Ah, I am now in the middle of some exciting (GOOD for a change!) developments in Borneo, so I don't have much time to post.
But since Ensar quoted me above....
...yes, I can confirm that there are oils that not only 'exist' with Ensar but in fact some of them are superior IMO to their past Oriscent predecessors (no offence Ensar!). For example, I can confirm that some of them were cooked from genuine kinam because of not only the aroma but also some other factors (i.e. not just a 'kinamic aroma' due to clever techniques, but actual kinam raw material).
As an example: I smear some on my pinkie and then suck my finger. I have a degenerative eye disorder (and the doctor says it ultimately leads to blindness, ack!) that causes eye pain during all my waking hours. There are literally only 3 or 4 things which alleviate the pain, and kinam is one of them (second-most potent actually). So when I consumed some of the oils that Ensar showed me, aside from spiralling up (or drowning into the oil... different oils affect me differently), some of these oils alleviated my eye pain as well. And it goes without saying they smelled like kinam, and tasted like it too. One even numbed my entire sinus tract (and brain) with the very same sensation as kinam
(different from anesthetics, clove, etc.)
Any how,
I am FINALLY now able to comprehend something that's been perplexing me since your visit.
In my case, as I had told you I piggy-back my website oils on large-scale projects. About 10% (quantity-wise) of about 10% (quality wise) — i.e. only about 1% — will be the stuff that I'll deem fit for the website. The rest is for the wholesale market, which doesn't care about (nor is able to discern)
qualitative factors.
So it baffled me how you've been able to produce so many high calibre oils without a piggy-backing mechanism. I simply couldn't comprehend it, considering the hefty debt you're in and the fact that you're no multi-zillionaire. Now that I see you've had to wholesale large portions of batches as well just to be able to run those distillations (sadly, only increasing your debt), it not only solves the mystery in my mind, but its a big relief too! I don't feel as incompetent any more, whew!
I wonder if most consumers (and I'd like to direct this question at consumers) realize the fact that the percentage of
quality agarwood in the overall stocks of agarwood is like a drop in the ocean.
For
quality oud oil, quantitative (visual) assessment is actually far lower than what most folks would imagine, I think.
In my humble opinion, its the ability to find the
quality needles in the haystack that is the primary determinant, before anything else (secondary factors like quantitative grade, techniques, good apparatus, etc.).
To give an example: extremely 'low grade' oil-grade wood from a kinam tree will give a superior oil to even high-incense-grade wood from a young tree with poor genes.
It bewilders me that Ensar found one such needle (the raw material for Borneo Kinam v2) a mere 6 months ago. In this day and age.. in the current messy situation of the supply-side market... mind-blowing, really.
Ensar, I still haven't been able to bring myself to apply it directly to my skin aside from that first time (I am content, for now, with smelling it from the bottle). But I can tell you, with just 6 months under its belt, I find this oil to be far far superior to v1. I cannot thank you enough for the bottle you gifted to me.
The poetic end to this post is that Borneo Kinam v2 is
literally the thing that made Jamal (my Borneo chief hunter) not give up. Whereas the Cambodians all gave up and retired out of frustration (yes, the old Agar Aura is no more), BK2 bewitched Jamal SO much that he talked me into giving Borneo one last shot instead of giving up like the rest of my team. So Ensar, if I do end up finding something, I hope you'll be happy to know what the motivation, the driving force, was.