Over the years, we’ve released numerous oud oils from countless jungles across South East Asia, and you already know by now that no two batches of wild oud are ever alike. The most obvious reason for this is the specific set of chemical reactions that take place inside the tree. Even two sister-trees standing side-by-side in a jungle will display aromatic variance.
For lovers of ‘barnyard’ style ouds, it doesn’t get any better than Lao oud. For those averse to animalic/fecal/cheesy ouds, Lao oud is probably at the bottom of their wish list.
But is this funky aroma really intrinsic to Lao oud?
One only has to look at the countries surrounding Laos, and its easy then to know what Lao oud should smell like.
Burma to the west, China to the North, Vietnam to the east, and Cambodia and Thailand to the south – Laos lies at the very heart of the regions that give us Aquilaria Crassna (called Mai Ketsana here). Continue reading
Its no secret: oud oil prices have been going up like crazy over the past 5 years. When you look at the price of agarwood in the market, even at the wholesale level, each grade of wood today is approximately 3-10 times the price it was back in 2003 (and the highest grades over 40 times more than they were in 1995)!
So it makes sense that as the price of wild agarwood continues to rise, the price of oils should go up as well, right?
Not quite…
Agar Aura’s Byakudan No. 1 is our first ever hands-on non-oud distillation.
Although it was meant to be part of the private ‘Syed Series‘ collection of oils which I distill for myself and only share with a very small number of people due to the insane costs and limited availablity of certain batches of raw materials, in the case of Byakudan No. 1 the cost-per-gram turned out to be close enough to being ‘sane’ so I decided to share it with a larger circle of lovers of high grade artisanal oils.
My previous blog post (here) covering the behind-the-scenes of Manaka Jinkoh and Sasora Jinkoh was received with a ton of interest and enthusiasm (congratulations, you’re all officially Oud NERDS!), so I’m going to go ahead and do an exegesis of our other three Rikkoku-Gomi inspired oils as well.
I hope you’ll find it enlightening, and enjoy reading about some of what goes into designing these super-customized distillations.
Enjoy!
Continue reading
When it comes to RAW agarwood, the state of Terengganu boasts the most beautiful scent profile in all of Malaysia. When it comes to oils, its a neck-to-neck competition between Terengganu (far north-east) and far-west states (Perak, Malacca, Selangor, etc). Keep in mind, I’m ONLY referring to ‘prettiness’ right now. Other states are great too of course, each in their own way (e.g. Johor = explosive, Kelantan = grounding, and so on).
We’ve already completed the trial distillation for the next Malaysian project: our first Terengganu oil. But before I finalize the distillation parameters, I want to ask YOU what you want, so that the distillation can be tweaked accordingly.
So recently, I realized that a lot of folks are not aware of what it is that makes ‘barnyard’ type ouds smell like… well, a barnyard. So I decided its time to talk a little bit about cheeses and wines. And of course apples.
If you don’t have a cup of hot cocoa at hand and the time to read the whole post, the short version is: its due to either rot or fermentation of the agarwood prior to distillation.
But if you’re an oud nerd and want to learn more about the intricacies of the process, read on…
Agar Aura is very excited to roll out our very own ‘Jinkoh Series’ oud oils of 4 (almost 5) out of the 6 types of agarwood found in Japanese Rikkoku-Gomi sets.
Of course every single oil we produce is unique in its own way, but for this particular series we decided to seek direction from the scent profiles of Rikkoku-Gomi agarwood specimens.
I have long been fascinated by traditional Japanese culture, pretty much everything about it. But if there’s one thing Japanese that beats my love for mochi (“once on the lips, forever on the hips!” as they say.. ugh), its the Japanese incense tradition. And within that, of course, the agarwood tradition.
