@m.arif, nice to see you here, welcome to the board!
Yes, the first time you saw Ensar's prices, you may have been surprised (especially when you can locally, i.e. at Bukit Bintang, get stuff for a fraction of the price). But I hope after our discussions during your visits, and after our analysis of the oils you presented, you can understand the cost for the
real stuff.
@bhanny, pretty much what Ensar said. And I'd like to add my thoughts to something he mentioned:
It is worthy of note that the grade of wood is not immediately and necessarily indicative of the quality of the fragrance that it will emit.
In recent times especially, I have observed this all too much.
Me personally, I am of the same opinion as old-school Khmer hunters: 'grandmother' generation trees usually yield superior aroma, compared to 'daughter' trees.
Grade (i.e. visual/quantitative grade), purely in and of itself, is not enough. A young tree that was heavily damaged (e.g. from bear clawing, elephant tusk mauling etc) can yield a very 'high grade' of wood, that can smell inferior to a grade of wood harvested from a grandmother-generation tree, several
quantitative grades below. So
qualitatively speaking (which typically the Japanese value the most), the lower grade wood is in fact superior to the higher grade wood.
Now, since I personally do wholesale and retail, even inferior high grade wood is of value. The Arab market wants black color, and the Chinese market wants thickness. We move kilos of wood every month, but good wood that is collected for
distillation, ah now that is harder and harder to come by. Like Ensar illustrated, just because a batch of wood looks great doesn't mean the aroma will be great.
On a slight tangent (but related to this topic, nevertheless), I thought I'd give the latest update for the wood situation in peninsular Malaysia. Gaharu (Malaccensis) grandmother and mother trees are pretty much finished now. Hunters had already moved on to Candan Paya (ground-level Hirta) quite a while ago, done with that, moved to mid-altitude fuzzy-leaf Candan, done with that, and are currently harvesting mountain-top Candan. This variety of Candan admittedly does smell quite lovely, but the best you can get from this is 'baby' King Super grade, no full-blown King Super wood.
Also, incidentally, a lot of the seasoned hunters are retiring as well, right about now. I'm talking about the guys who knew the
good stuff, from the good old days. One of those folks is my favorite Khmer former-hunter Sarit (the guy on the right, in the photo), who's served me well in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Believe it or not, he's hitting 60 soon (doesn't look like it, does it?) due to arthritis in his knees.
Aside from the ripening of their ages, they are also tired of hunts (like 2 recent hunts for me, one in Kelantan one in Johor) where they're in the jungle for
3 months, and hardly get anything to show for it.
Just think about that for a moment...
And now consider this: I am talking about
Malaysia. This is the country with more wild agarwood than any other country in continental Asia. Can you imagine how bad it is in all those other countries?
Aside from the retiring of the best hunters (who know what the best trees are like), their disillusionment
itself should be indication enough, as to what the state of affairs is right now.
Last year, I had (wrongly) made the prediction that there will be a surge in the availability of 'kayu minyak' grade wood, which will result in a plentitude of raw material for distillation for at least the coming 2-3 years. I was wrong because:
1) the hunters have to go in SO deep now to get to the good stuff (and even then, currently the chances of a successful harvest is about 15%), it is just plain silly to expect them to haul back kilos upon kilos of wood on their backs, out of the jungle. Take it from a guy who's carried a backpack with just some water, bananas, and a few snacks. It feels like you're carrying a truck on your back. Now imagine 10 times the weight.. maneuvering through vines, fallen trees, fleeing from wild animals... umm, no.
2)
experienced hunters aren't bringing back incense-grade wood, let alone kayu minyak grade wood (bringing back wood for distillation has a far lower $-reward, thus less incentive).
3) the new generation of hunters have an indiscriminate 'chop down anything that looks like agarwood' mentality. Aside from the inferiority of the trees they harvest, they all just want to find Chinese King Super grade wood. They don't want to 'waste' time with any other grades.
What this all means is, things suddenly (and exponentially) went from sour to rotten. I am feeling the pinch years before I thought I would.
You can expect most 'wild' oud oils being produced to soon be just co-distillations of wild and cultivated, or even more likely just cultivated. Forget about
good wild oud, I think pretty soon just genuinely-wild alone will be rare enough. But I also think that's not gonna stop fraudulent (and even honest but ignorant) sellers from peddling cultivated oils under the guise of wild. This is the case already, and it will only increase.
Since Ensar has been in the oud game since before the Chinese craze and the growing extinction problem, I'm sure he has many stories to share about how things have radically changed over the years.
Some may disagree with my bleak view, but keep in mind I operate right at the source itself, i.e. I have my fingers on the jungles' pulse...
So you can take it right from the horse's mouth, or believe the optimistic stories from folks far removed from the actual source.
On a brighter note,
Sarit's son Amab (you can see him carving away, in
this video at 2:11) is very well-trained by his father. Like his father, he's like a blood hound that can follow the cookie crumb trail to grandmother generation trees. I'll be taking him with me on the next expedition, in a couple weeks. Let's hope he finds me a tree or two.
Unlike the new crowd, these guys get down on all fours and taste the dirt (to assess the soil composition), assess the tree externally for hours (the leaves, roots, bark etc, to ascertain harvest-worthiness), among many other fascinating practices. Most trees are rejected. I remember a couple years ago, when I brought Sarit and Nasirt over to West Borneo to train local hunters, and they got sooo mad because those two guys rejected about 9 'good' trees (good enough for others, but not them), before finally approving the 10th, and even that was half-heartedly. See
here for more details and photos.
If more hunters from the new generation were like Amab (and like the older guys, who have mostly now retired), I think the crisis wouldn't have been as bad as it is now!
