Most Western perfumers use the synthetic versions, he told me, which convey an idea of oud rather than the actual ingredient itself, but he was tight-lipped about where one might find the rarest, wildest examples of oud. It's where the wild trees are, where they haven't been destroyed.
But you'd be hard-pressed to find them on your own. Only the dealers on the ground know where wild aquilaria trees can be harvested. What lengths, then, will Eastern and Western perfumers go to find such rare and fragile trees?
Albert Vielle, a supply company based in the European perfume capital of Grasse, France, is devoted to acquiring agarwood. The company's CEO, Georges Ferrando, is well known in the secretive French scent business as a fanatically scrupulous procurer of botanicals and woods from many sources, whether it's neroli from Tunisia or top-quality agarwood from Laos.
He supplies material to Kurkdjian, among others. In Laos he works with an equally intense dealer called Francis Chag naud, who has lived in the country for 25 years and who has single-mindedly set out to create some of the best oud in the world according to Ferrando.
To that end Chag naud is protecting and preserving the country's ever rarer aquilaria trees. I flew to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, to meet them both. Laos has a population of only 7 million.
It is one of the poorest nations in the world, and most of its surface is covered by tropical forest. Chagnaud's mission has been to make the trade legitimate and to get fair recompense for the farmers from the perfume companies in Paris. In the French bistros of Vientiane, over endless carafes of red wine, the two men talked with charming erudition and passion about the hundreds of rare woods that Laos's beautiful and enigmatic forests yield.
At Chagnaud's factory, on the outskirts of Vientiane, we were shown around his cluttered and eccentric lab, which is filled with strange and exotic oils and essences, and woods from deep in the Laotian forests. Perfume is enormously important to France. But mostly it's for the people of Laos, to protect the forests from theft. Oud is this mysterious, amazing thing, magical and rare, but the only way to preserve it is to harvest it with great care and respect.
Getting up at dawn the next day, we drove in Chagnaud's tanklike, dust-encrusted pickup truck a grueling seven hours to the remote forest town of Kam Keut, not far from the Vietnamese border.
During the Vietnam War, he told me, the Americans dropped so many bombs on the forests that innumerable aquilaria trees were wounded and thus began to produce invaluable agarwood. On the way we visited some of Chagnaud's backwoods oud distilleries by the roadside. Here, in the sweltering heat, workers hauled firewood for the pot fires, sawed huge aqui laria logs into pieces, and laid the wet chips out on sheets for drying. The heavy smell of agarwood was as distinctive here as it was in the streets of Bangkok or at the Dubai Mall.
Later that night we wandered around the cool and misty streets of Kam Keut listening to Communist news broadcasts from the corner loudspeakers. Chag naud told me that aquilaria smuggling was a big problem here; many villages had grown up around precious trees, not the other way around, as a way to protect them from both Lao and Vietnamese smugglers.
The villagers knew exactly how valuable the oud trees were. The following morning we drove a few miles out into the countryside, through sublime forests filled with delicate, feathery aquilaria trees, and found a village that had indeed been built around a few untouched trees. In the center of the hamlet was a strange sight: a massive, fenced-in tree with a sign that identified it as belonging to Agroforex, Chagnaud's company. It was the largest aquilaria we had seen so far.
I'm protecting it for the villagers. We put a fence around it so the Viet smugglers wouldn't dare touch it. This is how insane it's become, the thirst for oud. The perfume business is all about money. Unfortunately, many of these older trees are now considered threatened species. This contributes to its status as the most expensive commodity on the essential oil market.
They claim that only a little oil is needed per application and that one bottle should last the average daily user an entire year. The fragrance is comprised of many diverse aspects. It is simultaneously pungent, yet very pleasing, invoking warm, smoky notes with tinges of dampened wood. Although subtlety blended with touches of floral and fruit, the predominant scent is musky and sensual. The complex and exquisite fragrance of Oud is a precious, rare and intriguing gift of nature that when blended with other essential oils creates an olfactory experience that permeates any interior environment with a sense of opulence , luxury and supreme comfort.
Historians can trace the use of Oud back to ancient times and incontrovertible evidence lies within the scriptures of various ancient cultures. The Prophet, Muhammad, held the tradition of fumigation with agarwood, which is a practice that continues in the Muslim world to this day. The Holy Prophet referred to agarwood as a distinct item found in Paradise.
Early records in central Vietnam dating back to the third century A. Wealthy Chinese ancients were known to make their coffins out of this resinous heartwood. There is also a strong association with the use of this aromatic substance and the tradition of Fengshui, a discipline of governing the flow of energy in a particular place.
In Buddhist tradition, the most precious string of beads numbering to is made of agarwood. Historically, the Islamic world valued the precious resin as both an essential oil and a personal perfume. In recent times, some famous designers have launched their own fragrances utilizing this cherished essential oil. The rise of boutique hotels back in the s brought about a new and very opulent traveler experience and with it, rare and exotic scents catering to those with luxurious tastes for whom money is no object.
When used in a perfume composition, Oud is most often a base note , which tends to remain on the skin long after the others dissipate. They serve to enhance the scent of other ingredients; and, in some cases, they impart a fragrance all their own. While most wood notes are known for their earthy qualities, Oud provides a pleasant sweet scent and is often featured in a synthetic version because it is so costly to harvest.
This exquisite essential oil has many applications that range from spiritual to therapeutic and medicinal. It is often associated with harmony, serenity of spirit and when applied regularly, the removal of destructive and negative energies in the home. Oud in Arabic oudh is valued strongly by perfumers for its warm sweetness mixed with woody and balsamic notes. It's an aromatic and complex scent. It is used in the form of oud oil dehn al oud or a resin oud mubakhar. When used in a perfume composition, oud is most often a base note.
Essential in every perfume, unlike top notes and middle notes, base notes tend to stay on the skin long after the others dissipate. In a perfume with an oud base, it's likely you'll catch a whiff of it alone hours after applying it. As with many other expensive perfume ingredients, there are synthetic ouds produced. Compared to the naturally produced fragrance, these are nothing short of a disappointment. Synthetic oud tends to be more leathery and woody—sacrificing its warmth, sweetness, and balsamic notes for the price point.
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