Let's talk Oud: a detailed discourse on the various aspects of this substance we love

[Adam]

@*Ensar, AMAZING.
"... bitter taste of sadness was swiftly dispelled by the magical, psychoactive aroma..."* I wish you felt the same way.
But Yeh I wouldn't do it again either.

It also reminded me my first attempt to order some "custom distilled" oud oil. I shared this story on another* forum few years back. To cut it short, I bought farmed agarwood* sculpture. Black beauty, 5-6 meters tall, 30kg piece.
At that time living* in UK and simply ordering things to be done for me I was definitely* judging ONLY by the look.
Well, as a result I got 6ml of oil with a scent profile not even half way close to oud Yousuf and at a cost price close to the price of oud Sultani... hihihi.

As for now I always carefully inspect the wood prior deciding weather to cook it or not. One must look at the entire batch, not just a tiny sample. First you look at it, touch it, chew it... Then comes a heating session. Slowly heating piece by piece. Often a batch of wood contain pieces with several scent profiles. Good to identify and examine each one (unless it is a batch of dust, then it gets tricky takes long but still possible). Often a batch may contain some pieces that has a scent profile that does not pass the test, then each of those pieces must be identified and removed. For some extremely expensive and high quality batches EVERY single piece is examined...
Having said that, for me both aspect are quite important. The scent profile comes first then the look and the feel of the batch of agarwood one about to distill. If I could cook very high grade wood, black and thick with a RIGHT scent profile I definitely would go for it rather then cooking a lower grade batch with almost identical RIGHT scent profile. I do believe* that higher grade wood yields higher grade oil ( if the scent of both is almost identical ).

 

[Adam]

Oud head,
Yeh, it's quite common. Here in bangkok for instance lost of farmed Cambodian wood sold as wild. Lots of Prachin farmed wood sold as wild Kao Yai. I even heard of the case when some naughty hunters chopped some big farmed trees and obviously sold it as wild. Many think only about money and will tell you anything you want to hear.
We try not to deal with such people. Good source is the main thing. Weather it is a hunter, big wholesaler or a retailer. Each source may offer something. Sometimes hunters have a deal, often buying wood from a huge wholesalers bring benefit and even a good friends, small retailers may offer amazing stuff.
Main thing is to deal with honest, God fearing people...

 

[Ensar Oud]

Happy to see you guys here… I thank God Almighty for the opportunity to chit chat OUD with two of my unofficial teachers…

I'm glad to be here and having this discussion, too. I'm sure Taha feels the same way. One thing that is sorely lacking in the oud fancy is the existence of 'peer review', something you find in almost every field of study, science, art etc.

The problem with having a platform for end users to voice out anything that comes to their minds, is that it leaves no room for constructive criticism, advice, even objective speculation on the state of affairs by experts who are knee-deep in the field.

Take something I wrote recently about the state of wild agarwood, in which I alluded to your durian & oud co-extraction. Some people thought I was directly attacking you for undertaking such a distillation because (they assume) I felt 'threatened' by the sudden emergence of a durian & oud co-distillation. What I lament, is that it has to come to that. Where raw materials are so scarce, producers have to resort to co-distillation with other aromatics in order to be constantly producing agarwood oil that is unique and different. Ideally, oud should not need to be co-distilled with other aromatics because it is so complex, you can elicit a myriad different notes distilling pure oud alone. But the current state of affairs is so bleak, I would not be surprised if co-distillation with other aromatics becomes the norm. Producers who want to keep their work unique might just have to resort to this kind of thing going forward. (I'd love to see what an artisanal oud & sandalwood co-distill might smell like!)

Without the existence of a 'mentor' or a fellow craftsman to offer thoughts on one's work, there is no way for that work to develop and improve. And if every piece of advice is immediately filtered as 'bashing the competition' it eliminates the possibility for the much needed 'peer review' mechanism that drives any field of study forward.

I hope you see where I am coming from, and did not take what I said about the durian experiment as an attack; rather, as my own speculation about the state of affairs in the world of artisanal oud.

And I'd be happy to sample the durian oil the next time I'm in Thailand, if you still have a swipe to spare! Perhaps we can even put a drop in a cup of hot water and see what it tastes like! How is Ali's health coming along, by the way? Please give him my salams! Why doesn't he join in on the discussion here?

 

[Ensar Oud]

Do you guys know what an oil will generally smell like when you smell the wood? Is it then you decided what you will cook it in, copper vs steel? How long and what you will soak it in? Do you let the wood tell you what you are going to do? Or do you exert your will on it a little, or a lot, to try to force certain qualities out of it? I guess even a step further, I would guess many artists in various disciplines have an "idea" before they even have the materials to create their work. Do you guys have a dream or a sketch of a Chinese or a Vietnamese or a Borneo or a whatever in mind before even procuring the wood? About how you are going to do it, long before you have the materials?

There's an adage in the oud distilling world, and it is that if you bring raw materials from anywhere in the world and cook them in Cambodia, the oil is going to be 'Cambodi'. And here you've just been given a huge secret to the mysteries of distillation

Every region's raw materials need radically different distillation styles & techniques in order to capture their character correctly. Use the same styles & techniques for radically different raw materials and what do you get? Borneos & Hindis & Papuans & Cambodis that smell like non-identical twins: look at Port Moresby and Kinamantan as an example. Not only different species, but different genera of agarwood, yet they smell like brother-and-sister batches.....

It is in this sense that agarwood is like clay, and the hand of the distiller has such an impact on it that it influences its character and 'appearance' even more directly and profoundly than the source materials it was extracted from.

If the metal it was extracted in can make such an imprint on an agarwood extract, think what the water you soak it in can do to it! This is why, given high enough quality raw materials, I would opt to skip the soak altogether, in order to remain as true as possible to the character of the wood.

At times you want to exert your will upon the wood, and tell a Borneo to smell like a Papuan; but there are times when you're handling such precious wood (such as Vietnamese or Hainanese incense grade chips) that the last thing you want to do is exert any sort of 'will' upon that wood. And you desperately need to hear that wood's voice, and let it do all the talking and instructing about how it wants to be treated!

I have an 'idea' about the sort of scent I would like to get from a wild Pusong (Laos) harvest from the early 2000s I just recently scored. The last thing I want to do, though, is try to 'make imprints' on the wood by exposing it to all sorts of influencers, like the various metals, ceramics, etc. You do that with common lots you've distilled so many times, you can't afford to keep making them smell all the same. Not with a batch of wood like the wild Pusong from 15 years ago!

 

[Taha]

It is very interesting that the grade doesn't equate to quality of fragrance. Do you guys know what an oil will generally smell like when you smell the wood? Is it then you decided what you will cook it in, copper vs steel? How long and what you will soak it in? Do you let the wood tell you what you are going to do? Or do you exert your will on it a little, or a lot, to try to force certain qualities out of it?
[...]
Do you guys have a dream or a sketch of a Chinese or a Vietnamese or a Borneo or a whatever in mind before even procuring the wood? About how you are going to do it, long before you have the materials?[...]

Good questions! I think my answer might differ from other distillers on this issue, but that's okay. What fun is there, if the market was full of clones, right?

In response to your first question, the answer for me is: not always. Since we primarily do wholesale (Arab and Chinese markets), the oil market (i.e. the Arab market) has strict price ceilings. Since lower grade wood is the only wood that can be used to meet their price requirements, it is impossible to test the wood first and then design the distillation around that. It doesn't work that way. If you do a burn-test with that grade of wood, its just gonna smell like firewood.
Rather, you have to 'guess' the aroma of the oil (raw material region, and incense-grade wood from other parts of the same tree), and then choose the parameters accordingly.

On the other hand, when I'm doing smaller-scale artisanal distillations for website releases, its an entirely different story altogether. Yes, the wood has to be tested. Not a chip or two, but rather quite a few. In certain cases (e.g. VERY high grade Vietnamese), you have to break tiny splinters off almost every single piece to test the aroma.
After that, the way *I* decide on copper/steel/glass/soak process/(some other stuff that I think only I do), is by determining which best captures the aroma of the wood most accurately. That's very subjective, of course. I will rarely apply two different distillations permutations with the same wood, and when I do its only to present two scent genres that consumers could/would have grasped when heating the raw material, depending on their proficiency in the art of heating agarwood.
So, the short answer is: for me its (almost) always about replicating the aroma of the wood. The only exception is the odd barnyard oil every now and then, something I don't do much of.
And so, how good or bad an oil smells by definition is/should be a reflection of the quality of the raw material. For this reason, my personal opinion on mukhallats, barnyard oils, and even some amazing top-shelf Japanese incense blends could be seen as very controversial. I can appreciate all of the afore-mentioned things, but considering how precious wild high quality agarwood is, my first choice is always to try to capture its true aroma. That, itself, should be good enough.
Note to other vendors: please don't take this the wrong way. I myself make mukhallats every now and then, and enjoy (a very few) barnyard oils too. But you know what... its always my Maroke Muah, or the likes of it, that I prefer to rub into my moustache before I head off to bed to rest after a long hard day.

So as for others, maybe their philosophy differs. e.g. I have seen Adam use some crazy permutations which result in oils with the most unusual amazing scent profiles. Likewise, I've smelled oils from Ensar that you'd almost swear were perfumes.
Then again - I wasn't there to test the raw material. Maybe that is what the raw material smelled like when heated.

As a side note- I hope what Ensar mentioned about 'kayu minyak' isn't misconstrued by suppliers who use bunk grade wood, or vendors who sell their wares. There's a world of difference between visually-unappealing wood that burns fantastically, vs wood that appears to look the same but just smells like firewood when you burn it. The former IS in fact incense-grade (by definition), whereas the latter is what's termed 'kayu minyak' in the industry, the bread and butter of standard distillations.

Awesome stuff, guys!

@Taha, a lot of new (and depressing) information to take in, but especially interesting is the point you brought up about people peddling cultivated oils under the guise of wild. That’s very worrying to hear and it’s something I have wondered about myself. On top of all the walnut oil mixing and all the cheating we keep hearing about, it sounds like it’s very easy for people to tell me that what I am getting is wild wood/oil, where in reality it’s far from it! Ensar has even written recently about how in places like Vietnam they bring in wood from other countries and sell it as Vietnamese!!! Have you or Adam found the same thing? Is it the same story in places like Cambodia and Thailand?

All too much, Kruger.
What I can tell you for certain is: the majority of the alleged wild local wood being sold in Vietnam and Cambodia is actually Indonesian, Malaysian, and Thai. When you go there in person and see the large stockpiles of wood, you'd wonder how on earth its possible. You get closer... hmm, the wood appears to be Malaccensis. You pick up the pieces... bah, looks like I wasted money on the ticket coming here. You burn a few pieces... yep, I wasted my money. It ain't Cambodian/Vietnamese. :/
Now that's not to say there aren't ANY batches of genuine wild wood left in Indo-China. Ensar's recent Lao haul sounds like an example of one of those exceptions. Likewise, I know Adam has managed to score a few batches here and there, and so have I. But these cases are the exception and not the norm.

Keep in mind though, my experience is probably a little different from other distillers — since I do wholesale as well as retail I like to 'squeeze in' high grade oil distillations whenever possible. Take my recent Koh Kong distillations for example, they were actually part of 2 massive wholesale deals (Arab and Chinese) and I managed to squeeze the cost of distillation into the profit margin.
Since I know very well how much such a distillation actually costs, I can tell you this much: had the distillation not been piggybacking a large six-figure wholesale transaction, the oil would have costed way more.

The other day, someone asked me about a certain very costly oil from Ensar (four figures). You know what my answer was? Judging by the quality of the wood that would have been used to make that oil, yes the price is pretty much spot-on.

Rhinestones aren't diamonds... they just.. aren't.
The way I see it, if someone has the budget for a rhinestone ring, they shouldn't get outraged by the prices at a Tiffany outlet.
And if someone isn't able to tell the difference between the two, the way I see it, the flaw is in their eyes and not the real diamond.

Ensar, I want to address an issue, which is the use of the term 'artisanal'. I'm seeing it being way overused... more like abused. I just used it in this post too. Just because a distillation was small-scale, or wasn't conducted by a distiller who supplies to the standard-grade oud market, doesn't automatically make it an artisanal distillation. If you ask me, you're the one who invented this niche, so its only fair if I ask your permission to use this term. I can assure you, I don't use it liberally.

 

[Adam]

@ Ensar,
often advice appears to people as critique and critique as bashing. ... but we are thankful as we always benefit more from an honest feedback even if it is a negative one...
Being the one behind our own oud wheel and in a full control of the process we try to improve all the time and apreciate every single advice and comment taking it on board...
Our line of infusions was just an extention to already existing series of our true blends. First we co-distilled orange, few types of frankincense and jasmine and then blended it with oud. Now we have tried to co-distill agarwood with other things as we are always urged by curiosity... It is a co-distilled perfume, our own version of already existing line of mukhallats/blends offered by Ensar Oud or Agaraura.
We would love to continue focusing ONLY on cooking high grade agarwood oils but the simple fact prevent us from doing so. Not many able to afford it. I myself would love to buy a Mercedes at the price of Toyota but it is simply impossible. There are still plenty of wild agarwood to be found. Yes it is nearly extinct from jungle but... it could be sourced at countless warehouses and retail shops. Or even in China just as Ensar mentioned. The only painful fact is that the cost is flying sky high...
Two years ago we cooked some of the fine wild Thai agarwood oils. Quite a few people had a chance to experience it and approved it. Some of those oils are still sitting on the shelf. The price seems extremely high and only few can afford it. Well today I am in Thailand still looking for wild agarwood... there are many choices yet the cost of it is doubled or even tripled in two years time. It means that if we would like to cook another Ketsani or Ingravitesa they would cost us 2 or 3 times more... It means that the oil would br 2 or 3 times more expensive than the oils that are already appear extremely costly. Due to that fact I am a bit concerned weather I should go for it or not...

 

[Adam]

Ali finds it a bit difficult to follow the discussion due to language barrier. He pass the warmest asalamualekum to you Ensar. He pray for our guidance and ask God to give us the best in this world as well as in hear after...

 

[Adam]

Regarding our infusions Ali added ( it was actually his idea ) that it was an experiment that brought us the method of infusing beautiful substance (oud oil) with another beautiful substance that originally quite hard or impossible to distill on its own.

 

[Ensar Oud]

The other day, someone asked me about a certain very costly oil from Ensar (four figures). You know what my answer was? Judging by the quality of the wood that would have been used to make that oil, yes the price is pretty much spot-on. Rhinestones aren't diamonds... they just.. aren't. The way I see it, if someone has the budget for a rhinestone ring, they shouldn't get outraged by the prices at a Tiffany's outlet. And if someone isn't able to tell the difference between the two, the way I see it, the flaw is in their eyes and not the real diamond.

Word!

Ensar, I want to address an issue, which is the use of the term 'artisanal'. I'm seeing it being way overused... more like abused. I just used it in this post too. Just because a distillation was small-scale, or wasn't conducted by a distiller who supplies to the standard-grade oud market, doesn't automatically make it an artisanal distillation. If you ask me, you're the one who invented this niche, so its only fair if I ask your permission to use this term. I can assure you, I don't use it liberally.

I don't think anyone would doubt you on it. If there's one thing everyone knows, it's that Taha doesn't do Facebook oud. You may like his style or you may not, but one thing's certain; his style is really his style. No one else distills the same way. Not me, not Adam – no one, really.

Not that you need it, but since you asked for it, you definitely have my blessing, Taha!

 

[Ensar Oud]

We would love to continue focusing ONLY on cooking high grade agarwood oils but the simple fact prevent us from doing so. Not many able to afford it. I myself would love to buy a Mercedes at the price of Toyota but it is simply impossible. Two years ago we cooked some of the fine wild Thai agarwood oils. Some of those oils are still sitting on the shelf. The price seems extremely high and only few can afford it. Well today I am in Thailand still looking for wild agarwood... there are many choices yet the cost of it is doubled or even tripled in two years time. It means that if we would like to cook another Ketsani or Ingravitesa they would cost us 2 or 3 times more... It means that the oil would br 2 or 3 times more expensive than the oils that are already appear extremely costly. Due to that fact I am a bit concerned weather I should go for it or not...

Well, you can look at it in two ways....

From a business perspective, the answer lies right there in what you said. You're finding that the fusions, co-extracts and perfume blends are moving faster, while the costlier high grade ouds are still sitting on the shelf due to the high prices. Not everyone can drive a Mercedes, it is true, and Toyota is a much more lucrative company to run than a luxury brand like Mercedes. From a business point of view, I would say it makes no sense at all to buy wood that is double or triple the price of wood used to make oils that are still sitting on the shelf. If the existing oils are not selling, how are oils that are double or triple the price going to sell?

From an artistic perspective, does it really matter if the stuff sells? The last thing on Van Gogh's mind, when painting Starry Night, was whether it would sell later on, or how many million it would fetch.... If you're doing this as a business, then of course, listening to your customers is very important, in terms of what they want, how they want it offered, the terminology you use, etc.... From an artist's point of view, the world doesn't contain a single customer. It is you and your blank canvas, and your need to create something great for your own fulfillment and realization.

To distill Kyara LTD in our day costs more than what the oil is being resold for by collectors (around $160 for .1 gr, I believe?) I personally don't care if anyone buys it or not, or takes it personally that I am out to distill yet another such oil. I need to have this scent in my life. I believe and hope that there are others who feel the same way, and who share my vision. If there aren't, all the more Kyara LTD for me! Maybe I'll send some to you and Taha, and we can all have a discussion about the different notes

Please tell Ali I said wa alaikum as salaam wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh!

 

[bhanny]

@Ensar - Thank you for clarifying. I figured it was much more complex than I was trying to make it! One thing all of you keep going back to is the quality of wood and that DOES make a lot of sense to me. Letting the wood "talk" to you and let it tell you how it wants to be treated. I can definitely relate to that. Really awesome stuff. And this wild Pusong score of yours sounds very intriguing. Can't wait to hear more about that one for sure! And to follow further on your Kyara LTD, etc, keep going on those. Kynam No.1 is unreal. Not a 12-hour period goes by that I don't at least take a whiff from the bottle. No joke. It is that good.

@Taha - Ensar said exactly what I was going to, and I think I told you before, you definitely are an artisan. You put YOUR touch on your oils. I'm thinking I could pick a good chunk of yours out as yours based on the Taha oilprint. And this is not a bad thing at all. Thats what an artist does!

@Adam - I've sampled and have some of your agarwood oils and they are top notch. Hope the rest of the oud world catches on!

 

[Adam]

@ Ensar,
very true…
If only highest quality agarwood (our raw materials) would cost the same as some paints ( Van Gogh’s raw materials )…
Thank God we have friends who are as passionate about high quality oud oil as we are. For instance the person behind oils like
Wahid, Koon Mai Wan and Canopy… He simply gave us the raw materials to work with… Does he care about sales? Not really, otherwise he wouldn’t give us such a costly wood in the first place. Instead he would ask us to simply pay for the wood and add a fat profit on it. He didn’t. However, once he realised that not many can afford such oils he simply lost interest in giving us more and more high quality wood.

 

[Adam]

It was said in one famous Russian movie that very often people have the desire to do something but not have a means to do it…
On the other hands, some may have a means but they do not have a desire to do it…
So we ask God Almighty that he make our healthy and beneficial desires always to fit our means…

 

[Adam]

@ bhanny,
thank you for your kind word. In fact you and few other people are one of the causes for such high quality oils to exist and to continue being produced…

 

[m.arif]

Van Gogh, Gainsborough, and Rembrandt were masters in their own right. And yet their philosophies (thus their works) are starkly different.
I am pretty sure (rather, I know) that we will see some differences of opinion about what constitutes "Good Oud". And that's fine (hint: this is directed at vendors!); this is about increasing the awareness of the end users, so feel free to share your honest thoughts and don't get offended if another artisan disagrees with you. If anything, this disagreement I think will further deepen the community's appreciation of differing aspects/'signatures' in the products, between one vendor and another.
It would be great if end users could voice their opinions, concerns, preferences (and complaints!) as well. After all, the jury comprises of the end users. And it is the opinions of the end users that will shape what is brought to the market.

So about what Taha said in the first post.. To all the vendors mainly (and anyone else who reads definitely), what constitutes "good oud" ?

 

[m.arif]

Well, you can look at it in two ways....

From a business perspective, the answer lies right there in what you said. You're finding that the fusions, co-extracts and perfume blends are moving faster, while the costlier high grade ouds are still sitting on the shelf due to the high prices. Not everyone can drive a Mercedes, it is true, and Toyota is a much more lucrative company to run than a luxury brand like Mercedes. From a business point of view, I would say it makes no sense at all to buy wood that is double or triple the price of wood used to make oils that are still sitting on the shelf. If the existing oils are not selling, how are oils that are double or triple the price going to sell?

From an artistic perspective, does it really matter if the stuff sells? The last thing on Van Gogh's mind, when painting Starry Night, was whether it would sell later on, or how many million it would fetch.... If you're doing this as a business, then of course, listening to your customers is very important, in terms of what they want, how they want it offered, the terminology you use, etc.... From an artist's point of view, the world doesn't contain a single customer. It is you and your blank canvas, and your need to create something great for your own fulfillment and realization.

To distill Kyara LTD in our day costs more than what the oil is being resold for by collectors (around $160 for .1 gr, I believe?) I personally don't care if anyone buys it or not, or takes it personally that I am out to distill yet another such oil. I need to have this scent in my life. I believe and hope that there are others who feel the same way, and who share my vision. If there aren't, all the more Kyara LTD for me! Maybe I'll send some to you and Taha, and we can all have a discussion about the different notes

@Ensar It must be tough pursuing passion and art, at the same time balancing survivability (thus unable to completely ignore the business side of things). What about @Taha and @Adam? To what extent do you pursue art , and how do you balance it with business?

 

[Ensar Oud]

So about what Taha said in the first post.. To all the vendors mainly (and anyone else who reads definitely), what constitutes "good oud"?

I'm sure everyone will have a unique stance on this one, but to me Oud is a sacred tradition as much as it is an art form. So, if the oil you're out to produce is totally detached from the enormous tradition that was passed down to us from our predecessors, I feel as though we're not giving that tradition its due....

With that, I appreciate that there are many different schools in this tradition, and each school has its own foundational rules and principles that it adheres to. I am a purist, and therefore do not like to mix and match between the different principles of the different schools.

As an example, Indonesian oud is traditionally not soaked. I prefer to cook my Indonesian oils unsoaked for that reason. Indian oud is traditionally soaked. I soak my Hindis because of it.

So first and foremost, in my view, for an oud to be a 'good oud' it must be an 'oud' to begin with – as in the traditional extract commonly referred to as oud, oudh, dehn al oudh, etc. Some modern ouds are so experimental and detached from any sort of tradition, to me they are not ouds at all. True, they can be quite nice smelling, beautiful, fragrant, and so on. But to me 'oud' is something that carries a ton of history. Strip the extract of any and all historic facets it is meant to possess, and you've got no 'oud' to talk about at that point.

It's like saying, what constitutes good tempeh?.... yet the tempeh artisan doesn't ferment his soybeans, for example, or he adds cheese and sausage to his mix.... At that point, we're talking about an interesting and novel culinary invention, no doubt, but it's not going to be tempeh, if you get my drift.....

'Good' oud; now that is a tough one! Good oud must elevate. It must elate, grip, hound, transfix, spellbind. It must grip at your chest and make you moan and groan with satisfaction: 'Ah! Oh! Wow! Whoa! Whooooa!' – If you're resorting to your intellect in order to 'understand' an oil, and not your heart – if you're analyzing facets in relation to other sensory data, without experiencing that ecstasy in your chest – if you're not inclined to keep your nose glued to your wrist in order to get more and more of the 'healing' that the scent has to offer – then I guess what you're smelling is not truly a great oud.

 

[Taha]

So about what Taha said in the first post.. To all the vendors mainly (and anyone else who reads definitely), what constitutes "good oud" ?

A simple question, and yet... that is the ultimate question isn't it?

For me, its probably going to be a bit different from others. But that's okay, everyone can share their opinions, and of course there's no "right" or "wrong" when we're talking about something as subjective as personal taste.

A bit of background- my first artistic passion was oil painting. I still have scars on my lower back from when I was a kid and spent hours painting, my backbone digging into the chair. I am a lefty, and I hold pens/brushes like most lefties do (those who don't know, it looks like this). And so, I have to sit to paint, can't stand and paint like 'normal' right handers. Hence the scars.
My favourite genres were Realism/Barbizon and Impressionism, and my favorite subject matters were clouds, rocks, water, leaves, and more importantly: how to best capture the way light hits these things.
If you see how the artist captures the afore-mentioned objects on canvas, its radically different between the two school. With realism its straightforward, you try to capture everything with nice and smooth brushstrokes. With impressionism on the other hand, the artist 'breaks up' the strokes into dabs (literally), such that the viewer, when looking at the final product, the painting, uses their eyes to literally meld the dabs into the image that the painter aimed at achieving.
Here's an excellent example: click here.
First zoom in to see the image full size. Doesn't look too real, does it? Now zoom out, and step back about 2 meters. Amazing, isn't it? Looks like a photograph rather than a painting! Look particularly at the leaf immediately behind the lily, see how realistically the light reflects off the pad. Now zoom back into that area, and all you see is dots.

I've talked about two things to a great extent:
1) the importance of capturing the truest, purest essence of the aroma of the oud oleoresin inside the wood, untampered by any tricks, techniques, or practices, be they 'traditional' or 'new age'. The aim is one: capture the aroma as accurately as possible. The means to do that can vary (personally, I like to combine various techniques both traditional and modern for various effects, in order to achieve this).
2) I've spoken at great length about 'Gen3', 'Gen4' and so on. Although I know it doesn't apply to other vendors since I pretty much just invented these terms to express what I was trying to achieve, I think tying these into the 2 above-mentioned painting genres could be insightful. To me, Gen4 is like a Realistic painting. Straightforward, no nonsense, just capture what everyone can 'see' (or in this case, smell) when they heat agarwood. Gen3 is like an Impressionist painting. It breaks up the oud into its fundamental components, the individual notes bombard the nose. But when you step back and look at the painting (in the case of oud: you tie all the notes together), that's when you see the full picture.
Here's another example of an Impressionist painting: click here. Zoom in, and you'll wonder why there's purple patches in the mountains. Zoom out, step back a couple meters (take it all in), and behold.. it looks like a photograph.

The reason I have personally tended more and more towards these two genres (Gen3 and Gen4) has a lot to do with where I find myself right now. The bitterness of failed hunting expeditions increases the value of high grade wild agarwood exponentially in my heart. As time goes on, I find it harder and harder to produce oils that are 'tainted' with the effects of clever techniques or apparatus 'tricks'. I can't even bring myself to make mukhallats any more, the thought of blending anything with oud depresses me.
There are times when I greedily think to myself, if I find an ultra super duper awesome tree I would just quit the Oud game, and save everything for myself.
I know it sounds terrible. But when you've walked in my footsteps, its hard not to think that way sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if that thought has crossed Ensar's mind too!

So here's my shorter answer, if the above was too long and boring: good oud starts with excellent raw material, and ends with capturing the aroma of that excellent raw material.
As for how its done, for me it always varies. I neither conform to a fixed tradition / school of thought, nor do I think I have to be a rebel and come up with 'something unique' just for the sake of making a statement. Its all about the wood, trying to be as faithful as possible in capturing its aroma. And the 2 ways I've finally settled on for doing that, is Gen3 and Gen4. Gen3 for myself and other wacky people like me, and Gen4 for overall market appeal, wackos and normal people alike. Anything else, I just can't bring myself to do any more.

PS: if any of you are interested, I could try to dig up some old paintings I did, I probably have some scanned and saved somewhere. Don't be too hard on me though , I was between the age of 11-15 during my painting days, maybe some of the colors will be a little off.

 

[bhanny]

@Taha - C'mon man. Don't keep all that super duper tree oil all to yourself!

@Ensar - For me you nailed it. I know when I'm glued to my wrist, forearm, wherever, and it's taking me somewhere else, that's good oud.

@both you fellas - It seems it comes back to the raw material and the honor you both have for it. I incredibly respect that. I also suspect that's why your stuff is so good.

 

[Taha]

@Taha - C'mon man. Don't keep all that super duper tree oil all to yourself!

@Ensar - For me you nailed it. I know when I'm glued to my wrist, forearm, wherever, and it's taking me somewhere else, that's good oud.

@both you fellas - It seems it comes back to the raw material and the honor you both have for it. I incredibly respect that. I also suspect that's why your stuff is so good.

Well, I just received confirmation from Yusof: Amab should be back from Cambodia with all the passport paperwork done, within the next few days!
*gulp* Jungle, hear I come..... I can totally feel the night attacks of cold sweats coming.

Let's see what we find this time. I sure hope I hit gold (for a change)! Hm, maybe I'll make an oil or two, bhanny.

So, time for me to start making the final preparations. I won't be able to participate for.. who knows how long. A friend jokingly remarked I should keep the camera rolling in the jungle, in case I fall off a cliff - my stocks would shoot through the roof, ha!
Meanwhile, I hope other distillers can join and contribute their thoughts as well. And of course, other oud consumers too. I know there are lots of questions on folks' minds.
C'mon.. three distillers here, people. All with hands-on wood and oil experience. If I had this opportunity back when I was just a consumer, I'd practically drive the distillers mad with all my questions.