The company says:
Russian Oud is a gourmand oud perfume, built around high quality agarwood oil distilled by Russian Adam, according to an old traditional way… yet with a unique twist.
Russian Oud fragrance notes
Head
- multilayered Choco Borai oud oil
Heart
- Indian oud, Russian castoreum and cocoa extract, Siberian deer musk maceration
Base
- guggul resinoid, Indian myrrh, labdanum, birch tar, sandalwood, cedarwood
Where to buy
Latest Reviews of Russian Oud

LESS is MORE with this one
With Russian Oud, LESS is MORE. I like to see this perfume as a continuation of Zen and Picante. But this one is the player, the seductive one. Adam toned down the Oud, the smoke, the spices, and the animalics, added dark cocoa, and turned it up to an 11. The result is something truly perfect, brilliant in its barbaric simplicity. Hindi Oud, Resins, a hint of Castoreum, and Dark Cocoa that turns into a molted Chocolate accord. But it really boils down to 3 main players, the Oud, the Cocoa, and the Resins. That's it. But it's more than enough. It almost feels linear, though not quite that boring. The opening is a massive blast of dark, unsweetened Cocoa powder. Like someone just sprinkled some in your face. This opening is fantastic and it literally takes my breath away each time. It wears off quickly and it moves to the heart, where the Hindi Oud is present, quite bold, backed up by resins and a sweet, leathery castoreum. At this stage, the Cocoa envelopes the previously mentioned notes, as these are always portrayed through this Cocoa dust-screen. As it settles into the base, the Oud recedes and the Cocoa together with the resins fuse to create a dark chocolate accord. The woodiness just lingers as a reminder that this is still, an Oud perfume.
This is very close to the original, but I actually prefer this version, as the Cocoa is more prominent, whereas I feel the Labdanum/Resins were more prominent in the OG. Also, there's a more vivid showcase of notes here, and the composition feels clearer. I believe Adam improved upon the original, with this one.
To me, Russian Oud is the best Oud-Cacao blend ever and an incredibly satisfying and comfortable wear. Nothing is off here. Everything fits perfectly within the blend and is dosed accurately. If you are a Cocoa lover like myself, this should be one to sample. Bear in mind though, that this is no plain gourmand perfume, nor the commercially sweet stuff. It has a noticeable Hindi Oud note and Castoreum. I don't really find them to distract much, but I am quite used to them. The way the Cocoa accord is showcased here is my favorite. It has that dusty, velvety quality, before turning into a chocolate-toffee-like texture. For me, this one, alongside Lutens' Borneo, and older iterations of Slumbehouse Ore, reigns supreme in this genre. My Cocoa Trifecta. The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

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My whole being rebels against that. It's been my experience that not only do plenty of people want to smell like chocolate, or caramel, but that people reading a review for, say, Tom Ford's Orchid Soleil, generally find it more useful when it says that it smells like tortilla chips than if it says something overly technical about tuberose.
But then again, you can't write something like that when you're trying to sell perfume, because even if it does smell like masa, the brand will take that as a negative reference and automatically black-marker it. Oh, I understand it, but I'm on the side of the reader/buyer here. If something smells like food and food that you, the reader, can immediately identify with, then you better believe I'm going to mention it. My language is impoverished enough with someone taking my food references away from me.
Anyway, the reason I bring this up is because it's impossible to describe Russian Oud without bringing food into the conversation. If Oud Piccante is a piece of raw steak covered in peppercorns, slapped down into a pan sizzling with lamb fat, then Russian Oud is a dainty piece of chocolate cake laid out on a doily, tendrils of caramel drizzled on top. For something so delicious, it is remarkably spacious and fine-boned. Even in color, Russian Oud distinguishes itself as finer than her rugged big brothers, being clear in color, while Oud Zen and Oud Piccante leave great big yellow-brown oil stains all over the skin.
Russian Oud is clearly a gourmand take on oud. It is very chocolatey, with a sweet, incensey woodsmoke note giving it a nicely dusty texture, and labdanum later lending a toffee chewiness that, in turn, jives perfectly with the smoky chocolate. The papery dryness in the heart gives the structure room to breathe. Actually, in terms of texture, Russian Oud has a surprising trajectory, from dusty to papery to chewy.
At first, Russian Oud reminds me very much of several chocolate-woody-ambery fragrances I've been loving recently, including Ummagumma (Bruno Fazzolari), Dark Moon (DSH Parfums), and meltmyheart (Strangelove NYC), but later on, when the resiny, leathery almost coffee-ish tone of the oud asserts its dominance, it reminds me more of the woody gourmands of Parfumerie Generale. In other words, it becomes less edible as time goes on, and more woody-resinous.
The drydown is where the castoreum and labdanum really begin to take over, and to my nose, it is this phase that is most similar to that of Oud Piccante. The castoreum gives the oud and amber a slightly sour, musky undertone that suits the hot, bilious oud. Kafkaesque mentions Ambre Loup (Rania J) in her review, and yes, that's spot on the drydown of both Russian Oud and Oud Piccante is extremely similar to that of Ambre Loup.
Full disclosure; I sold my bottle of Ambre Loup because I found it to be a mess of contradictions: sweet but sour, delicious but super-heavy, like too much of a good thing, a faintly greasy mixture of animal fat and chocolate and sugar and freshly-tanned leather all melted down together. I liked it, but never wanted to wear it. It felt like the 24th course in a 25-course tasting menu tasty, I'm sure, but might I save it for tomorrow instead? This is a feature of the oud or castoreum-tobacco accord that Rania uses in both Ambre Loup and Oud Assam. Both excellent scents, but stifling in their heavy, breathy, brocaded sweet-n-sourness. The Ambre Loup effect is much, much softer in Russian Oud than in Oud Piccante, though, and it's one of the reasons why I prefer Russian Oud.
All in all, Russian Oud is a soft, smoky chocolate take on oud, and the refined sister scent to Oud Piccante's brash, big brother. Oud Piccante and Russian Oud are definitely first cousins; Oud Zen, by comparison, is a very distant progenitor, a Romanov offshoot who found peace in obscurity, living a simple but hearty life in a country dacha.

Russian oud is a dense and chewy fragrance with an unmistakably feral opening, even with a light dab on the wrist. This softens into a smouldering leathery oud that plumbs deep with the bitter depth of cocoa while maintaining a medicinal "band-aid" edge up top.
What I like about Russian oud is that it has an oily, resinous character that gives the fragrance a voluptuous richness compared to many woody oud fragrances that can impart a harsh or scratchy sensation. Even the animalistic opening has a lushness to it.

The fragrance is indeed very scary with the opening spray, since this stuff has real oud, castoreum, and musk, which comes from animal nether regions and rotted wood, but like all classically-composed fragrances, top notes are almost to be ignored, for the point of this is it's development on skin, not the way it hits you when testing like in a modern designer. You have to actually swallow your revulsion and get to the dry down to appreciate Russian Oud, and once you do, this is what follows: the revolting animal-crotch oud and castoreum blend settles in about five minutes, with the barnyard giving way to a chocolate factory. Cocoa mixes with a composite of various oud distillations and the castoreum to create a heady but sweet open, challenging like a head shop Egyptian musk, but with less of a sweaty edge, thanks to the cocoa. A few more minutes and the castoreum tags out, with the deer musk coming in. This is not a soft cK One (1994) kind of white musk like most people are used to, but an earthy, round, almost confectionary kind of musk not duplicable by chemistry. The oud keeps thrumming away but is mellowed further with cocoa and musk, finally resting on a bed of birch tar, guggul (Mukul Myrrh), standard myrrh, labadanum, sandalwood, and cedar. The sandalwood and labadanum keep the finish creamy, while the tar and myrrh continue the virile earthiness of the top, and the whole thing just finishes as a dessert-quality parfait of oud, musk, sandalwood, cocoa, and myrrh that literally lasts hours and hours. Russian Oud is not a sillage monster like other ouds, there's no petrol leather or synthetic rose compound to contrast the oud, just over a day's worth of creamy sweet chocolate agarwood and musk that keeps you feeling delicious all day, making that bordello bedsheet smell of the first 5 minutes worth enduring.
Due to the entirely natural composition, and likely hand-measured compounding of ingredients, if this comes back and is around for sale by the time you read my review, your intial impressions may be different. Batch variation might be seen as a marketing gimmick for some houses, but it's a very real phenomenon when it's just one guy making perfume using obsolete methods like maceration to extract his oils. I like Russian Oud a lot, and can't fault the price, but I do admit it's hard to fall in love with something so inherently precious from the get-go that my anxiety would never let me properly wear the stuff even if I did get a bottle, but as a one-off experience from the provided review sample, it is a sheer joy. Perfumes like this put into perspective where we've come from and where we've gone in this art form, and should be experienced by hobbyists of all walks, even if owning them is off the table. If you have a bottle this, cherish it, and if you don't, that's okay, since perfume like this is more of an experience than a trophy prize (if any perfume should ever be considered the latter). A fundamental oud with a gourmand twist that places the ever-popular agarwood at the center of the stage, Russian Oud won't appeal to the hardcore oud attar users or the commercial oud florals and leathers out there, but is a nice history lesson with a modern flavor streak which I sure am happy I got to sniff. There's no context or suggested time of year where this is best. Something this artisinal is going to stand out no matter where you wear it, so you either do or don't, and doesn't need a reason to exist like a sport flanker or seasonal release. Very interesting stuff indeed!

There's a lot of talk of chocolate when describing Russian Oud, but that's not primarily what I'm getting. What I smell here is a big, complicated animalic oud (real, for a change,) wed to a deep, sweet, warm amber with a huge labdanum (or is that guggul?) note that persists through the long and lovely drydown. And when I say long, I mean LOOOOOOONG. This stuff hangs on as a skin scent for as much as 24 hours after application, for those to whom it matters.
Russian Adam appears to be a master at extracting marvelous raw materials, and when he sets them in relatively straightforward compositions, such as this one, they can glow in a most gratifying manner. This fragrance feels awfully nice in contrast to the tidal wave of predictable rose and synthetic oud compositions that have swamped the current market.