All Things Ensar Oud

[thesacredsaguaro]

Even adding a few drops of synthetic would automatically disqualify that release from being 100% Natural, it would be a mixed media composition when synthetic is being incorporated into the scent profile, however small the amount being added.

IMO....ALL-natural means 100%, if it's not all, then it ain't 100%, and 99% still ain't 100% LOL For transparency's sake, the perfumer should disclose it.

But then what is defined as natural? Are isolates allowed? At what point is an isolate considered a synthetic? Ensar uses isolates and c02 extracts. Many “synthetics” are naturally derived isolates. Many perfumers use naturally isolated Ambroxan or ambrarome both derived from labdanum. Naturally derived materials are abundant in perfumery especially natural perfume palettes.

I guess the question is, would anyone not trained in perfumery be able to tell what material is naturally derived or not. Are absolutes considered natural? Well Hexane is an industrial solvent and yet natural perfumers have no issue washing their raw materials in it.

So then that would leave us with simply tinctures, macerations and essential oils by the logic of “100% natural“. It just gets real murky when we assume what natural is because Eugenol is a natural aromamolecule yet many would consider it a synthetic. Where does the line get drawn? Not being combative either just curious here.

 

[haope]

But then what is defined as natural? Are isolates allowed? At what point is an isolate considered a synthetic? Ensar uses isolates and c02 extracts. Many “synthetics” are naturally derived isolates. Many perfumers use naturally isolated Ambroxan or ambrarome both derived from labdanum. Naturally derived materials are abundant in perfumery especially natural perfume palettes.

Yea, this is something I've wondered myself. Because technically isolates can be naturally derived, but also synthetically produced - and end of the day it'll smell the same. I've found myself sensitive to natural isolates the same way that synthetic aromamolecules affect me, so it's certainly not a natural vs synthetic which is better issue.

following up to see how this discussion proceeded, i must say, it really sounds like very small amounts of specific synthetics cleverly and carefully added into a otherwise natural perfume may be essentially impossible for noses to discriminate, of course this is just my speculation, but i feel quite confident that most of us probably aren't as talented as we'd like to believe at picking out the less obvious synthetics that may even mimic natural materials and be the identical molecules but made in a lab. to be fair, even if we wanted to compare a group of master noses to a group of rookie noses, it'd take a lot of trials and a lot of different perfumes that are all natural vs natural with a bit of synthetics (not obvious ones that are obviously distinct smells not found in nature) to really generate any worthy statistics to analyze and draw conclusions from and compare our null hypothesis to alternative hypothesis. with a guess being a binary choice, it wouldn't be hard for many of us to just get lucky in our first few guesses but over more trials show our noses limitations and inability to recognize. at some point i wonder does it even matter? even if a vendor lied to you or didn't, unless you can confidently pinpoint some sort of genuine physiological allergy to specific synthetic additives used, i don't really see what it matters, i'm sure a lot of things we own we either overly doubt or overly take at face value while genius marketing and our senses fool us.

Like you so eloquently put, end of the day what matters most is whether we like the perfume or not. I think a lot of people in this space falsely equate all natural = instantly better than synths/mixed media, which isnt necessarily the case.

 

[Mak-7]

following up to see how this discussion proceeded, i must say, it really sounds like very small amounts of specific synthetics cleverly and carefully added into a otherwise natural perfume may be essentially impossible for noses to discriminate, of course this is just my speculation, but i feel quite confident that most of us probably aren't as talented as we'd like to believe at picking out the less obvious synthetics that may even mimic natural materials and be the identical molecules but made in a lab. to be fair, even if we wanted to compare a group of master noses to a group of rookie noses, it'd take a lot of trials and a lot of different perfumes that are all natural vs natural with a bit of synthetics (not obvious ones that are obviously distinct smells not found in nature) to really generate any worthy statistics to analyze and draw conclusions from and compare our null hypothesis to alternative hypothesis. with a guess being a binary choice, it wouldn't be hard for many of us to just get lucky in our first few guesses but over more trials show our noses limitations and inability to recognize. at some point i wonder does it even matter? even if a vendor lied to you or didn't, unless you can confidently pinpoint some sort of genuine physiological allergy to specific synthetic additives used, i don't really see what it matters, i'm sure a lot of things we own we either overly doubt or overly take at face value while genius marketing and our senses fool us.

What you are saying is kinda good, but...

How can someone differentiate an aromachemical in the composition if they never necessarily smelled it stand alone? Its like asking someone to name ingredients of a dish they never tasted, seen or heard of, and then claim they dont know anything about food.

Until recent times, and maybe i am wrong, but Allyl ionone seems to play a big part in Egoiste. I couldnt find much sandalwood in it that everyone speaks of, but i did find a note thats A Ionone like, and if i didnt have that material stand alone, i could have been swayed into thinking that this was some special sandalwood that was used, because it does lean in that direction stylistically, and many users whos experienced with old and new formulas state"differences are minimal".

 

[epigeneticmutant]

What you are saying is kinda good, but...

How can someone differentiate an aromachemical in the composition if they never necessarily smelled it stand alone? Its like asking someone to name ingredients of a dish they never tasted, seen or heard of, and then claim they dont know anything about food.

Until recent times, and maybe i am wrong, but Allyl ionone seems to play a big part in Egoiste. I couldnt find much sandalwood in it that everyone speaks of, but i did find a note thats A Ionone like, and if i didnt have that material stand alone, i could have been swayed into thinking that this was some special sandalwood that was used, because it does lean in that direction stylistically, and many users whos experienced with old and new formulas state"differences are minimal".

What I’m trying to say is that chemophobe or not, the things in natural ingredients are aromachemicals, they just came from nature. The same can be made in a lab and is for many of our beloved ingredients.

What you are saying is not wrong, but it'd be akin to asking someone to distinguish two tastes or sensations of any sort that they've never experienced before or and have no reference encoded in their memory to recall and compare to. To directly answer the specific case you ask is similar to a problem I learned of in school called blind signal source seperation and the cocktail party problem where you are at a party with many speakers simultaneously talking around you and essentially a symphony of humans buzzing around making noise and you want to seperate each voice into a signal of its own from the multivariate signal of all the speakers. In this case it'd be each note in a perfume, but the idea is the same, and at some point of mixing it might be indiscenible as a unique feature (note) compared to the note alone or in less mixed or washed out (diluted) olfactory signals (the smell experienced from all the ingredients in the perfume.) edit: it actually appears there's some active research around exploring this actually https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00155/full If you search odor discrimination learning there appears to be quite a few papers although I doubt any of us really care that much to read this science babble.

I do have vintage egoiste and modern and can entirely relate with your sentiment. Almost surely if there is sandalwood like molecules in those bottles, it's not quite the same as our precious sandalwood oils which clearly are not just one molecule. Aromachemistry isn't the area of science I work in, so I can't tell you how well attempts to reconstitute the original chemical makeup signature of an essential oil with the synthesized lab versions have gone, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's quite good for many things. Without a doubt there are synthetic chemicals attempting to mimic natural ingredients as you've called out here, the most evident example to my own nose being synthetic ouds in Tom ford's and Rojas etc. If you've smelled any real oud you'll know immediately those synthetic attempts are very far off. But oud is a huge symphony of potentially dozens of aroma molecules unique to each oil, with the tree and all its species being able to express numerous compounds. I beg if any experts are reading this please correct me for my potential ignorance.



A medicinal chemist might give you an example of how he can grow poppy pods, draw the opium from them, do a few very basic steps to proceed to calcium morphenate and quickly morphine which he could then make to heroin (semi-synthetic, big word to understand here) or purify in its current state.

Purification may involve a series of anything from simple to complex including things like simple filtration, charcoal filtration, acid base purification followed by recrystallization, and perhaps largely most effective, column chromatography. Assuming he has enough lab access, he can continue on this process with more and more sophisticated techniques purifying and testing the eventual samples via a myriad of analytical chemistry techniques including the famed gcms mentioned in this thread. Theoretically if he continues at this he will obtain an analyte of remarkable purity perhaps 99 followed by a few 9s after the decimal point. At this point we should see a substance that mimics the lab made 99.99 whatever version of the same compound. Visually, smell, molecular weight, all the other physical chemistry properties should match up.

This same procedure can now be thought of for an distillate/essential oil, absolute, isolate, maceration, whatever you wanna think of as a starting material from nature. We can purify and purify until we've honed in on whatever specific molecule (aromachemical) that we are looking for. At some point of purifying we will be left with something indistinguishable from a lab grade version. There's almost always another sophisticated technique the chemist has in his toolbox to continue the purification process and decompose a mixture from nature until he's found and or achieved what he wants. Many aromachemicals that don't exist in natural were developed by chemists from natural molecules as starting points. Musk being a famous example where chemist's developed entire families of derivative aroma molecules they called synthetic musks if i remember correctly.

 

[FlexMentallo]

Who else is lusting after those three new HK fragrances? Purple Haze sounds like it might be amazing

 

[Mak-7]

3 new?

 

[haope]

3 new?

the hong kong oudfest exclusives, the green jade one sounds interesting

 

[Mak-7]

I didnt see any official announcement.
Can you please share more?
Thank you

 

[911LambMelb]

Purple Haze, they had me at "if you love Iris Ghalia". Ordered!

I know for a fact IG is in the top few releases from EO for most fans....

 

[Xcaliber6685]

All three new releases look and sound amazing, especially Layers of Jade! can't afford any of them now but would be fun to read about them tho. Here's a snippet from FB:

 

[Mak-7]

Any notes on that Layers of Jade?
Third is Yamanashi?

 

[FlexMentallo]

Any notes on that Layers of Jade?
Third is Yamanashi?

Hi Mak-7, the other two (Layers of Jade and yes, Yamanashi) are rumored to drop as limited editions on the EO website sometime in the future. I believe EO confirmed they should hit the site. For notes, we don't have anything official yet, only feedback from those that were at HK Oudfest, someone wrote "Layers of Jade contains Green Papua, it’s more woody and smoky. Yamanashi focuses on Japanese rose and it’s crisp, slightly watery and airy. The drydown is slightly sweet and woody".

 

[MrOud]

Purple Haze, they had me at "if you love Iris Ghalia". Ordered!

I know for a fact IG is in the top few releases from EO for most fans....

Same here 😅

I’ve been told that this perfume smells like Jamaican ambergris and OSK having a baby. Less sweet and more purple 🥹

I’m really looking forward to this one 😁

 

[MrOud]

Guys here are some details about the other two perfumes. Sorry for the blurry pic of the jade but you should be able to read the notes.

 

[Scentcrazy]

The ingredient list of the green jade is very very nice indeed. I Imagine that to smell amazing!

 

[MrOud]

The ingredient list of the green jade is very very nice indeed. I Imagine that to smell amazing!

the guy who sent me the pictures told me that it’s extremely dark and reminds him of moshpit Pavarotti/black changho.

Tbh that makes me quite sceptical 😅 Pavarotti is a decent scent but it’s too dark for me to wear it for work or outdoor activities.

 

[Mak-7]

Didnt try MP, but after reading description, i have a feeling that this might be as dark as Jungle Kinam, and it wasnt a composition i was fond of.

 

[Xcaliber6685]

The Jade has been officially released, looks like a very green and rooty type scent, probably has some similarity and greenness to the new Thai Tabac would be my guess.

 

[Scentcrazy]

Hmm the write up for it didnt give me the same vibe I had for it when seeing the ingredient list on the bottle....would have been amazing if they had thrown in hojari frankincense instead of the tobacco in my humble opinion.
Frankincense, khus, rose otto trio's always work amazingly together

 

[MrOud]

Any thoughts about the yamanashi?

The notes look great, the only thing that’s keeping me from pulling the trigger is that it’s promoted as a Kodo scent.
It might be smelling phantastic but I’m worried that it could be a scent that’s sitting very close on the skin 🤔

What do you guys think ?