What does a distiller look for when smelling an oil?

Rasoul S

Well-Known Member
#1
Sotd
Kenmei
Just as before pretty much a celebration of only and only geeen Kyara oil. Basically that sweet creamy milky vanilic ethereal soul satisfying note with some camphor. There is lift to it. A baaaaaaam oil. I find it highly medicnal and very effective. I am looking forward to the wanmei a new Vietnamese release from taha that supposedly is a more advanced Kyara note: black Kyara. My understanding is the two are very similar but black no longer has the green camphoric bright note. So basically to my nose creamy condensed milky sweet vannilic note. @Taha can you share what this note is to you? Paint us a picture of your minds eye.

Sotn
EO oud Ahmed
Tonight was the night to really for the first time get to experience this oil. Previously encounters weee off the vial or off of teeny tiny dot application. Pviously I didn’t get the “it”factor in this oil. I saw the uniqueness factor I.e musk but not necessarily the greatness. I thought there had to be more. No oil ensar has really gone gaga from r in past has failed to miss the mark so what’s he seeing in this oil I am not?

Two thick swipes in an over generous amount went on wrist and chin. Later on the moustache too! ‘‘Tis the season for over indulging. Pardon me for stepping it up!

Ok few minutes in and I already see something I hadn’t before. There is a true “roundness” to this oil that most others lack. There are no edges. No medicinal or camphoric or animal or overt fruit or bitter or... edges. None. Like an amazing aged traditional hindi. But better.

Still really only seeing musk and fennel top part of musk plus that raw animalic in most mild polite fashion. But now there is an oudhy ness underneath. That tiny pulse to keep the oil feeling alive is there after all just beating very politely and like a very mature person.

And no further real discoveries were made.

I go to bed still not quite understanding what’s so dear to ensar in this oil? What am I not seeing? Don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed the scent in a hedonistic fashion but I dint get the intellectual pleasure.

Pls share @Ensar give us a clearer picture of what you see
 
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Ensar Oud

Well-Known Member
#2
Glad you're enjoying Pilipinas No.1! But I must correct you there... it's not the best oil I made. It's the best wood I distilled. It's ALL about the wood, and not Taha.
SOTN
EO Oud Ahmad
Tonight was the night to really for the first time get to experience this oil. Previously encounters weee off the vial or off of teeny tiny dot application. Pviously I didn’t get the “it” factor in this oil. I saw the uniqueness factor I.e musk but not necessarily the greatness. I thought there had to be more. No oil Ensar has really gone gaga from in past has failed to miss the mark so what’s he seeing in this oil I am not?

Two thick swipes in an over-generous amount went on wrist and chin. Later on the mustache too! ‘‘Tis the season for overindulging. Pardon me for stepping it up!

Ok, few minutes in and I already see something I hadn’t before. There is a true “roundness” to this oil that most others lack. There are no edges. No medicinal or camphoric or animal or overt fruit or bitter or... edges. None. Like an amazing aged traditional Hindi. But better.

Still really only seeing musk and fennel top part of musk plus that raw animalic in most mild polite fashion. But now there is an oudhyness underneath. That tiny pulse to keep the oil feeling alive is there after all just beating very politely and like a very mature person.

And no further real discoveries were made.

I go to bed still not quite understanding what’s so dear to Ensar in this oil? What am I not seeing? Don’t get me wrong I really enjoyed the scent in a hedonistic fashion but I didn't get the intellectual pleasure.

Please share @Ensar give us a clearer picture of what you see.
Please refer to Taha's statement above as an additional illustration of what I'm about to say.

Smelling as a producer and smelling as an end-user are two drastically different – sometimes totally opposite – ways of approaching an oil. While a user might be trying to pinpoint 'notes' in the profile (which are 100% of the time fictive, imagined assumptions we make which may and do vary from user to user) when smelling an oil as a producer, you're least concerned about metaphoric olfactory blueprints that are stored in your hard drive of sensory data. Rather, what you want to smell is the WOOD that the oil was made from. And I don't mean an abstract guesstimate at the 'grade' of wood. I mean the literal stuff that was ground up and then distilled as matching any of dozens (if not hundreds) of batches the distiller has himself previously handled and seen such oils come out of – from resination pattern to type of 'cut' that was ground, if young or old formation, living or dead tree, etc.

As a recent example: You wrote a beautiful review of Taha's new Royal Malinau. Naturally, I was curious to 'sample' the oil you were talking about so as to put your words into perspective. I wanted to know what it was exactly that you were talking about (i.e. what type of wood, as translated into oil, as translated into your unique personal experience). During a recent chat, Taha shared a picture of the ground up dust that the oil was cooked from. Mission complete. Sample no longer necessary. I knew EXACTLY what that wood looked like prior to getting ground up, in addition to the fragrance profile of the dust. Show this same picture to a user of oud oil, and he won't have the slightest idea what sort of a smell he can expect. Obviously, extensive experience handling wood, grinding it, and then having it distilled, plays a major role in this.

Another recent example: Our dear friend @Shabby brought a sample of Khmer Special K with him to the London OudFest. Within 30 seconds of smelling the oil, I knew exactly what type of shavings it was distilled from, the type of tree that they're harvested from in Cambodia. The checkmarks all went off in my head: We had a perfect match. What I was smelling as a prototype matched the type of wood this oil could have been pressed from perfectly.

As you can see, the last thing in my mind in both instances was the identification of metaphoric olfactory semblances; flowers, fruits, green, camphor, mint, kinam, red, figs, plums, etc. All of these things are IMAGINED. (Unless, of course, actual camphor, or flowers, or kinam are added into the feedstock for the particular batch.) It is the last thing a distiller thinks of when encountering an oil. And believe me, encountering an oil as a producer can be like grabbing a bull by the horns. The last thing you want at that moment is imaginary things to come into play. All you care about is identifying the WOOD and how it matches your knowledge and understanding of that wood, and how true to life the representation of that wood is in the oil (even this is a secondary consideration).

When there is NO WOOD to speak of, distillers start sniffing out: soak, drum material, water type, length of soak, 'probiotics,' pot material, temperature, length of cooking, etc. But first and foremost comes the WOOD. If there's no wood to identify – because the oil is a truly low-grade distillation 100% made up of auxiliary notes – then we start picking at the auxiliary notes in an effort to 'grade' the distiller's attempt at making something out of nothing. Well, almost nothing.

Now to answer your question about Oud Ahmad.

The WOOD used in Oud Ahmad was sinking-grade. This is not a pot smell. It's not a high-temp scorching white oil-grade wood smell. It's not a water smell. And it most certainly is not a 'friendly bacteria' (i.e. fermentation) smell. What I smell when I smell Oud Ahmad is the incredibly high-grade, ultra rare breed of Malaysian malaccensis (perhaps some sort of cross-breed) verging on colossal ancient crassnas from Cambodia. So this is a tree that deserves my reverence. This is a tree I more than respect. I don't care about the metaphoric 'musk' note or the red temperament that reminds me of very old 'Cambodis'. I care about the grade of WOOD.

To put it into perspective another way: If Oud Ahmad is an 'Oud' – then Oud Yusuf must not be the same aromatic. We'd need to rename all the present-day distillations into something 'sub-class' – a 'new' breed or 'generation' of what we used to call 'Oud'. We can conveniently call Oud Ahmad 'high grade' and Oud Yusuf 'low grade' – but we'd be doing Oud Ahmad a HUGE disservice while doing Oud Yusuf a HUGE favor.

All the rest is subjective. Oud Sultani is, according to many, the No 1 oil of all time. They love the lavender-purple, incredibly 'pretty' aroma of Sultani and it sends their souls to the highest heaven. All that matters to me is that Oud Ahmad is exactly the same oil – WOOD-wise – only from the adjacent province of Kelantan to Sultani's Terengganu.

Yet another way of illustrating this:

Oud Ahmad: $2,500 / 3 gr.
Tigerwood 1995: $390 / 3 gr.

Which one is more expensive?

In my book, Tigerwood 1995 is more expensive than Oud Ahmad. At least doubly so. Who decides, and how do I know? – The WOOD, and by smelling the WOOD.
 
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Rasoul S

Well-Known Member
#4
Please refer to Taha's statement above as an additional illustration of what I'm about to say.

Smelling as a producer and smelling as an end-user are two drastically different – sometimes totally opposite – ways of approaching an oil. While a user might be trying to pinpoint 'notes' in the profile (which are 100% of the time fictive, imagined assumptions we make which may and do vary from user to user) when smelling an oil as a producer, you're least concerned about metaphoric olfactory blueprints that are stored in your hard drive of sensory data. Rather, what you want to smell is the WOOD that the oil was made from. And I don't mean an abstract guesstimate at the 'grade' of wood. I mean the literal stuff that was ground up and then distilled as matching any of dozens (if not hundreds) of batches the distiller has himself previously handled and seen such oils come out of – from resination pattern to type of 'cut' that was ground, if young or old formation, living or dead tree, etc.

As a recent example: You wrote a beautiful review of Taha's new Royal Malinau. Naturally, I was curious to 'sample' the oil you were talking about so as to put your words into perspective. I wanted to know what it was exactly that you were talking about (i.e. what type of wood, as translated into oil, as translated into your unique personal experience). During a recent chat, Taha shared a picture of the ground up dust that the oil was cooked from. Mission complete. Sample no longer necessary. I knew EXACTLY what that wood looked like prior to getting ground up, in addition to the fragrance profile of the dust. Show this same picture to a user of oud oil, and he won't have the slightest idea what sort of a smell he can expect. Obviously, extensive experience handling wood, grinding it, and then having it distilled, plays a major role in this.

Another recent example: Our dear friend @Shabby brought a sample of Khmer Special K with him to the London OudFest. Within 30 seconds of smelling the oil, I knew exactly what type of shavings it was distilled from, the type of tree that they're harvested from in Cambodia. The checkmarks all went off in my head: We had a perfect match. What I was smelling as a prototype matched the type of wood this oil could have been pressed from perfectly.

As you can see, the last thing in my mind in both instances was the identification of metaphoric olfactory semblances; flowers, fruits, green, camphor, mint, kinam, red, figs, plums, etc. All of these things are IMAGINED. (Unless, of course, actual camphor, or flowers, or kinam are added into the feedstock for the particular batch.) It is the last thing a distiller thinks of when encountering an oil. And believe me, encountering an oil as a producer can be like grabbing a bull by the horns. The last thing you want at that moment is imaginary things to come into play. All you care about is identifying the WOOD and how it matches your knowledge and understanding of that wood, and how true to life the representation of that wood is in the oil (even this is a secondary consideration).

When there is NO WOOD to speak of, distillers start sniffing out: soak, drum material, water type, length of soak, 'probiotics,' pot material, temperature, length of cooking, etc. But first and foremost comes the WOOD. If there's no wood to identify – because the oil is a truly low-grade distillation 100% made up of auxiliary notes – then we start picking at the auxiliary notes in an effort to 'grade' the distiller's attempt at making something out of nothing. Well, almost nothing.

Now to answer your question about Oud Ahmad.

The WOOD used in Oud Ahmad was sinking-grade. This is not a pot smell. It's not a high-temp scorching white oil-grade wood smell. It's not a water smell. And it most certainly is not a 'friendly bacteria' (i.e. fermentation) smell. What I smell when I smell Oud Ahmad is the incredibly high-grade, ultra rare breed of Malaysian malaccensis (perhaps some sort of cross-breed) verging on colossal ancient crassnas from Cambodia. So this is a tree that deserves my reverence. This is a tree I more than respect. I don't care about the metaphoric 'musk' note or the red temperament that reminds me of very old 'Cambodis'. I care about the grade of WOOD.

To put it into perspective another way: If Oud Ahmad is an 'Oud' – then Oud Yusuf must not be the same aromatic. We'd need to rename all the present-day distillations into something 'sub-class' – a 'new' breed or 'generation' of what we used to call 'Oud'. We can conveniently call Oud Ahmad 'high grade' and Oud Yusuf 'low grade' – but we'd be doing Oud Ahmad a HUGE disservice while doing Oud Yusuf a HUGE favor.

All the rest is subjective. Oud Sultani is, according to many, the No 1 oil of all time. They love the lavender-purple, incredibly 'pretty' aroma of Sultani and it sends their souls to the highest heaven. All that matters to me is that Oud Ahmad is exactly the same oil – WOOD-wise – only from the adjacent province of Kelantan to Sultani's Terengganu.

Yet another way of illustrating this:

Oud Ahmad: $2,500 / 3 gr.
Tigerwood 1995: $390 / 3 gr.

Which one is more expensive?

In my book, Tigerwood 1995 is more expensive than Oud Ahmad. At least doubly so. Who decides, and how do I know? – The WOOD, and by smelling the WOOD.
double like. back with questions when i have the time to formulate an appropriate reply
 

Shabby

Well-Known Member
#5
Please refer to Taha's statement above as an additional illustration of what I'm about to say.

Smelling as a producer and smelling as an end-user are two drastically different – sometimes totally opposite – ways of approaching an oil. While a user might be trying to pinpoint 'notes' in the profile (which are 100% of the time fictive, imagined assumptions we make which may and do vary from user to user) when smelling an oil as a producer, you're least concerned about metaphoric olfactory blueprints that are stored in your hard drive of sensory data. Rather, what you want to smell is the WOOD that the oil was made from. And I don't mean an abstract guesstimate at the 'grade' of wood. I mean the literal stuff that was ground up and then distilled as matching any of dozens (if not hundreds) of batches the distiller has himself previously handled and seen such oils come out of – from resination pattern to type of 'cut' that was ground, if young or old formation, living or dead tree, etc.

As a recent example: You wrote a beautiful review of Taha's new Royal Malinau. Naturally, I was curious to 'sample' the oil you were talking about so as to put your words into perspective. I wanted to know what it was exactly that you were talking about (i.e. what type of wood, as translated into oil, as translated into your unique personal experience). During a recent chat, Taha shared a picture of the ground up dust that the oil was cooked from. Mission complete. Sample no longer necessary. I knew EXACTLY what that wood looked like prior to getting ground up, in addition to the fragrance profile of the dust. Show this same picture to a user of oud oil, and he won't have the slightest idea what sort of a smell he can expect. Obviously, extensive experience handling wood, grinding it, and then having it distilled, plays a major role in this.

Another recent example: Our dear friend @Shabby brought a sample of Khmer Special K with him to the London OudFest. Within 30 seconds of smelling the oil, I knew exactly what type of shavings it was distilled from, the type of tree that they're harvested from in Cambodia. The checkmarks all went off in my head: We had a perfect match. What I was smelling as a prototype matched the type of wood this oil could have been pressed from perfectly.

As you can see, the last thing in my mind in both instances was the identification of metaphoric olfactory semblances; flowers, fruits, green, camphor, mint, kinam, red, figs, plums, etc. All of these things are IMAGINED. (Unless, of course, actual camphor, or flowers, or kinam are added into the feedstock for the particular batch.) It is the last thing a distiller thinks of when encountering an oil. And believe me, encountering an oil as a producer can be like grabbing a bull by the horns. The last thing you want at that moment is imaginary things to come into play. All you care about is identifying the WOOD and how it matches your knowledge and understanding of that wood, and how true to life the representation of that wood is in the oil (even this is a secondary consideration).

When there is NO WOOD to speak of, distillers start sniffing out: soak, drum material, water type, length of soak, 'probiotics,' pot material, temperature, length of cooking, etc. But first and foremost comes the WOOD. If there's no wood to identify – because the oil is a truly low-grade distillation 100% made up of auxiliary notes – then we start picking at the auxiliary notes in an effort to 'grade' the distiller's attempt at making something out of nothing. Well, almost nothing.

Now to answer your question about Oud Ahmad.

The WOOD used in Oud Ahmad was sinking-grade. This is not a pot smell. It's not a high-temp scorching white oil-grade wood smell. It's not a water smell. And it most certainly is not a 'friendly bacteria' (i.e. fermentation) smell. What I smell when I smell Oud Ahmad is the incredibly high-grade, ultra rare breed of Malaysian malaccensis (perhaps some sort of cross-breed) verging on colossal ancient crassnas from Cambodia. So this is a tree that deserves my reverence. This is a tree I more than respect. I don't care about the metaphoric 'musk' note or the red temperament that reminds me of very old 'Cambodis'. I care about the grade of WOOD.

To put it into perspective another way: If Oud Ahmad is an 'Oud' – then Oud Yusuf must not be the same aromatic. We'd need to rename all the present-day distillations into something 'sub-class' – a 'new' breed or 'generation' of what we used to call 'Oud'. We can conveniently call Oud Ahmad 'high grade' and Oud Yusuf 'low grade' – but we'd be doing Oud Ahmad a HUGE disservice while doing Oud Yusuf a HUGE favor.

All the rest is subjective. Oud Sultani is, according to many, the No 1 oil of all time. They love the lavender-purple, incredibly 'pretty' aroma of Sultani and it sends their souls to the highest heaven. All that matters to me is that Oud Ahmad is exactly the same oil – WOOD-wise – only from the adjacent province of Kelantan to Sultani's Terengganu.

Yet another way of illustrating this:

Oud Ahmad: $2,500 / 3 gr.
Tigerwood 1995: $390 / 3 gr.

Which one is more expensive?

In my book, Tigerwood 1995 is more expensive than Oud Ahmad. At least doubly so. Who decides, and how do I know? – The WOOD, and by smelling the WOOD.
Another anecdote I can add in this respect is when I took some samples from various distillers to Ensar on my first visit during last year's OudFest - at that point he clearly was unaware of most of the oils (meaning what various vendors had named them and their price).

He lined them up according to region and quality, and he had them in exact order of price, meaning he had exactly ascertained the quality of wood that had gone into them and ranked them accordingly. It was very impressive I have to say, although it is probably essential for a distiller to be able to do that.

@Rasoul S I have had in my history an issue with regal smelling ouds - they make me feel worldly and grand and I lose some of the introspective practice which other ouds can give me - the intellectualism, as you call it. That was until very recently when I applied to these ouds the principle that being of the world does not preclude introverted investigation, in fact being in the world but apart from it is a triumph of introspection. I feel that that is the particular intellectual quality that comes with Oud Ahmad - the strength and generosity of perfect internal self-domination, which is easily perceptible to all through its musky grandeur.
 

kesiro

Well-Known Member
#6
My experience of Oud Ahmad was not a gradual learning experience, as has been with many excellent oud oils. I was sent a sample of it by Adam and was given the warning that this oil can be “challenging”. Well, I opened the cap and took a whiff. And what ensued was the single most immediate instant love of an oud I have yet to have experienced. It is one of my prized oils and reserved only for special occasions. Such are the individual subjective olfactory preferences.
 

m.arif

Active Member
#7
I believe that the more complex a distillation is (not just the setup), the more complex an oil's behaviour will be. Taha's oils and his methods ,in this regard, seem to correlate. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about... :p

Wanmei and Hansei, seriously, (vietnamese) oud lovers (especially), what a year to live in . Not many incense grade vietnamese oils floating around the market, what more well-made incense grade vietnamese oils :)
 

Taha

Well-Known Member
#8
When is Pilipinas No. 1 going public?
Ah, you ask a question which puts me in a rather awkward position to answer. :p

But here goes… *gulp*
If it were up to me, I’d first release oils that are aged even more (and fully ready). But the current market is in a rather crazy state right now. This does not include all oud buyers of course, but there is undoubtedly a pandemic problem, what I’d call a “War on Good Oud” (and in 99% of cases, except where the yield was crazy high, good oud = costly oud = expensive oud).

I can understand where the critics are coming from, but I think some folks have gone overboard in their criticism of expensive oud.
But more importantly, I think that the oils under attack are often not the ones that should be attacked, rather its the most unexpected category of oils that are most worthy of criticism: mid-range oils.
Now here's something to think about: some of my costliest oils have been my worst investments from a purely $ perspective. And, affirming what Ensar stated above, some of the most insanely overpriced oils that I have smelled have not been the priciest ones – on the contrary actually, its mostly mid-range oils that I find to be the costliest, for what they are.

This is a huge topic and I’d rather not get into it in all the nitty gritties, so just some quick tiny morsels for thought:
99.99% of oils are distilled from a standard grade of “oil grade wood”. Go to any oud-producing country (okay some countries might be an exception, Vietnam being an obvious one), and you’ll find that is the case. If you ask me, oils cooked from such wood *should* retail for far less than they are.

The only exception to this rule of raw materials is where a vendor/distiller (usually the former, not the latter because frankly they can’t afford to do this in 2017) goes out of the way and uses exceptional materials. But that means a HUGE jump in the cost. Huge. Its not a graduated spectrum, there are no ‘intermediary’ grades of wood that can be used to make mid-range oils.

Without exception, a mid-range oil is mid-range priced because:
1) the yield for a low grade wood distillation was lower than expected, or...
2) because lower grade wood was consciously and deliberately boosted with higher grade wood thrown into the pot to bump up the oomph factor*, or…
3) because high grade wood was distilled and the yield was huge, and I mean HUGE*, or...
4) because a low grade oil is overpriced by the seller, and...
5) there's no fifth option.
(* in my humble opinion, these are the only categories of mid-range priced oud oils whose price tag is justified)

So what does that have to do with what you asked?
Simple. Until the market as a whole calms down and understands what’s what, I'm scared of releasing some of these “insanely expensive” (actually far cheaper for what they are) oils, like the Filipinos, out of concern for the safety of my boy parts. I’d get castrated. :)

Food for thought: how do I price an oil that COST me $500/g to produce? Just based on the raw material cost, and ignoring even additional expenses like electricity and gas. Labor / my profit...? pfft, keep dreaming Taha. If I was to release it at bare wood cost price, I think I’d face a lot of criticism. And a threat to the continuation of my lineage. ;)

I hope that answers your question, even if not directly.

@Taha what is the first thing you smell in Royal malinau?

And the second most prominent note?
You know Rasoul, Ensar’s reply above sent shivers down my spine, the way he answered is precisely how I feel about it as well. I am in general too scared to post a lot of my thoughts and opinions publicly (and I’m sure you’ll recall that most of my emails to you during your early ouducation had a ton of “apologies in advance” and disclaimers), because they can be misconstrued as being condescending.

But the reality is… when you’re intimate with the raw material (good material, of course), its a whole different ball game.

Like Ensar said, its not about the individual scent notes, rather its about how accurately the oil captures the essence of the wood, (or in my vernacular, the ‘energy’). For me, really truly, its about that ‘energy’. I’ve been telling customers this for the longest time (and finally put it into a blog post only just recently).

I know it sounds hocus pocus, but once you’ve become intimate with enough batches of raw material and ran enough distillations that you’ve lost count, everything melts away, and you get this tunnel vision: your sole focus is on the essence, the energy, of that wood. At least that’s the case with me, due to the Gen3 dominance in how I view agarwood. Folks who regularly chat with me while I’m conducting distillations can tell you, I have a VERY hard time pinpointing notes while a distillation is running or has just ended and I’m assessing the oil. Because the scent notes are a distraction. I am too busy focusing on trying to do the wood justice, to let my mind go to that.

Now here’s an interesting fact, and I hope it drives the point home. Its no secret I’m not a fan of barnyard oud. Sure, I appreciate its value as perfume (done right, some barnyard oils can smell awesome), but in no way do they reflect the aroma of the raw material. But when I smell an oil like Oud Mostafa No.1, it brings my heart up to my throat. Not because I’m a fan of barnyard oils (I’m not, and this oil is a barny beast) but rather because the ‘energy’ is oozing out of the seams. Even the barn could not suppress it, that’s how good the raw material was.
Fun fact: every time I've told Ensar this, he replied with "if only you smelled Oud Sulaiman 1!"

Back to Royal Malinau now. The first thing I am hit with is the essence of the wood. A very specific type of Malinau wood. To date, I have only smelled 4 truly worthy ambassadors of Malinau, and this is one of them.

But if I try to break down the scent notes, then the most immediate dominant aroma I smell is orange creamsicle (vanilla ice cream surrounded by sweet tangerine juice). But now that you mention it, I think you’re right about the Valentine heart candy too!

As for your question about green vs black, wellllll to me, again, its not so much a scent notes thing as it is a ‘feel’ and 'energy' thing (or Z-axis, so shoot me). Which is funny because none of these oils were distilled from actual green OR black kyara. And yet, its fascinating for that very reason, because they correlate to one another in much the same way the color-coded kyaras do to each other.

Scent-wise, I find green to be more glitter and black to be more glamor. Alternative reading: green is zestier and black is comparatively smoother. These oils are the same way. The new brew is still quite ‘bright’ but… imagine staring into a naked light bulb vs a lamp fitted with a bulb of equal wattage. More “creamy condensed milky sweet vannilic note”...? Now THIS is spot on. :D

PS: back in the day, my team hunted in Kelantan State as well, and I know exactly which wood Ensar is referring to. Here in Malaysia they call it Burma wood, and its found in northern-most Malaysia, the skinny strip of south Thailand, and the Burmese jungles adjacent to that Thai strip. I can confirm that it is indeed Malaccensis per the scientific definition, however its different from most of the other Malaccensis sub-species found in Malaysia. I have never seen this variety in any state besides Kelantan.

Disclaimer:
I don’t deny that some of what I said might sound far-fetched, but I can't do more than just shrug my shoulders and say that some realizations come with time. And a few others only come with hands-on distillation experience.
Also, I don't mean any disrespect to anyone.
Some of what I said could be seen by some vendors as an indirect attack on them, please guys, understand its not. There is an undeniable advantage one enjoys when hand-picking raw materials, getting intimate with them, and carefully designing distillations. I was merely touching on some of those advantages here. I tried to be as diplomatic and polite as possible, so I urge you to not read more into it than what I stated, face-value. An oil like Oud Ahmad was not distilled by Ensar himself and yet he takes his hat off for it. Likewise, I do for many oils which I never cooked myself nor witnessed the distillation of. At the end of the day, its the WOOD that dominates. If it was awesome, the oil cannot hide that awesomeness.

(and sadly, nowadays the biggest problem is that most batches of wood are NOT awesome – the opposite is the default case)
 

Taha

Well-Known Member
#10
I believe that the more complex a distillation is (not just the setup), the more complex an oil's behaviour will be. Taha's oils and his methods ,in this regard, seem to correlate. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about... :p

Wanmei and Hansei, seriously, (vietnamese) oud lovers (especially), what a year to live in . Not many incense grade vietnamese oils floating around the market, what more well-made incense grade vietnamese oils :)
Oh please! :p

Guys, m.arif is being modest. He’s helped me with a lot of distillations, and actually in the case of Royal Malinau he helped in literally every single stage… from grinding to yield-boosting to setting up the distillation to disassembling to post-distillation annoying-as-heck ‘Agar Aura grade’ washing of the apparatus, ha!

He can tell you exactly what Kruger meant when he talked about snorting out brown mucus, how you get severely sick and feverish for a week after grinding agarwood (for some reason, I have a rather robust respiratory system and I don’t get hit... or maybe I’m just used to it by now), and he can also tell you how amazing it is to see wood fibres practically ‘melt away’ in a matter of 8 minutes during the yield boost process, yielding a "sinking grade" awesome sludge of oleoresin.

And of course.. for all his help, he gets a bunch of free swipes every time he swings by. ;)
 

Taha

Well-Known Member
#13
Oh my it’s so lovely seeing Sidi Taha’s beautiful long posts again!! :):)
Good God.. I did it again, didn't I. :eek:
Turns out every time I open my mouth (punch the keyboard), I somehow end up writing an essay.

Any how, re-reading my post I just want to really emphasize this point again: I am not trying to sneakily bash anyone. I said it above already (giving the example of Oud Ahmad), but I'll say it even more explicitly, and in a different way. We all know Faheem recently went to Sri Lanka to personally inspect batches of wood for their oils. And I sometimes get to hear from birdies when Jawed is in town (turns out he's in Malaysia quite regularly). I'm willing to bet that the ultra-raved Sri Lankan IO oils and Qandahar II by ASO – even though I haven't smelled them myself – were likely instances of what I rambled on about above. Namely, scrutiny of the materials, followed by distillations designed specifically for those batches. Never met either of them in person. Never smelled the oils I just referred to either. But I'm willing to put down my sweet blue Ringgit in assuming they did precisely what I described for those oils.

Again: neither am I trying to attack anyone (vendors: if I didn't name you, it doesn't mean I just attacked you) nor cleverly promoting myself. It just so happens that I know my oils best teehee and let's face it we all know EnsarOud's SI rating (@Oudamberlove did I get the term right?) is off the charts and EnsarOud.. is well.. EnsarOud after all, and that's why I used my oils and his for illustration purposes.
So consider this my footnote to my footnote haha. My post was intended to give a 'wholesome' answer that went deeper than just scratching the surface.

Anyone who knows what I potentially face on Jan 1 12:00:00 will know I have no reason to have secret agendas, or any reason for clever jabs. Oud USERS: I am not trying to be condescending. Oud VENDORS: I am not trying to play you down.
And if you don't know what I'm referring to by 'Jan 1', just never mind for now. :)

I got gist of it: time to start saving my money. ;)
Please give me till Jan 1, my friend, before I can promise anything. :D
 

kooolaid79

Well-Known Member
#14
Good God.. I did it again, didn't I. :eek:
Anyone who knows what I potentially face on Jan 1 12:00:00 will know I have no reason to have secret agendas, or any reason for clever jabs. Oud USERS: I am not trying to be condescending. Oud VENDORS: I am not trying to play you down.
And if you don't know what I'm referring to by 'Jan 1', just never mind for now. :)
Inshallah we pray that there will be good news for everyone to hear, we pray that you and your family are blessed to stay with these passion of making, producing, and distilling Oud for many more years to come!
 

Oudamberlove

Well-Known Member
#15
@Taha (Professor Taha to be exact)
I can only envy your skill at seeking the energy of an oil. Exclusively a Distiller's ability, but I will keep that in mind when I go a sniffing. Likewise I would like to borrow Ensar's nose for spell, he's been all over the East and sniffed so many oils. I would also like to be your assistant for a while....screeeeeeerch.....back to reality. I have no pots to tinker with, nor do I have the Agarwood. I am however enjoying AYU right now, it capped an intense day, which started with a swipe of OR85 layered with TW95, as I was busy amending four tax returns.
 

Taha

Well-Known Member
#16
Glad you've been enjoying Ayu, AmberyOudLover! :D
I hope you're still discovering new delightful facets (my discoveries came to an end after a whopping 3 whole months with the oil).

And speaking of Malaysian oud... I had a Malaya partay today. King Taha and the Knights of the Square Table.
malays.jpg
Maybe I'll share the juicy details of what the meet-up was all about later.
But since this is the SOTD thread, I can tell you the four chaps got healthy swipes of Vietnamese oud (as did @m.arif who isn't pictured here since he was taking the photo, but that adorable little girl is his daughter). Those swipes were an essential part of getting what I was trying to convey to them, burnt into their brains.
As for my SOTD, Sultan Ahmad.
Woooph.. with its fumes floating around your sinuses.. your head will be up so high in the clouds, you'll be so chill, that you won't feel any discomfiture pointing out to a Malay hunter (pictured right side) straight to his face what the problems with their (Malay) style gaharu hunting are.
Wait, did I just reveal what the meeting was about? :p

Request for mods: could my off-topic earlier post (and everything related to it that came after) be moved to a more appropriate thread, say, the Let's Talk Oud thread?

Inshallah we pray that there will be good news for everyone to hear, we pray that you and your family are blessed to stay with these passion of making, producing, and distilling Oud for many more years to come!
Ameen!
 

PEARL

Well-Known Member
#17
@Taha the "War on Good Oud" is extremely perverted. Whether inadvertent or by intent, it along with MOCA has been the impetus to make the majority of vendor/distillers uninterested in making truly high grade oils. It has resulted in a market dominated by low to low mid and sometimes mid grade oils, what I'd call the very average quality, sweet spot price, high volume business model for the majority of oud vendor/distillers. But can you blame them? Most won't take the risk to purposely produce or procure a truly high grade oil that they know will only appeal to a narrow segment of the consumer market due to it's relative price, despite knowing themselves that the quality justifies the price.

From a consumer perspective, if the "War on Good Oud" and MOCA sought to create an informed and discerning consumer it has actually done the opposite. It has created an uninformed and fickle consumer where the majority believe they get something for nothing, well almost nothing, or all oils are the "same". It has created a majority of undiscerning consumers who are incapable of assessing quality (or don't care to based on trying to pinpoint the 'notes' Ensar spoke of, while neglecting the wood) and mistakenly believe their low to low mid and sometimes mid grade oils are truly high grade.

My fedora's off to you and the few, continue to masterfully distill high grade oils from high grade wood, release them if and when you see fit and do so without consideration to anyone who'd attempt to dictate what your oils cost. Anybody that would balk at the price simply don't understand what they're pricing, those who do understand are your target audience and potential consumers for that commodity; it's really that simple.
 

Rasoul S

Well-Known Member
#18
Another anecdote I can add in this respect is when I took some samples from various distillers to Ensar on my first visit during last year's OudFest - at that point he clearly was unaware of most of the oils (meaning what various vendors had named them and their price).

He lined them up according to region and quality, and he had them in exact order of price, meaning he had exactly ascertained the quality of wood that had gone into them and ranked them accordingly. It was very impressive I have to say, although it is probably essential for a distiller to be able to do that.

@Rasoul S I have had in my history an issue with regal smelling ouds - they make me feel worldly and grand and I lose some of the introspective practice which other ouds can give me - the intellectualism, as you call it. That was until very recently when I applied to these ouds the principle that being of the world does not preclude introverted investigation, in fact being in the world but apart from it is a triumph of introspection. I feel that that is the particular intellectual quality that comes with Oud Ahmad - the strength and generosity of perfect internal self-domination, which is easily perceptible to all through its musky grandeur.
Beautifully put
 

m.arif

Active Member
#19
Glad you've been enjoying Ayu, AmberyOudLover! :D
I hope you're still discovering new delightful facets (my discoveries came to an end after a whopping 3 whole months with the oil).

And speaking of Malaysian oud... I had a Malaya partay today. King Taha and the Knights of the Square Table.
View attachment 807
Maybe I'll share the juicy details of what the meet-up was all about later.
But since this is the SOTD thread, I can tell you the four chaps got healthy swipes of Vietnamese oud (as did @m.arif who isn't pictured here since he was taking the photo, but that adorable little girl is his daughter). Those swipes were an essential part of getting what I was trying to convey to them, burnt into their brains.
As for my SOTD, Sultan Ahmad.
Woooph.. with its fumes floating around your sinuses.. your head will be up so high in the clouds, you'll be so chill, that you won't feel any discomfiture pointing out to a Malay hunter (pictured right side) straight to his face what the problems with their (Malay) style gaharu hunting are.
Wait, did I just reveal what the meeting was about? :p

Request for mods: could my off-topic earlier post (and everything related to it that came after) be moved to a more appropriate thread, say, the Let's Talk Oud thread?

Ameen!
One guy in the picture is crazy for oud. He also evaluates quality based on aroma, and not visuals alone (more of a wood guy compared to oil). He smelled Wanmei and went along the lines of "This is the smell of black kyara...." ...Those that know him, know his experience and appreciation of gaharu (and maybe some of his network of contacts, to ascertain his credibility)

The value of the oil then comes into play...quality versus longevity/tenacity? How does one evaluate the quality of aroma? Most can't. Same as wood. Most can't evaluate the quality of aroma, so they opt to evaluate the grade (visuals,physical traits), since it is universally quantifiable.

The current market (generally) still sees ouds that lasts long as superb, a benchmark of value, since it can be universally quantified to a certain extent. They're not to blame, anyone would praise fragrances that lasts long (provided they're not adulterated).

Would an oil smelling like black kyara , that is defeated in longevity compared to sewer-ditch smelling ouds (I smelled one which wouldn't even go away after washing with Dettol soap), be of better value, or overpriced? Many love oud (or think what they're loving is oud), but few appreciate. Artisanal oils need appreciation, and not just consumption. I guess you get the same reaction when a common guy eats A5 Japanese wagyu and says it's overpriced,and tastes just like any other beef. The chef and farm owners just keep doing their thing, for those whom appreciate their work. Though the occasional negative remarks are irritating to a certain extent, sometimes to a point of frustration, like a mosquito. On a bad day, you get Aedes mozzies giving dengue fever...They're not totally harmless and I've seen/heard the effects on people's livelihoods..sad to say the least. Really, many dont understand/care to understand what distillers/vendors like Taha, Russian Adam and EnsarOudCo. go through.

I'm starting to get a better picture of the whole gaharu scene..Still lots of dark areas, but another puzzle piece in the labyrinth of mysteries.

Back to the picture, very insightful meeting. Quite a bit of candan smoke filling your living room eh @Taha :D

Kudos to the guys who chose to keep producing good oud for us to benefit from, however disheartening it may be.
 
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Rasoul S

Well-Known Member
#20
Ah, you ask a question which puts me in a rather awkward position to answer. :p

But here goes… *gulp*
If it were up to me, I’d first release oils that are aged even more (and fully ready). But the current market is in a rather crazy state right now. This does not include all oud buyers of course, but there is undoubtedly a pandemic problem, what I’d call a “War on Good Oud” (and in 99% of cases, except where the yield was crazy high, good oud = costly oud = expensive oud).

I can understand where the critics are coming from, but I think some folks have gone overboard in their criticism of expensive oud.
But more importantly, I think that the oils under attack are often not the ones that should be attacked, rather its the most unexpected category of oils that are most worthy of criticism: mid-range oils.
Now here's something to think about: some of my costliest oils have been my worst investments from a purely $ perspective. And, affirming what Ensar stated above, some of the most insanely overpriced oils that I have smelled have not been the priciest ones – on the contrary actually, its mostly mid-range oils that I find to be the costliest, for what they are.

This is a huge topic and I’d rather not get into it in all the nitty gritties, so just some quick tiny morsels for thought:
99.99% of oils are distilled from a standard grade of “oil grade wood”. Go to any oud-producing country (okay some countries might be an exception, Vietnam being an obvious one), and you’ll find that is the case. If you ask me, oils cooked from such wood *should* retail for far less than they are.

The only exception to this rule of raw materials is where a vendor/distiller (usually the former, not the latter because frankly they can’t afford to do this in 2017) goes out of the way and uses exceptional materials. But that means a HUGE jump in the cost. Huge. Its not a graduated spectrum, there are no ‘intermediary’ grades of wood that can be used to make mid-range oils.

Without exception, a mid-range oil is mid-range priced because:
1) the yield for a low grade wood distillation was lower than expected, or...
2) because lower grade wood was consciously and deliberately boosted with higher grade wood thrown into the pot to bump up the oomph factor*, or…
3) because high grade wood was distilled and the yield was huge, and I mean HUGE*, or...
4) because a low grade oil is overpriced by the seller, and...
5) there's no fifth option.
(* in my humble opinion, these are the only categories of mid-range priced oud oils whose price tag is justified)

So what does that have to do with what you asked?
Simple. Until the market as a whole calms down and understands what’s what, I'm scared of releasing some of these “insanely expensive” (actually far cheaper for what they are) oils, like the Filipinos, out of concern for the safety of my boy parts. I’d get castrated. :)

Food for thought: how do I price an oil that COST me $500/g to produce? Just based on the raw material cost, and ignoring even additional expenses like electricity and gas. Labor / my profit...? pfft, keep dreaming Taha. If I was to release it at bare wood cost price, I think I’d face a lot of criticism. And a threat to the continuation of my lineage. ;)

I hope that answers your question, even if not directly.


You know Rasoul, Ensar’s reply above sent shivers down my spine, the way he answered is precisely how I feel about it as well. I am in general too scared to post a lot of my thoughts and opinions publicly (and I’m sure you’ll recall that most of my emails to you during your early ouducation had a ton of “apologies in advance” and disclaimers), because they can be misconstrued as being condescending.

But the reality is… when you’re intimate with the raw material (good material, of course), its a whole different ball game.

Like Ensar said, its not about the individual scent notes, rather its about how accurately the oil captures the essence of the wood, (or in my vernacular, the ‘energy’). For me, really truly, its about that ‘energy’. I’ve been telling customers this for the longest time (and finally put it into a blog post only just recently).

I know it sounds hocus pocus, but once you’ve become intimate with enough batches of raw material and ran enough distillations that you’ve lost count, everything melts away, and you get this tunnel vision: your sole focus is on the essence, the energy, of that wood. At least that’s the case with me, due to the Gen3 dominance in how I view agarwood. Folks who regularly chat with me while I’m conducting distillations can tell you, I have a VERY hard time pinpointing notes while a distillation is running or has just ended and I’m assessing the oil. Because the scent notes are a distraction. I am too busy focusing on trying to do the wood justice, to let my mind go to that.

Now here’s an interesting fact, and I hope it drives the point home. Its no secret I’m not a fan of barnyard oud. Sure, I appreciate its value as perfume (done right, some barnyard oils can smell awesome), but in no way do they reflect the aroma of the raw material. But when I smell an oil like Oud Mostafa No.1, it brings my heart up to my throat. Not because I’m a fan of barnyard oils (I’m not, and this oil is a barny beast) but rather because the ‘energy’ is oozing out of the seams. Even the barn could not suppress it, that’s how good the raw material was.
Fun fact: every time I've told Ensar this, he replied with "if only you smelled Oud Sulaiman 1!"

Back to Royal Malinau now. The first thing I am hit with is the essence of the wood. A very specific type of Malinau wood. To date, I have only smelled 4 truly worthy ambassadors of Malinau, and this is one of them.

But if I try to break down the scent notes, then the most immediate dominant aroma I smell is orange creamsicle (vanilla ice cream surrounded by sweet tangerine juice). But now that you mention it, I think you’re right about the Valentine heart candy too!

As for your question about green vs black, wellllll to me, again, its not so much a scent notes thing as it is a ‘feel’ and 'energy' thing (or Z-axis, so shoot me). Which is funny because none of these oils were distilled from actual green OR black kyara. And yet, its fascinating for that very reason, because they correlate to one another in much the same way the color-coded kyaras do to each other.

Scent-wise, I find green to be more glitter and black to be more glamor. Alternative reading: green is zestier and black is comparatively smoother. These oils are the same way. The new brew is still quite ‘bright’ but… imagine staring into a naked light bulb vs a lamp fitted with a bulb of equal wattage. More “creamy condensed milky sweet vannilic note”...? Now THIS is spot on. :D

PS: back in the day, my team hunted in Kelantan State as well, and I know exactly which wood Ensar is referring to. Here in Malaysia they call it Burma wood, and its found in northern-most Malaysia, the skinny strip of south Thailand, and the Burmese jungles adjacent to that Thai strip. I can confirm that it is indeed Malaccensis per the scientific definition, however its different from most of the other Malaccensis sub-species found in Malaysia. I have never seen this variety in any state besides Kelantan.

Disclaimer:
I don’t deny that some of what I said might sound far-fetched, but I can't do more than just shrug my shoulders and say that some realizations come with time. And a few others only come with hands-on distillation experience.
Also, I don't mean any disrespect to anyone.
Some of what I said could be seen by some vendors as an indirect attack on them, please guys, understand its not. There is an undeniable advantage one enjoys when hand-picking raw materials, getting intimate with them, and carefully designing distillations. I was merely touching on some of those advantages here. I tried to be as diplomatic and polite as possible, so I urge you to not read more into it than what I stated, face-value. An oil like Oud Ahmad was not distilled by Ensar himself and yet he takes his hat off for it. Likewise, I do for many oils which I never cooked myself nor witnessed the distillation of. At the end of the day, its the WOOD that dominates. If it was awesome, the oil cannot hide that awesomeness.

(and sadly, nowadays the biggest problem is that most batches of wood are NOT awesome – the opposite is the default case)
@Taha @Ensar
Damn you. Giving me a taste of my own medicine. I HATE and I mean it when people ask me what this or that wine smells like. Sure I too started out that way but it’s been long since I can be bothered with all these notes that are quite arbitrary and vary between person to person. I am more interested to talk about the way the year was and how the wine made and what each has contributed to the final product. Then later came the state of not even wanting to break down the wine into pieces to figure out how it was made grown etc. That takes 5-10 seconds. What I value more is the sensation the nerdy ias you call it or the essence of the terroir. Some wines have life to them. They have tension. They feel alive and kicking. Others not so much. And all goes back to how special the vineyard block is or not and how well adapted the plants to that block and climate. Mans job is to not f$&@# it up. Not even add his or her own signature to it but instead pay it the biggest homage possible: direct translation of site into a bottle.

But we must not forget to speak layman terms and lend a holding hand to newbies. We can’t expect all to know or feel or even understand what you are talking about. I get it fully because of working in an awfully similar field.

Here is to oils with a special wavelength and energy to them. To the likes of special k to royal malinau to kinamantan to Oud Ahmad, Ceylon royale, rubai’e ...
 
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