How does oud smell like?

[DeathArrow]

Reading the reply of mr. Varanis Ridari in another thread:

I wouldn't mind Western oud launches if they

A) Tried to actually smell like oud. Not necessarily the fecal or barnyard stuff, just some form of accurate synthesis that resembles the real deal more closely.

I've realized that I am not sure how oud smells like. Of course I have both oriental and western perfumes who list oud note, but I am not entirely sure how it's supposed to smell. Because I get different smells from different perfumes.

And since it's kind of rare and expensive, it's hard to get the real deal in essential oil form to form an opinion. Oud is the smell produced by agar trees infected with a certain parasite. But since there are many species of the tree, one "real" oud might smell different than other "real" oud.

Some companies use substances with smell as plain uninfected agarwood chips, but as I understand, that's not exactly the oud smell.

I've got one that smells real skanky and barnyard-y, maybe that's how oud is supposed to smell since I see many people saying that that is how "real" oud smells.

Can you give some example of a common perfume which is supposed to smell like real oud? It doesn't matter if it contains real oud or synthetic oud.

 

[Paddington]

Oud smells like a lot of things
The region, soak or no soak, how long it was soaked how often the water changes ,temperature curves blah blah a lot.

Oud can smell like leather , honey , florals , red fruits , blue berries , pollen ,chocolate theres a lot of profiles.

The bottom barrel stuff is pure barn and cheese as it’s heavily soaked to increase the yield and after the cheese/barn u can pick up some of the other aspects usually.

Usually when someone says all oud is barn/shit it’s a sign that the knowledge and exploration of it is lacking

Combined with a lot of con artists up selling junk for more then it’s worth

 

[Tilt]

Paddington above is right. There are so many variations to do with geography and treatment that it really is a moving target trying to describe what it smells like. For example, I particularly love floral ouds.

Though in the end, wonderful oud oils (and wood) stand on their own and justice can't be done to them with descriptions and associations (like trying to describe a poem or piece of music). Habzoud and Mellifluence do good sample packs if you're interested in exploring oud further.

 

[Brooks Otterlake]

Oud smells like a lot of things
The region, soak or no soak, how long it was soaked how often the water changes ,temperature curves blah blah a lot.

Oud can smell like leather , honey , florals , red fruits , blue berries , pollen ,chocolate theres a lot of profiles.

Indeed. Oud has a very broad spectrum.

 

[thescentguru]

And since it's kind of rare and expensive, it's hard to get the real deal in essential oil form to form an opinion. Oud is the smell produced by agar trees infected with a certain parasite. But since there are many species of the tree, one "real" oud might smell different than other "real"

It's not rare or that expensive, I highly suggest you do try real agarwood essential oils. Take a look at my insta for ideas if you like!

 

[DeathArrow]

It's not rare or that expensive, I highly suggest you do try real agarwood essential oils. Take a look at my insta for ideas if you like!

My understanding is that agarwood and oud are not the same thing.

 

[heavy black heart]

My understanding is that agarwood and oud are not the same thing.

Agarwood - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

I would just add that once you smell the real deal you understand why some people are obsessed with it - the scents are so complex that some even feel like compositions in themselves with multiple “accords”, facets & profiles in a single oil

it is quite fascinating tbh

 

[Paddington]

oud isn’t as rare as they say it and the price scales like my man below states

It's not rare or that expensive, I highly suggest you do try real agarwood essential oils. Take a look at my insta for ideas if you like!

Number of distillers offering top notch product at good prices and u can buy samples to heck u can probably live off a sample as I my self rarely swipe mainly a dot at most

 

[mixerscent]

Consider doing some research at Ouddict before going down the rabbit hole, it's an expensive hobby. I'd recommend ordering samples from Agar Aura and Al Shareef Oudh.

 

[cacio]

Others have explained already-there's a lot of variation in real oud. One western perfume that comes to mind was by Kilian Pure oud-more or less the main notes are there, though it's tamer and more subdued than the real thing.

Also, this is for oud oil. Oud wood is also burnt-the smell there is more incensy and smoky.

 

[hednic]

To me it just smells like burnt wood.

 

[sjg3839]

A dark kind of wood.

 

[Thioacetone]

how do i make my own oud?

 

[DeathArrow]

I have the impression that we are speaking about different things. I am not interested in how the distillation of wood smells but in how that resin smells when used in perfumery.

Both Agarwood and its resin extracts are known as oud. In Western countries, many perfumers use agarwood essential oil under the name "oudh" or "oud." Oud is by far one of the priciest raw fragrance ingredients on the globe. This precious ingredient comes from the tropical agar tree known to thrive in the Middle East.

When mould (phialophora parasitica) infects the agar tree, that's when the tree creates a dense, dark, and fragrant resin—all in an effort to protect itself. The resin is then embedded in the very tree, becoming the source of Oudh.

What Is Oud (Oudh) Perfume? And Why Is It Expensive?

Ever heard of the scent that's pricier than gold? That would be oud, also known as wood resin or Agarwood. This remarkable fragrance has been used for thousands of years across various cultures. It quickly made a popular addition to perfume products. It is also a highly valued and luxurious...

thefragranceworld.co.uk

 

[Thioacetone]

I have the impression that we are speaking about different things. I am not interested in how the distillation of wood smells but in how that resin smells when used in perfumery.

What Is Oud (Oudh) Perfume? And Why Is It Expensive?

Ever heard of the scent that's pricier than gold? That would be oud, also known as wood resin or Agarwood. This remarkable fragrance has been used for thousands of years across various cultures. It quickly made a popular addition to perfume products. It is also a highly valued and luxurious...

thefragranceworld.co.uk

But the resin is obtained by distillation of the wood, no?

 

[DeathArrow]

But the resin is obtained by distillation of the wood, no?

By the distillation of the rotten stuff that was once wood.

 

[primotenore]

To my nose it smells like...heaven. To my wife's nose it smells like...well, you can guess.

 

[Paddington]

By the distillation of the rotten stuff that was once wood.

It’s wood that gets distilled not rotting stuff unless it’s heavily soaked or deadwood pulled out of mangroves.

In terms of perfumery usage depends on the oud being used and what facet there trying to highlight for usage in the composition but ud have to explore the more independent side of things for an actual diverse pallete of oud usage as western takes usually are what the layman think oud smells like all the time

 

[N.CAL Fragrance Reviewer]

The real stuff tends to smell very animalic and pungent smelling.

 

[Bon et Copieux]

It's not rare or that expensive, I highly suggest you do try real agarwood essential oils. Take a look at my insta for ideas if you like!

Oud is a rare and precious natural commodity sought after and revered since ancient times whose value and cultural significance is perhaps best illustrated by the most famous oud in history "Ranjatai" (蘭奢待) an 11.6 kilogram piece of oud / aloeswood presented as tribute from China to the Japanese Emperor Shōmu (AD 724–748) over a thousand years ago, now in the Imperial treasure repository at Nara: Ranjatai is so highly prized that over the years the Emperor would award tiny pieces to shoguns and generals. In 1602, General Oda Nobunaga was awarded a piece for unifying Japan, and the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu received a piece for restoring order, a fragment of which is on display at the Tokugawa Museum.

Incidentally, Oud (aka Aloeswood, Agarwood) is one of the fragrant woods integral to Kodo, "the incense ceremony", one of the five noble arts of Samurai culture. There are six categories of oud in Japan, the finest of which is Kyara, which starts at around US$1,000 a gram.

But oud comes in many forms; Kyara, the rarest and most beautiful oud of all, usually from genus Aquilaria Crassna or Aquilaria Agallocha in Assam, is a rich, leathery, and slightly sweet oud. I've been fascinated by Aquilaria ouds for years and have a modest collection (nb. so-called “white oud” comes from a different tree, genus Aetoxylon).

Kanon Agarwood, a commercial Western-style "oud" fragrance is a product at the exact opposite of the spectrum in terms of price and quality, but which has a similar resinous oud note and also vaguely reminiscent of the first Western-style designer oud fragrance, Yves Saint Laurent M7.

In reality, Oud is an extremely rare natural product produced by a very particular alignment of circumstances - it's not "wood" per se (even though the word “oud” literally means "wood" in Arabic), it's actually wood saturated with the resin produced by trees of the genus Aquilaria in response to physical trauma, then infected with a bacterial mold, phialophora parasitica, which gradually becomes oud - decades later.

High quality oud is a natural product that is neither environmentally friendly, nor renewable. Wilderness areas from Laos to Indonesia have been devastated and plundered by profiteers seeking oud.

Because high quality oud is such a scarce but lucrative natural resource that requires killing old growth trees, national parks in Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, are now patrolled by paramilitary police. Every year hundreds of people are killed trying to find and exploit oud in protected wilderness areas.

There have been attempts to manufacture oud, but the plantation grown "oud" made in Thailand and Vietnam (by hammering nails into farmed Aquilaria trees then infecting them by hand with a lab-grown culture) is grossly inferior to "wild" oud and is usually sold to the perfume industry and to Westerners who don't know anything about oud - and that's the most likely source of any oud in Western "oud" fragrances.

To be honest, only rubbish-grade oud ever makes it to the fragrance industry anyway because otherwise it's simply not profitable - the finest oud always goes to the Japanese market (nobody can compete with the prices the Japanese pay plus they're the longest established market so they always get the best), then there's the incense and bakhoor market and finally the fragrance industry (Western and Middle East) and the Chinese traditional medicine market gets what's left, as well as the plantation grown crap nobody else wants. The sole exception is Ensar who since 2004 has harnessed his obsessive tendencies to source and distill only the very finest ouds (and charges accordingly at several hundred USD a gram).

 

[thescentguru]

My understanding is that agarwood and oud are not the same thing.

Agarwood is the actual wood the oil is distilled from, Oud, Oudh, Aoud all the same thing, depending on your dialect.

 

[Paddington]

This copy and paste is very out dated there is wild oud out there more so in the unexplored regions of Brunei and so forth and plantation oud is much much different then it used to be there are levels from the junk to the stuff so good they sell it as wild kynam so good the experts themselves wouldn't question it

 

[thescentguru]

I have the impression that we are speaking about different things. I am not interested in how the distillation of wood smells but in how that resin smells when used in perfumery.

What Is Oud (Oudh) Perfume? And Why Is It Expensive?

Ever heard of the scent that's pricier than gold? That would be oud, also known as wood resin or Agarwood. This remarkable fragrance has been used for thousands of years across various cultures. It quickly made a popular addition to perfume products. It is also a highly valued and luxurious...

thefragranceworld.co.uk

You have some learning young'n. I'm trying to help you and you are confused in a big way. Oud oil is Agarwood oil is what you want.

 

[LiveJazz]

I think oud smells like spicy, leathery, medicinally fruity wood, and it may or may not contain mushroomy/cheesy/barnyard characteristics.

As always, there are going to be large differences depending on variety and processing method, but that's kind of the baseline, as my nose perceives it.

"Western" renditions of the note tend to focus on the spicy and fruity elements and tone the others way, way down. The artisanal exotics can be quite the full frontal sensory assault if you aren't used to it.

 

[Dorje123]

I have the impression that we are speaking about different things. I am not interested in how the distillation of wood smells but in how that resin smells when used in perfumery.

What Is Oud (Oudh) Perfume? And Why Is It Expensive?

Ever heard of the scent that's pricier than gold? That would be oud, also known as wood resin or Agarwood. This remarkable fragrance has been used for thousands of years across various cultures. It quickly made a popular addition to perfume products. It is also a highly valued and luxurious...

thefragranceworld.co.uk

So... oud is the essential oil distilled from infected Aquilaria trees, this wood is permeated by a resin the tree produces to protect itself from invading microorganisms.

It can smell very different depending on the exact species of the tree and where it grows. So you can't really generalize unless talking about specific trees, geographic regions, and distillation techniques. Quality oud is not animalic, not cheesy, not pungent, doesn't smell like $hit. Some oud does, as mentioned, if it's allowed to ferment (rot) before distilling, it gets the $hit smell.

You need to try ouds to have any clue. Ensar Oud offers the best variety and ease of access for the highest prices, but you won't be wasting your money on bogus oils. Al Shareef, Rising Phoenix, and many others have copied Ensar, and they offer similar "value". I mean, oud is never cheap, but some of these guys are charging crazy prices. You need to do research on the seller and the oil before committing.

Those who give a quick answer to this question are demonstrating their lack of experience. Oud can be magical, it can be a very potent aromatheraputic and is used to make medicine in many cultures. It can be incredibly complex and and the best stuff has what seems like alien accords in it, unlike anything in traditional perfumery.

Finally, oud is not sustainable and great damage has been done by greedy collectors. Ensar offers some cultivated ouds that are very good, and while this is rare, I have seen some excellent cultivated ouds in the last 5 years or so. They aren't all garbage and come with a bit less environmental impact vs wild.

 

[DeathArrow]

Now that Bon et Copieux and Dorje123 have explained with great detail what natural oud is, for which I am grateful, here comes the question: can it be replaced with synthetics and still smell the same?

 

[Jack Hunter]

Many years ago I had some samples from Ensar Oud when the Oud thing was becoming a craze. And since I have smelled various forms of Oud and they are not all friendly to our Western sensibilities.

What I find interesting is in the middle east they wear Oud in all it's skanky glory. Where in the West we try to tame the fragrance into synthetic perfumes and in the process rob the Oud experience of it's glory. You have to take the rough with the smooth and I think those countries understand this. I'm guessing people are more in tune with the note there because people burn Oud woodchips on a everyday basis. Where in our society some Ouds would be socially unacceptable. Try wearing a barnyard Oud to work for example, you would be sent home by the boss is my guess.

 

[LiveJazz]

Now that Bon et Copieux and Dorje123 have explained with great detail what natural oud is, for which I am grateful, here comes the question: can it be replaced with synthetics and still smell the same?

With something as intrinsically complex as natural oud, I'm going to say no.

But on the topic of synthetics, and how close they are to naturals: Even if someone could exactly replicate the strident, sometimes gamey smell of a natural oud with synthetics, there's the question of whether that smell is what the perfumer wants to use in the context of the fragrance they are trying to create. I'm guessing part of the reason synthetic "western style" oud notes/accords smell as they do is partly technical limitations, and partly a choice in response to perfumers requirements and consumer preferences...and the bean counters, of course.

If Armani could put the full natural character of oud into one of their perfumes, and the cost/profitability was the same, would they? Would it sell at Sephora? I doubt it.

 

[DeathArrow]

Many years ago I had some samples from Ensar Oud when the Oud thing was becoming a craze. And since I have smelled various forms of Oud and they are not all friendly to our Western sensibilities.

What I find interesting is in the middle east they wear Oud in all it's skanky glory. Where in the West we try to tame the fragrance into synthetic perfumes and in the process rob the Oud experience of it's glory. You have to take the rough with the smooth and I think those countries understand this. I'm guessing people are more in tune with the note there because people burn Oud woodchips on a everyday basis. Where in our society some Ouds would be socially unacceptable. Try wearing a barnyard Oud to work for example, you would be sent home by the boss is my guess.

So something from Al Haramain or Ajmal could be closer to the real thing than Initio Parfums Privés or Tom Ford?

 

[Jack Hunter]

So something from Al Haramain or Ajmal could be closer to the real thing than Initio Parfums Privés or Tom Ford?

I'm not to familiar with those companies, maybe someone else can say. But if you want to experience real quality Oud I would have a look at Ensar Oud. Expensive but you get the real thing without a doubt. Xerjoff do a series of Oud based scents in their Oud Stars range. Samples should be not be that hard to get. Checking out Oud whether it is real or synthetic spray or oil is quite the rabbit hole.

 

[heavy black heart]

So something from Al Haramain or Ajmal could be closer to the real thing than Initio Parfums Privés or Tom Ford?

Ajmal has some “affordable” oud compositions that will not cost you an eye or an arm (as opposed to say Ensar)

Russian Adam from Areej le Dore made some lab tests on Ajmal oils & he confirmed they contain real oud - he also considers Ajmal his favorite perfume house for what it’s worth

 

[DeathArrow]

Great, thank you. I might get some Mukhallat Shams or Dahn Oudh Al Shams from Ajmal to see what's the oud smell and if other perfumes I own and list oud do come close.

 

[Brooks Otterlake]

Great, thank you. I might get some Mukhallat Shams or Dahn Oudh Al Shams from Ajmal to see what's the oud smell and if other perfumes I own and list oud do come close.

Dahn Oudh Al Shams is a good baseline for the more "fermented" style of Hindi oud. Once you've smelled it, you'll very quickly be able to pick up how other fragrances repurpose that profile or try to recreate it.

 

[thescentguru]

So something from Al Haramain or Ajmal could be closer to the real thing than Initio Parfums Privés or Tom Ford?

Ajmal has the largest commercial plantations in Bangladesh, and they use real agarwood, unlike TF or Initio

 

[thescentguru]

Oud is a rare and precious natural commodity sought after and revered since ancient times whose value and cultural significance is perhaps best illustrated by the most famous oud in history "Ranjatai" (蘭奢待) an 11.6 kilogram piece of oud / aloeswood presented as tribute from China to the Japanese Emperor Shōmu (AD 724–748) over a thousand years ago, now in the Imperial treasure repository at Nara: Ranjatai is so highly prized that over the years the Emperor would award tiny pieces to shoguns and generals. In 1602, General Oda Nobunaga was awarded a piece for unifying Japan, and the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu received a piece for restoring order, a fragment of which is on display at the Tokugawa Museum.

Incidentally, Oud (aka Aloeswood, Agarwood) is one of the fragrant woods integral to Kodo, "the incense ceremony", one of the five noble arts of Samurai culture. There are six categories of oud in Japan, the finest of which is Kyara, which starts at around US$1,000 a gram.

But oud comes in many forms; Kyara, the rarest and most beautiful oud of all, usually from genus Aquilaria Crassna or Aquilaria Agallocha in Assam, is a rich, leathery, and slightly sweet oud. I've been fascinated by Aquilaria ouds for years and have a modest collection (nb. so-called “white oud” comes from a different tree, genus Aetoxylon).

Kanon Agarwood, a commercial Western-style "oud" fragrance is a product at the exact opposite of the spectrum in terms of price and quality, but which has a similar resinous oud note and also vaguely reminiscent of the first Western-style designer oud fragrance, Yves Saint Laurent M7.

In reality, Oud is an extremely rare natural product produced by a very particular alignment of circumstances - it's not "wood" per se (even though the word “oud” literally means "wood" in Arabic), it's actually wood saturated with the resin produced by trees of the genus Aquilaria in response to physical trauma, then infected with a bacterial mold, phialophora parasitica, which gradually becomes oud - decades later.

High quality oud is a natural product that is neither environmentally friendly, nor renewable. Wilderness areas from Laos to Indonesia have been devastated and plundered by profiteers seeking oud.

Because high quality oud is such a scarce but lucrative natural resource that requires killing old growth trees, national parks in Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, are now patrolled by paramilitary police. Every year hundreds of people are killed trying to find and exploit oud in protected wilderness areas.

There have been attempts to manufacture oud, but the plantation grown "oud" made in Thailand and Vietnam (by hammering nails into farmed Aquilaria trees then infecting them by hand with a lab-grown culture) is grossly inferior to "wild" oud and is usually sold to the perfume industry and to Westerners who don't know anything about oud - and that's the most likely source of any oud in Western "oud" fragrances.

To be honest, only rubbish-grade oud ever makes it to the fragrance industry anyway because otherwise it's simply not profitable - the finest oud always goes to the Japanese market (nobody can compete with the prices the Japanese pay plus they're the longest established market so they always get the best), then there's the incense and bakhoor market and finally the fragrance industry (Western and Middle East) and the Chinese traditional medicine market gets what's left, as well as the plantation grown crap nobody else wants. The sole exception is Ensar who since 2004 has harnessed his obsessive tendencies to source and distill only the very finest ouds (and charges accordingly at several hundred USD a gram).

You're cutting and pasting in trying to educate me? Seriously you have a lot to learn as well

 

[thescentguru]

Great, thank you. I might get some Mukhallat Shams or Dahn Oudh Al Shams from Ajmal to see what's the oud smell and if other perfumes I own and list oud do come close.

Keep in mind these are the lowest quality available commercial agarwood products, and do not smell anything like what a Artisan oil would smell like

 

[Brooks Otterlake]

Keep in mind these are the lowest quality available commercial agarwood products, and do not smell anything like what a Artisan oil would smell like

Yup. But it's a pretty good reference nonetheless because of a lot of perfumery still uses these lower-quality ouds as an ingredient/model.

 

[thescentguru]

Yup. But it's a pretty good reference nonetheless because of a lot of perfumery still uses these lower-quality ouds as an ingredient/model.

The only people who are using Ajmal Oud oils in their perfumes is Ajmal but don't take that wrong, Ajmal is the house that I started with, as such I really enjoy them and have a decent Ajmal collection

https://flic.kr/p/2o8XP6V

 

[Brooks Otterlake]

The only people who are using Ajmal Oud oils in their perfumes is Ajmal

Sure. But comparable Hindi ouds show up all over.

 

[thescentguru]

Sure. But comparable Hindi ouds show up all over.

Sure, hindi oud is used in many more readily available perfumes like Rania J, and perhaps touches as a percentage of the makeup with synthetics mostly.