons of the fall. So, I created this window in my head (something totally normal sane people say) called “early fall,” during which I celebrate the woody, Earthy, dead-leaves-and-the-dirty-ground types of scents that, in my opinion, Yankee Candle does better than anybody else. So, this morning, I’m going to list my top 10 favorites for “early fall,” and I encourage you to celebrate along with me!

Honorable Mention to the versatile Mountain Lodge: A surprisingly versatile fragrance, Mountain Lodge can fit just about anywhere on the calendar and that’s part of the reason I love it so much. You can burn it in the summer time to bring back memories of heading to the cabins of the Smoky Mountains on vacation. Or, you can burn it in the fall for it’s musky scent. It’s one of those rare “it doesn’t really matter when you burn it” candles for me.

Yankee Candle’s Best Early Fall Candles

10. Ciderhouse – Ciderhouse is great because of how the fruit and the spice fragrances balance each other. It is heavy on the apple, but it has just the slightest hint of spice to make this a tremendous transition from the summer into the fall – burn this thing from the last week of August through Labor Day and you are going to be in the fall spirit in no time.

9. Maple Pancakes – Are you into torture? Specifically speaking, do you love to torture your own family? Well, I have just the candle for you – Maple Pancakes. Nothing will inflict mental anguish on folks quite like waking up early on a Saturday morning, burning this candle, and having everyone in the house think they’re waking up to pancakes, only to discover that it’s just a candle. That’s how accurate this one is.

8. Evening Air – I’m going to be honest with you guys, Evening Air used to be a top 10 candle for me back in the day. It’s a great late summer/early fall fragrance. But, one day, when I was still living at home, my dad walked into the room and said it smelled like pencil shavings and it just completely wrecked me. I haven’t been able to smell it the same since. Nonetheless, I loved it for how outdoorsy it smelled while also sneaking in hints of a cool evening breeze into it.

7. Autumn Nature Walk full review – I love the fresh, Earthy stuff this time of year…be it the ambiguous “fresh” smells or the “dead leaves” smells…it works for me. I’m not leaning into the pumpkin and cinnamon stuff quite yet, but it’s getting close to that time of the year. Autumn Nature Walk hits all the right notes for late August into September – it’s woody, there’s a little bit of damp soil under a bed of dead leaves, and there’s even a hint of spice in this thing to boot.

6. Woodland Road Trip – full review – This is a newer fragrance, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the highlight of the 2021 class of fall candles. It’s been a hot minute since something came out and immediately contended among the fall heavyweights. Listen – Yankee Candle does fall like nobody else. That’s not easy to do. Woodland Road Trip smells like warm sunshine with a cool fall breeze and the ripe smells of an Earth that is beginning to cool off for the season. I tell you hwhut, it damn well smells just like a ride in the car right up through Gatlinburg, Tennessee…in the heart of the Smoky Mountains.

5. Autumn Wreath – I swear Autumn Wreath smells just like a combination of all of the other fall fragrances from the Yankee Candle catalogue. There’s an inherently Earthy scent to it, but the more it lingers, the more the smells of cinnamon and apples hang in the air.

4. Amber Glow – Soft, rich, and Earthy, Amber Glow is among my quintessential transition candles from summer to fall. It has ample amount of freshness, but it also has some rich rocky tones in it that make it feel closer to an Earthy fall candle than a fresh-air summer candle. If you want to say it smells like a golden hour sunset, well then who the hell am I to stop you?

3. Lakeside Birch – I rather enjoy the woodsy, wet fragrances in late summer when the tropical vibes of the season have worn off and I’m beginning to look forward to fall. That’s exactly what I get with Lakeside Birch. It brings back memories of the swampy frisbee golf course in Smyrna, Tennessee.

2. Autumn Leaves – full review – In case I haven’t established this already, I’m more of a fan of the Earthy and leafy scents in the fall than I am the overbearing pumpkin scents. Give me some shit that smells kind of like dirt, and I’ll be a happy camper. That’s why I like Autumn Leaves so much – it doesn’t try to be too sweet. It knows exactly what it is – dead ass leaves – and it stays in its lane. For that reason, I burn it every September.

1. Autumn Woods (if you can still find it anywhere) – Believe it or not, Autumn Woods was the candle that started it all for me. Back on that fateful September day in 2006, when I walked into the Yankee Candle in Providence Marketplace here in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, it was this very candle that I walked out with. To this day, it remains my favorite. Part of that, I’ll admit, is that there’s a certain nostalgia in looking back upon the start of my journey as a Yankee Candle fan. But, mostly, it’s just a damn good fall fragrance. It smells like the wind, blowing through a deciduous forest in the fall, catching Earthy scents in its breeze, and carrying them directly to your living room.

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley

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