Actually, it is quite difficult to properly heat/burn agarwood chips. A good example would be the Japanese incense tradition, or Monkoh/Kodo .
Arabs usually simply chuck a super high grade, highly resinous wood on hot coal , so no matter how skilled you are, it's going to smell good. But you won't be able to discern the subtle nuances of the aroma. Everything gets shot up in one go and it's like your olfactory senses just got an uppercut by Mike Tyson.
The Japanese way, takes a lot of skill. The right temperature, the right piece of wood, the right stage of heating. Even a small splinter of wood can last very long by this way. They call it "listening" to the aroma of the heated wood.
Oil, IMO, it's like taking the good stuff out already, for consumers to appreciate. "Listening" to the aroma, and the many facets it brings, also takes skill, and training (your nose).
If you take a low grade wood, or even an average quality wood available nowadays, you'll most likely inhale the smell of burnt wood (like when you burn wood for campfires), and maaaaaybe some of the agarwood goodness. Why? Because the bunk wood (unresinated) gets burnt simultaneously with the resinated parts. Do it like the Japs, you HEAT the wood, not burn it, so that the aroma gets released , while the wood stays unburnt. Use a charcoal, and things get more difficult. Use a good electric heater, then it's easier.
As of now, I'm more of an oil guy. I suck at heating wood, and I'm not rich enough to trial and error with high grade wood. But I do wish to learn it some day.
Now...about oils...from my noob experience, plus some fruitful discussions with Ensar, Adam (Feel Oud), Taha (AA), and some others..
"The real deal" is very subjective. Oil extracted from low quality wood, with poor distillation techniques, are also "The real deal", if one means purity, and really from gaharu, as long as it's not adulterated/diluted. You can get these for below RM200 to RM300+ tops.
If by "the REAL deal" , one means the no nonsense, high end, benchmark oud oils, well then it's a whole different story.
The smell of wood, and even more the oil, may vary due to the following factors :
- Species (malaccensis,crassna, sinensis,etc.)
- Region (Crassna in Pahang vs Crassna in Cambodia, may produce very different smells)
- Grade (obviously) . wild wood tend to give richer,and more complex smells. but take scrap wild wood, compare to high grade cultivation wood, wild will lose out.
- and currently among the biggest factors, Distillation techniques and practices.
So if someone is offering you some WILD oud oil, and put a high price tag,but it smells like longkang all the way through the dry down, the wood used was probably low grade, and the distillation techniques were probably poor as well.
Whether or not synthetics can do the job of real oud, personally I think not at the moment. Real oud is just too complex. Take two sibling trees side by side from the same jungle, make oil, you won't get 100% identical aroma.
BTW Tazio, Feel Oud has 3g oils that would cost around RM400 I think. Like Mai Bo Rai (among which I have extra of..but sold out on website .just checked while writing this). Champi intensa also within my collection. They're the classic cultivated thai oud , but high quality, and no inoculants (injections to trigger infection). Atleast 3 years of natural infection. I think less than 50% of cultivators in Malaysia would even wait as long as 2 years.
Looks like we have an Oud expert in the house. Thanks for sharing. Keep it coming. I'm sure it'll benefit for anyone who's into real oud.
Sep 28 2016, 11:07 AM
Quote
0.1296sec
0.40
7 queries
GZIP Disabled