Borneo 3000 anyone?

Ensar Oud

Well-Known Member
#1
Borneo 3000 has become everybody’s bread-and-butter sales pitch for their Borneos. “It reminds me of Borneo 3000. It smells like Borneo 3000. It’s all but identical to Borneo 3000.” But, you know what, it’s not identical to Borneo 3000.

Oud, simply, isn’t just an extract taken from a tree, then bottled. It’s the filtration of that extract through a particular ecosystem, a particular distillation setup, a particular distillation style… at the hands of a particular Master. That’s the 3000, that’s Borneo Kinam. A synergy of countless variables that came together in a painstakingly precise way to create a work of art.

It’s just a marketing gimmick: it smells like Borneo 3000, therefore buy it. Well, you know what—don’t buy it. Don’t believe it.

A lot of the so-called ‘new generation’ ouds are so linear, it’s impossible to compare them to an oil like the 3000. Their one-dimensionality makes them interesting as far as single-note extracts go; such as lavender, bergamot, mint. Their cleanliness and simplicity are commendable. Because oils like Sheikh’s Borneo come at you with a myriad notes, it’s possible that one of these notes is what you smell in the single-note ‘new gen’ ouds. Though to compare such oils to Borneo 3000 would be like comparing the sound of a lone clarinet to the clarinets in the sea of the Ninth Symphony.

They are completely different extracts. I would venture to say, if Borneo 3000 is what you’d traditionally classify as ‘oud oil’, the New Gen oils ought to be classified as something else: An innovation aimed at isolating a single note rather than coaxing from the raw materials an entire orchestra of top notes, heart notes and base notes harmoniously woven together.