@Taha Ok, will give it a try.
Heartwood takes many years to form and typically found in grandmother trees of decades, if not centuries old. Given the current state of the supply market, it is not hard to explain the price difference in the wood.
I would imagine most of the cookie cutter Oud sellers would use the $5 wood to cook most of the oils in the market due to 1) cheaper and 2) most beginners would hardly tell the difference between high grade oils from good quality wood and mediocre oils from low grade wood [emoji57].
Having said that, I would guess that the high grade wood in picture 3 would be 'useless' to most distillers (except for artisans [emoji4]) as we know the yield would be super low. Perhaps the wood in the 2nd picture might be a better choice since it has a good balance of oil and resin?
As for why the wood in the first picture not cleaned beyond stage 2? Hehe I would reckon there will be insufficient material left for distillation! The bunk wood are there to make up the bulk of the distillation. Remove all of them and you might need at least 32 times more wood material, which work out to be the same financially! [emoji1] That might explain why Taha left most of the 'rubbish' in the jungle.
Whoa,
dude.. color me impressed!
I thought there would be a bunch of people guessing and each would get maybe a thing or two right. Your post pretty much summed it up!
And you're not just right in your guesses, but also about my reasoning for not bothering with the $5 grade wood. Since I now have to distill everything myself, I simply do not have the capacity (or patience or brawn.. or real estate) to process the volume of wood required to run standard-grade distillations anymore, i.e. for wholesale clients.
Adam is exactly right. Just seeing the photos is
not enough.. and that's exactly why I included both pics one and two. Not only do they look very similar overall, but in fact you'll see some
darker stains in the first (lower grade) photo.. and so, judging from just the images, one would wrongly conclude photo 1 shows a better batch of wood than photo 2.
And of course Adam is also right in saying that most (actually, pretty much all) suppliers don't bother to separate different grades of shavings.
The wood in photo 1 is from the tree's xylem. The brown stains here are just months/few years old. And so, like I've always insisted: oils distilled from such wood are no different or any better from good organic oud. If you ask me, you're better off getting
superior plantation oud oils from Ensar or Adam, rather than waste money on overpriced wild oud oils that were cooked from xylem raw material. Fyi, that covers most wild oud oils in the market. Unless a seller goes out of the way to ensure the wood quality is excellent (personally inspecting the raw material, or training the hunters/suppliers to separate different grades), what they'll likely be selling is Xylem oud oils.
Think rose petals absolute vs rose petals+buds+twigs absolute.... the former is always going to be more expensive. All producers want to minimize costs, no wonder most rose absolutes are extracted from the latter.
So there you have it folks.
Lesson learned: do not be fooled by photos of dark wood that is presented as the raw material for an oil.
Some months ago, Ensar said oil-grade wood CAN be used to make high grade oils. I cringed when I read that - not because I disagree with it, but because it can open the door for some sneaky folks to abuse the term. I will take the liberty of speaking on Ensar's behalf: his definition of oil-grade is
not the same as what is generally referred to as 'oil grade wood'/'kayu minyak' in the market.
I hope the demonstration with the photos of the shavings helped you guys understand why.
From personal experience, I can attest that mixing heartwood with some xylem agarwood (so long as its good enough) can be a good way to bring production cost down. A good nose will be able to pick it up right away, but most folks won't know the difference.
And for high grade xylem-only agarwood, the
only places where I think it even exists any more are Sri Lanka and Papua. And since I know some sneaky folks can abuse that too, the emphasis is on '
high grade' xylem (e.g. decade++ oleoresin formation).
As a side note: earlier, Ensar had posted a photo of a bunk-y looking piece of Sri Lankan wood. That was a xylem chunk. Xylem wood is super water-absorbent, and soaking it for a single day can easily make it 'sinking wood' (not 'sinking
grade wood'). On the other hand, heartwood is very tough, and you can't play these sinking games with it.
So there you have it folks. Another piece of the oud puzzle. Something that's not discussed much (at all), but hopefully something folks will appreciate true artisans paying attention to.. among many other things yet undiscussed.
