@PEARL: Great insights, and difficult questions to answer! Many might think it better to sweep the topic under the rug, but it’s a theme that pops up repeatedly, so I thought we might as well explore it a bit more, perhaps to learn something new and also to be fair to all parties involved.
Ensar puts his neck on the line all the time. It’s probably one of the things he’s most known for. I’m sure he’s aware of how that could reflect on him, in case it goes bad. I think most would agree that’s fine, for him to voice an opinion and possibly be proven wrong. The burden will be his to carry. But, of course, the problem lies in him voicing his opinion about another vendor’s product.
The ‘bashing the competition’ ban, while it leaves us all being very polite and friendly, also leaves many at a loss. If people didn’t call out certain dealers as they have done in the past, many of us would have ended up with some really nasty stuff. At the least, purchases like that can hit you financially, but at worse they can turn you off from oud altogether without you ever even getting your foot in the door. So, criticism – sometimes direct and brutal – has its place, and I believe many people have been saved by it. But again, the problem is that these words of caution should preferably come from an end user. If a seller does it, it’s considered bad form.
Ensar said that a certain oil smells like a cultivated Thai one. I know for a fact that he wasn’t aware of any details about this oil other than who made it (and I was present when he smelled it the first time). That was simply his impression. It smells like a well soaked Thai oil. The funny thing is, I had the exact same reaction he did. And we both got to try it on two separate occasions, both times with the same impression – except, the second time it smelled even more soaked. (Learning that it was a clay soak explained it.)
Then it comes out that this oil is Malaysian.
Neither Ensar or I meant to say that the distiller tried to trick anybody – there are plenty of Malaysian ouds available, so it’s not like he needed to come up with a rarity. That’s not the point. The fact that a Malaysian wood of such high quality ended smelling like a Thai one can mean many things, not necessarily negative. In fact, one could commend the distiller for the ability to achieve such a result.
From our corner, we didn’t just say it smells Thai without much experience with Thai oils (or Malay profiles for that matter).
When you’re attempting to capture the smell of wild Cambodian oud, your first job isn’t to know what Cambodian oud ought to smell like – it’s to know what
Thai ouds smell like. Even if you’re distilling any Indonesian or Malaysian ouds, it’s your job to know what Thai oils smell like, just as it’s your job to be able to identify Malaysian wood if you’re on the hunt for wild wood in Cambodia. That’s because if you’re after the more ‘authentic’ Malaysian scent, you have to be aware that there are
thousands of crassnas imported to Malaysia from Thailand (which might explain the current case).
Not only have we gone through great lengths to capture Cambodian scents, we’ve also offered an assortment of different-smelling Thai oils. In order to pursue variety, you have to be intimately familiar with run-of-the-mill stuff. And believe me, there’s
a lot of oud in Trat, most of which are simply permutations of the same smell, so much so that identifying a Trat distill is like spotting a Hyundai sedan amidst a row of Vespa motorcycles.
If an inexperienced nose has trouble telling the difference between, say, Basic Kinam and Thai Phalaka, fine. But for somebody whose bread and butter is to know what Thai oud smells like, to pick up a Thai pitch in a Malaysian oil… that tells you something. And I think it’s worth hearing.
Of course you can extract a myriad scents from Malaysian wood. Ensar has done exactly that many times himself during his industrious 2 years in this business. I guess all Ensar, and myself, are saying is that this particular oil got the Thai fraction from that myriad. How or why doesn’t concern either of us. That goes back to the distiller.
* * *
Another way to approach this issue is the way we as oud vendors have to tackle the same scenario. We constantly get asked to sample oils to give our opinion. In the end, it’s hardly ever a question of a Malay oil that smells like a Thai. It’s normally a matter of purity. It’s amazing to find out how people have been stuck with blatant synthetics thinking they’re delving deeper into the world of oud. Many folks are unable to discern ‘white musk’ from ‘blue oud’. How then when it comes to the real deal?
We also constantly get contacted from people in the oud world who want to work with us in some way or another. And I’ll be brutally honest, I’m not sure which discovery is more shocking – what passes as oud to consumers, or the stuff that gets passed as oud
within the oud world. Oud is basically a game of rejection. And I don’t mean rejecting agarwood because it’s not good enough. I mean because of fabrication, adulteration, and sheer mockery.
I’ll give you an example. One ‘experienced distiller’ whose family has been in the business for generations contacts you. He tells you he can supply you, even help you improve the quality of your oils. That sounds good, who doesn’t want to improve? So, you ask him for more info, some pictures of his wood, etc. When you hear back from him, you find out that good agarwood looks like this:
....and that pure oud oil should have a wonderfully fluorescent burgundy hue like this:
Now, you’re an oud company. The guy might honestly be trying to reach out. He really does want to work with you and really believes that he can help. His family has been in the business forever, after all. But, even if you’ve only been in the business for 2, 5 or 10 years, you know that no matter how well-intentioned the guy is, his goods are bogus and he
obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about. So, you simply tell him ‘better luck next time’.
HOWEVER, it’s not the same on the user’s end. Many end users who are new to oud get bombarded with everything BUT real oud, or real low-grade stuff. They might end up buying this funky glow-in-the-dark purple business and use that as a point of departure… and steer waaaay off course. Should somebody tell this person he/she’s being duped, or just brush it under the carpet and let them figure it out the hard way?
