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Aromatic Barbershop Independent Perfumery Masculine Sandalwood Woods

Il Dieci X by Bogue: A Review

12th January 2024

 

Il Dieci X by Bogue had a very short run of 50 bottles produced in 2019, so perhaps it doesn’t even make sense for me to write about it.  But I have to say, if you’re like me and curious about what a sandalwood from Antonio Gardoni might smell like, then this review might surprise you.  First, because the scent’s linearity and simplicity are not properties normally associated with Bogue’s Italian apothecary style.   Second, because if you assumed, like me, that the extreme limits placed on production pointed to the use of a very vintage Mysore santalum album oil, then you’d be, like me, dead wrong. 

 

Instead, Gardoni seems to have made the decision to produce a turbo-charged version of the citrusy, sour-yoghurty, and pine-like facets of Australian sandalwood (santalum spiccatum), when he then drapes over a traditional barbershop fougere structure.  I respect this decision, even if this means that I would have to morph into a 60-year-old wet shaver for Il Dieci to be to my personal taste.

 

Objectively speaking, though, this is one heck of a handsome masculine.  The topnotes smell like a silvery shard of wood stripped from a young tree, rubbed with citrus peel and mint for extra sting, while the basenotes smell gently powdery and clean, like the scent of your hands after washing vigorously with sandalwood soap.  And in between, there is that astringent, but not unpleasant aroma of a freshly shaved male cheek, complete with hot towels, shaving cream, and the hiss of steam. 

 

I think my father would have loved this.  Oh, don’t worry – he’s still with us.  But given that this doesn’t feature – to my nose anyway – anything particularly rare or exclusive, I don’t understand why Il Dieci is not.   

 

Source of sample:   Very kindly sent to me by Antonio Gardoni for review. 

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Adam Sherez on Unsplash 

Aromatic Chypre Herbal Oakmoss Patchouli Review Sandalwood Spice

Marescialla by Santa Maria Novella: Mad, bad, and dangerous to know

28th July 2023

 

Santa Maria Novella’s Marescialla is one of only three fragrances in the ‘interesting and ugly-beautiful but almost too brutal to love’ category that I keep around and wear on a regular basis – the others being the original Parfum by Comme des Garcons and M/Mink by Byredo.  In my non-reviewing, day-to-day life, I don’t always wear perfume and when I do, it is invariably something easy and attractive in the ambery category.  (If you’re thinking of calling me basic, don’t worry – that’s a badge I wear with pride).  

 

Still, there is something about the filthy pungency of raw spices that pulls me in every time.   I can wear the heck out of a sweaty clove-on-steroids (Eau Lente), armpitty cumin (Rubj), and the arid ‘sweddy ballz’ element of whatever poisonous stew of spices thickens a favorite woody scent (Caravelle Epicée).  This is just to explain that, when I say I love the ever-loving shit out of Marescialla, I mean that I really love the ever-loving shit out of it and am not just saying that as your typical fragrance reviewer who exalts the artistic merits of a challenging fragrance only to never again touch it outside of that one review.  Which, to be fair, I have also done. 

 

That said, Marescialla is a scent that probably 95% of people who smell it will think is repulsive.  The opening is a grotesque cacophony of paint thinner, medicinal notes, herbal salve, floor wax, and creeping mold, all underscored by a screechy citric note as harsh as it is unlovely.

 

It’s a bit like walking into an ancient church that’s just been scrubbed down with peppery, neon-yellow antiseptic fluids that cost 0.57 cents from a hardware store.  This harsh, clean scent – the aroma of mace, really – mingles with the damp old wood and stone, creating an atmosphere that’s both a little terrifying and enthralling.  If you told me someone had used a bucket of Marescialla to cover up a ritualistic killing or exorcism gone wrong in an old church, I’d believe you.  The mace adds a clove-like twist, emphasizing the swing between the purifying and the unholy. 

 

I find the scent oddly comforting, though.  I bought Marescialla the day after a particularly gruesome medical procedure I’d undergone in a podiatrist’s office one dark, rainy night in Rome, an office that I realize now must have been repurposed from an ancient crypt or cellar, soaring architraves and all.  Marescialla smells like my experience that night – there was a needle of anesthetic (teasing me with the sweet promise of deliverance), there was blood, there was medical gauze soaked in a brackish, clovey antiseptic, a herb-scented tissue to bring me round after I fainted, and most of all, there was the smell of ancient wood, creeping rot, and damp stone.  It should be no surprise then that fear and loathing and relief (at it all being over) are mixed up in the aroma of Marescialla.  It is already an intensely evocative fragrance – for me, it is memory incarnate.   

 

As it settles, Marescialla reveals a bracing and surprisingly clean blend of clove, rose, wood, and patchouli, reminiscent of skin that’s been thoroughly washed with Pears soap or coal tar.  Though not a conventionally attractive fragrance by any stretch of the imagination, when I wear it, it is one hell of an aide-memoire, and at my age, any aide to the old memoire is deeply appreciated.  

 

Cover Image:  Photo by so flow on Unsplash 

 

Source of Sample:  I bought my bottle of Marescialla from the smaller Santa Maria Novella shop (near Piazza Navona) in Rome in late November 2019. 

Animalic Balsamic Floral Herbal Incense Oud Resins Review Rose Sandalwood Spice Spicy Floral

Baruti Indigo: A Review

21st March 2023

 

Spyros Drosopoulos of Baruti is one of the most consistently original perfumers I have ever encountered.  Baruti Indigo is a case in point.  This is a perfume built on a series of weird but wearable contrasts.

 

First, it is balsamic but also airily floral.  With its clutch of frankincense and mastic, it smells like a dense wall of greenish balsams – all crushed pine needles, sap, and terpenes – through which a slightly wilted (but still deodorant fresh) tandem of oily hyacinth and lush rose throbs like a flesh wound.  Still, despite all the floral and balsamic notes, the first big hit to the synapses is of polished wood and spice.

 

It is never less than syrupy sweet, thanks to that rose, but it is also as vegetally piquant as long fingers of butter pickles fished straight from a jar to your mouth.  This watery, almost cucumberish element seems like it would make the scent feel fresh, but instead, the overall impression is one of dark, seedy warmth.

 

Something about the interaction between the peppered wood, the gripe water florals, and that balsamic curtain of green makes me think of something delicious reduced to a dark, sticky concentrate.  Its nectary heft makes me think of those balsamic vinegar glazes you buy to drizzle over a tagliata or green walnut salad – sweet, sour, and thick with the umami tang of Parmesan or soy.

 

The sandalwood and labdanum in the base are supposed to bring the bodacious comfort of an amber to finish things off, but hold up, because though there is creaminess, it is the animalic creaminess of goat yoghurt, sweat, and caramel taken too far past burning point.  The lingering tartness or acidity from the hyacinth, or maybe even from Baruti’s signature ‘nood’ – a dank, metallic, but rousing synthetic base built to approximate oud without using any of the industry’s off-the-shelf oud synths – runs in the background like an application, giving the blend an addictive piquancy that keeps your nose returning for more.

 

Like many of Spyros’ creations, Indigo is perhaps too special or distracting for me to wear on a regular basis.  But I plan to buy it one day, if only as a piece of olfactory art I bring out for those specific moments when I want to tumble down wormholes and wander the labyrinthine pathways of a true artist’s imagination.  Vero is gone.  But we still have Spyros. 

 

Source of Sample: I purchased a sample from Indiescents quite a few years ago.

 

Cover Image:  Photo by miro polca on Unsplash

 

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Areej Le Doré Exclusive Attar Collection: Thoughts and Reviews

10th January 2023

 

 

Thoughts

 

As of 2023, anyone stumbling onto Areej Le Doré for the first time might be a bit confused about what the house does and what it stands for.  After all, there are regular perfumes but also mukhallats (oils), a series of attars commissioned from traditional attar makers, and now, a series of attars that the brand has distilled or mixed itself.  A newcomer would be forgiven for wondering if Russian Adam is a perfumer, a distiller, an educator, or a patron of traditional attar wallahs.

 

In fact, he wears all of those hats, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes separately.  His evolution from the small, two-person ‘Book of Oud’ oil outfit in London (circa 2013) to the artisan oud distillery of FeelOud (circa 2015) to the luxury French-inspired, but Eastern materials-based operation of Areej Le Doré (circa 2016) is a trajectory worthy of study and admiration.

 

For the perfume enthusiast, though, it is worth taking a moment to unpack the context of any new Areej Le Doré ‘drop’.  The original spray-based perfumes released by the brand in collections of four or five perfumes each year (which normally follow the pattern of an oud, a musk, an ambergris, and a floral) were where most of the brand’s fan base came on board, and where most of the support still pools.  These annual collections see Russian Adam in full-on compositional mode, mixing his own distillations and those of others into precise formulas of bases and accords for a result that reads as perfumey as a Guerlain. 

 

But 2022 saw Russian Adam launch a passion project that was both a stylistic and commercial departure, namely, a series of traditionally distilled Indian attars (which he did not make himself but entrusted to an experienced attar distiller), quickly followed by a set of spray-based perfumes that used traditional Indian attar perfumery as a springboard into something more conventionally perfume-like.

 

The traditional Indian attars (thoughts and reviews here) were Russian Adam with his educator hat on and his perfumer hat off.  Deeply passionate about Indian attar perfumery, he wanted to give his followers (yes, I use the term ‘followers’ deliberately) a set of benchmarks for what a rose (gulab) or jasmine (motia) smells like when distilled into sandalwood in the old Indian manner.  Pure, linear, and delicate, these attars were less perfumes than they were a teaching moment.  If you smelled anything complex in them, it was more because the raw materials themselves are naturally complex than any compositional skill (since traditional attars are distilled rather than composed).  These attars were intended to serve as a primer on the building blocks of ancient Eastern perfumery for the attar-based spray perfumes to follow.  But they were also a gentle reminder to attar enthusiasts that a rose gulab produced laboriously and painstakingly in a deg and bhapka is absolutely not the same thing as the ‘rose gulab’ you can get off IndiaMart for $8 a liter.

 

The spray-based perfumes produced as part of the History of Attar collection (reviews here) were not so much an extension of the Indian attars as they were riffs on a theme.  Here, Russian Adam put his perfumer hat back on and took the more complex Indian distilled attars like shamama and majmua – involving multiple co-distillations, add-ins of choyas and macerations – as the starting point for an artistic exploration that, while still remaining true to the essence of traditional Indian perfumery, were far more in line with the perfumeyness of Areej Le Doré’s core annual collections to date.

 

It is difficult to get a read on how successful a collection is based on online critical reception alone, but if the Basenotes thread is anything to go by, the History of Attar collection was not popular with the core group of enthusiasts who onboarded the Areej Le Doré train for its Siberian Musk and Russian Oud-type output.  Which is not that surprising, really.  If your buy-in to a brand is big, rich, Arabian-style compositions, then there is bound to be some whiplash if one year your supplier brings out a product based on Indian simplicity and purity instead.  On the face of things, we all want the artisan perfumers we support to be free to pursue their artistic passions and vision.  But where the money from one collection fuels the purchase, sourcing, and commissioning of rare raw materials and distillations for the next, the stakes are high indeed.  When a product veers this close to being bespoke, you have to listen to what your customers want, or they take themselves and their wallets off to find another altar of rare essences to worship at.

 

Personally, I think the History of Attar spray-based fragrance collection was one of the brand’s best and most accomplished.  This may be partially due to the fact that I already loved and had studied traditional Indian attars, so understood what it was that Russian Adam was trying to do.  But even from the perspective of a bog-standard fragrance reviewer, Ambre de Coco, Al Majmua, and Beauty and the Beast were not only an incredibly artistic re-imagining of age-old Indian attar perfumery themes but improvements on earlier perfumes in terms of clarity and intentionality.  For example, though I liked Antiquity, I found it impressive due more to the quality of the Cambodi oud oil that had been used rather than for its composition.  Ambre de Coco, which shares something of the same nutty-smutty-smeary texture of yaks in a barn, uses shamama co-distillations of over 50-60 plant-based materials, deer musks, and cocoa to arrive at a picture of warm fur.  It is more complete, a fuller fleshing out of a similar vision, yet conveyed in a less ‘muddy’ or cluttered frame.  I believe that, in time, history will judge this collection more clear-sightedly and it will settle favorably into the deep lines of our experience with Areej Le Doré.

 

So, where does the Exclusive Attar collection fall against this backdrop?  In terms of simplicity and intent, this may be viewed as an extension of the History of Attar attar collection but nudged strongly in the direction of a mukhallat-based style of perfumery by focusing on raw materials more commonly found in Middle Eastern or Arabian perfumery, such as Taifi rose, deer musk, and ambergris.  This is Russian Adam in distiller mode[1], inching back to the interests and preferences of his core fan base but still working in a style that is as minimalistic as the Indian attars.  Wait for the next core collection if you were not a fan of the History of Attar collection or if you prefer the brand’s core collections of spray-based perfumes.  The Exclusive Attar collection is for aesthetes for whom hours of contemplation of the simple beauty of vintage musks or aged ambergris muddled together in a thimbleful of vintage sandalwood is the point of the exercise.

 

To wit, the perfumes in this collection are all rather soft and linear, relying on the inherent complexity of the raw materials to do all the heavy lifting rather than the composition itself.  In other words, if any of these ever come across as perfumey or strong, it is due to some innate characteristic of the material used rather than any conscious arrangement.   This collection would also work for people who just love natural, aged Indian sandalwood because the twenty-year-old sandalwood these attars are mixed into is insanely rich (sometimes even taking over the blend entirely).  But even if you are a big fan of Middle Eastern mukhallats and already own a few examples of the genres explored here, the reasonable price point for high quality stuff like chocolatey vintage musks, sparkling white ambergris, and aged sandalwood oil makes the Exclusive Attar collection a pretty good investment.

 

 

 

Reviews

 

Photo by Roksolana Zasiadko on Unsplash

 

Musk de Taif

 

Beautiful and moving in its simplicity – a gentle blur of Taif roses folded into cushiony musks and creamy sandalwood. It reminds me a lot of Rose TRO by Amouage, which follows a similar model (roses + creamy woods), but with the zestier, more peppery Taif rose from Saudi Arabia rather than with the Turkish rose otto used in the Amouage.  To a newcomer or to anyone with zero perfume experience at all, this will simply smell like the exotic, Eastern ideal of a rosy attar we all hold vaguely in our heads without thinking too much about it.  The aroma here is a classically pleasing one.  The bright, lemony green and black pepper nuances of the Taif rose send sparks flying against the creamy background, which in turn softens the sharp, fiery edges of the rose.  The deer musks here are more of a textural agent than a major contributor to the scent profile – they feather the outer lines of the rose and woods into one fluffy, amorphous mass.    

 

 

 

Civet Bomb

 

Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash

 

Not only are animalic aromas are not a monolith but how you process them will vary according to individual experience with animalic smells in general.  Smells come to all of us filtered through our childhood memories, mental associations, and biases.   For example, because I worked on a farm, most deer musk smells warm and round and alive to me, even though the animal from whence it came is long dead.  Castoreum always smells dry to the point of being parched, which is why I like it less.  For a long time, I found some force-aged Hindi oils to smell like bile and billy goat, an association I had to work hard to get past.

 

But civet?  The most difficult of all for me, but of course, because these perceptions are so individual, perhaps maybe not difficult at all for someone else.  To me, civet smells really sharp, leathery, and foul, perhaps a bit floral in dilution.  The word that usually comes to mind for me when smelling civet paste is ‘unholy’.

 

But while those properties are definitely present in Civet Bomb, two things save it for me.  First, the civet paste has been co-distilled with rose, meaning that the sharpness of its funk has been softened somewhat.  Second, the co-distillation has accentuated the geraniol content of the rose, so there is this minty-camphoraceous greenness floating over the civet paste note that lifts it and freshens its breath.  Sharpness is exchanged for a lively bitterness, and this is a good trade off.

 

Be forewarned that the animalic quality of civet paste is still very much in evidence, but its inherent foulness comes more from the ‘staleness’ of well-rotted leather or wood or old radiators rather than from the anal secretion of a civet cat.  As with all of these attars, Civet Bomb ends up wrapped in a thick blanket of that buttery old sandalwood Russian Adam is using here.  In the far drydown – if attars can be said to have a proper drydown at all – the lingering civet and sandalwood aroma reminds me of the handsome maleness of Jicky or Mouchoir de Monsieur in their far reaches, albeit much simpler and less mossy-herbal.  

 

 

 

Royal Musk

 

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

 

Like Hemmingway’s writing, Royal Musk boasts a structure that is straight-forward and devoid of frills, yet still manages to wring an imagined wealth of feeling and depth from the one or two elements it contains.   Made from stirring a tincture of a deer musk pod so old and dried out that all the urinous, sharper edges have long disappeared into that old, deep, buttery Indian Government sandalwood oil that the house is using, this is the rare musk-based attar that might be described as delicious.

 

The opening notes are raisiny, with dried fruit mingling with dark chocolate (or actually cocoa) for a slight panforte impression.  There are no animalic notes whatsoever, yet you can tell that it is deer musk, mostly because of the hint of plastic around the topnotes and its subtly furry, velvety texture, but also because if you are patient and quiet enough, you can also smell a hint of booziness from the tincture.  This is really very nice – dark and sensuous, with that cocoa-and-dried-fruit aspect that makes me think of the pleasures of deep winter, like drowsing under a blanket with a cat or watching the light flicker in the coals of a dying fire.   

 

 

 

Royal Amber

 

Photo by Kendall Scott on Unsplash

 

Here, the intensely buttery, savory vintage sandalwood oil initially overwhelms the composition, for once much stronger than the element with which it is paired, here, a piece of white ambergris from the West of Ireland ground to a fine powder.  Sandalwood is usually the quiet portion of an attar, carrying the other natural essences and adding only a depth and warmth that would otherwise be missing.  Here, however, as well as in the other attars, the age of the sandalwood oil used means that its santalols have deepened into this rich, buttery, concentrated essence of wood that asserts its own character and quite forcefully too.  It smells sweet and savory at once and feels as thickly resinous as an amber accord.  As a sandalwood fan, I am not complaining.  However, part of me does wonder if using a younger, less venerable quality of sandalwood would have allowed the other materials, such as this delicate ambergris, to shine through more clearly.

 

The tart, rubbery ping of the wood esters at the tippy top of the sandalwood oil interact with something briny in the ambergris to create an opening that smells momentarily iodic, like those dark iron syrups you take to correct anemia.  Then the rich, sweet sandalwood notes settle in and start spreading their warmth.  For the longest time, I can’t smell the ambergris.  Until you take your nose and attention off it, and then return, and yes, there it is.

 

Smelling white ambergris – the oldest, most aged specimen of ambergris that has been cured for decades in the ocean and under the sun – is a notoriously peekaboo experience.  There is a faint smattering of nuances so ephemeral and fleeting that they tend to exist like flashes of light at the outer edges of your field of smell-o-vision, making you doubt your own nose.  Here, it smells subtly of sweet, sun-dried minerals and salt on female skin and old newspapers and also a little of morning breath.  The darker you go with ambergris, the marshier the mammalian funk.  In Royal Amber, the only truly animalic part of the experience is the hint of halitosis that sometimes appears and sometimes does not, so mostly what you smell here is the sweet, bright, dusty minerals, mica, and salt-encrusted skin.

 

Ambergris is not amber resin, of course, but the resinousness of that buttery sandalwood does ultimately create an amber-like impression.  The powdery salinity of the ambergris gently strafes the ‘amberiness’ of the drydown, lifting and aerating what might otherwise have been very heavy.  A note about the powderiness here, as powder is a trigger word for some.  It is subtle but perceptible, like the gilded baby powder of Shalimar’s ambery drydown, but not as dense as Teint de Neige.  The slight brininess of the ambergris also offsets the powder somewhat, leavening as deftly as it does the buttered sandalwood.

 

Overall, though, this is a subtle, soft scent that is far simpler than my description suggests.  But I do find it gentle kaleidoscope of nuances entrancing.  It is a private sort of experience on its own; as a layering agent, I imagine that it would act like a bellows on a dying fire, breathing new life and dimension into whatever scent you wear on top.  The more perfume-like equivalent to Royal Amber might be Yeti Ambergris Attar 2012 by Rising Phoenix Perfumery.

 

 

 

Zam Zam

 

Photo by Vera De on Unsplash

 

Although this attar is said to be the most complex and perfumey of the entire collection, I personally don’t perceive it as such.  Zam Zam features a fiercely medicinal saffron distillation mixed into the vintage sandalwood used throughout the collection, and oddly, I find that the two materials bring out the worst in each other.  The high-toned wood esters fizzing at the top of the sandalwood accentuate the iodine-like properties of the saffron, so what I mostly smell is a slightly pitchy, medicinal accord that is too astringent to allow me to relax into the experience.  Once the vaporousness of the topnotes settle, the sandalwood heart notes bank everything down in a fine, brown layer of woody warmth, which in turn allows the saffron to play more of its traditional ‘exoticizing’ role for the sweet, buttery amber-woods.  I don’t smell anything particularly floral.  The saffron, a ferociously strong material, is able to keep a vein of something metallic coursing through the creaminess from top to toe, like a flash of electricity.  I find it Zam Zam striking, but angular and again, simpler than its billing suggests.

 

 

 

  

[1] To be precise, Russian Adam made two of the collection’s attars (Civet Comb and Zam Zam) by distilling the materials into the sandalwood oil carrier, while the other three attars (Musk de Taif, Royal Amber, and Royal Musk) were composed by macerating materials in oil and mixing these macerations into tinctures and sandalwood oil to complete the compositions.

 

 

Source of Sample:  Sent to me for free by the brand for review. 

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash 

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Areej Le Doré History of Attar Collection (Fragrances): Reviews

4th October 2022

 

The first release in the History of Attar Collection was a set of traditionally-distilled attars specifically commissioned by Areej Le Dore to give its customers an idea of what Indian attars are (thoughts and reviews of the attar set here).  This release, on the other hand, is a collection of spray-based fragrances (not oils) made by Russian Adam himself, rather than commissioned from an attar distiller.  Since their composition do revolve around the use and theme of Indian attars, however, it might be useful for readers to read my previous article describing the attar set first.  

 

 

 

Beauty and the Beast

 

Photo by Maksym Sirman on Unsplash

 

I wrote about the new generation of Amouage attars (2021) a while back, but in trying to couch my disappointment in terms of market realities, I skipped over the sense of loss – emotional and patrilineal – of never seeing the likes of Badr al Badour, Al Shomukh, and Al Molook again.  These were mukhallats that successfully positioned feral ouds against the softening backdrops of rose, ambergris, and musk, stoking a love for oud among the heretofore uninitiated.  The first sniff of Beauty and the Beast makes me realize, with great joy, that cultural ‘scent’ patrimony is never lost entirely, but rather, constantly over-written by new entrants like this.   

 

Based on the age-old Middle Eastern custom of pairing the sometimes challengingly sour, regal animalism of Hindi oud (the Beast) with the soft, winey sweetness of rose (the Beauty), Beauty and the Beast doesn’t deviate too dramatically from the basic rose-oud template.  When the starring raw materials are this good, you don’t need to.  The Hindi oud and the rose oils used here are so complex in and of themselves that an experienced perfumer chooses wisely when they leave them alone to work their synergistic magic on each other. 

 

Interestingly, the ouds in Beauty and the Beast have been distilled using rose hydrosols, meaning that the water normally loaded into the still with the oud chips has been replaced with rosewater, the natural by-product of distilling roses.  I am not sure that this makes a difference to the resulting oud oil, but the environmentalist in me likes the thinking around circular economy it implies.  

 

The balancing act the materials perform is nothing short of magisterial.  When the Hindi oud at first challenges the senses with its pungent, feral qualities – think beasts of burden steaming together in a barn, old saddles piled on old wooden barrels in the corner, piss-soaked straw matted into the dirt floor – the rose (not Taifi, for sure, but more likely something like Rosa bourboniana, used to distill attar of roses, or Rosa damascena, used to distill ruh gulab, or a mix) is there merely to soften and sweeten things.  Later, however, when there is more room to breathe, the rose offers up a kaleidoscope of different ‘flavors’, cycling through wine and chocolate to raspberry liquor, Turkish delight, truffles, and finally, that traditional rose-sandalwood ‘attar’ scent.

 

But it is crucial to note that these nuances all unfold in sequence, matching step for step the series of nuances emerging from the Hindi oud.  So, when the oud reveals that regal, spicy leather underpinning so typical of high-quality Hindi ouds, the rose offers up its truffles and wine.  The two materials continue to evolve and in doing so, change the character of the rose-oud pairing we are smelling.  First, the character is pungent and sweet, then it is leathery and winey, then it is dry, woody-spicy and jellied-loukhoum-like.  This evolution, this symbiotic dance, lasts for a whole 24 hours, so you have ample time to luxuriate in its every transition.

 

There is nothing really new or innovative about the rose-oud pairing, but Beauty and the Beast is worth your time and money if you are looking for an exemplar of the heights it can scale when only truly excellent materials are used.  It is strong, rich, long-lasting, but most of all, interesting and beautiful from every angle, from top to toe.  In terms of what is still available in this style today, I would rank Beauty and the Beast alongside The Night (Frederic Malle), Mukhallat Dahn al Oudh Moattaq (Ajmal), Al Hareem (Sultan Pasha Attars), and Al Noukhba Elite Blend (Abdul Samad al Qurashi).  In other words, the fragrances that best capture the feral but regal nature of Hindi oud, balancing it perfectly against dark, sweet roses.  For what it’s worth, my husband, who is a hardcore oud enthusiast, kept muttering stuff, “Good Lord, that is good,” and “Oh, that smells insanely good” all day long every time I wore it.

  

 

 

Ambre de Coco

 

Photo:   Aromatics, spice, and dried plant material for a shamama distillation being loaded into the deg. Photo by Pranjal Kapoor. 

 

Coming across a genuine shamama attar in the wild is like thumbing through a library of slim poetry books and pulling out a tome with the girth of a Ulysses.  Shamama attars, which can take two months of continuous distilling and over 60 separate fragrant materials to make, are so bewilderingly complex that even reading about how they are made is exhausting.  I’ve written about the process here, but in case you haven’t come prepared with sandwiches, a flask of tea, and a map, then let me just tl;dr it for you: an even more aromatic MAAI, wearing a bear pelt.

 

But Ambre de Coco takes it one step further – there is a shamama attar at its heart, but it is wrapped up in a dark, almost bitter, but superbly plush cocoa powder note, stone fruit accords, and a deeply furry impression that suggests that deer musk grains might have been involved at some point.  Complexity-wise, this is like taking Ulysses and wrapping it in a layer of Finnegan’s Wake.

 

Where to begin?  Let’s start with the amber.  Forget the idea of those cozy-vanillic-resinous ambers like Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens), Amber Absolute (Tom Ford) or Ambre Precieux (Maître Parfumeur et Gantier).  This is Indian amber, or what they call shamamatul amber, which is green, mossy, and astringent as hell, as if amber resin was not a resin after all but a stalk of rhubarb or a copper penny.  Indian ambers are lean and a bit stern – there is zero fat on their bones.  Inside this carnivorous structure, the rest of these 50-odd raw materials flow as a swirl of tastes and impressions rather than identifiable notes.  Aromatic grasses mingle with bitter, mossy aromas, wet-smelling herbs, roasted roots, dried berries, calligraphy ink, floral bath salts, and all sorts of dried lichens, leaves, and twigs.  It smells more like something a traditional Chinese medicine man would brew up to cure an infection than a perfume.

 

Now, imagine all this soaked in a rich cocoa powder that softens all the pointy, jangly bits that threaten to poke your eye out, and you get an impression of being plunged into the warm embrace of fur – both animal and human.  The cocoa is not at all edible – fold away any expectations you might have of something gourmandy and sweet.  Rather, its powdery texture cleverly replicates the stale chocolate bitterness-dustiness that is a natural feature of real deer musk tinctures.  Shamama attars and shamama-based perfumes can often be animalic, even when they lean exclusively on plant-based materials (Ajmal’s 1001 Nights being a case in point), relying on the natural funkiness of the aromatics or woods or moss to create something that, in some quarters, might be termed a Parfum de Fourrure (a fur perfume).  Here, Ambre de Coco leans a little on oud and ambergris to boost that effect, but in spirit and intent, it joins the ranks of other glorious Indian shamama-inspired perfumes, such as 1001 Nights (Al Lail) by Ajmal and Jardin de Shalimar by Agarscents Bazaar.

 

Photo:  Charila, a type of Indian lichen that is similar to oakmoss. Photo by Pranjal Kapoor

 

The drydown is suitably bitter-musky-tobacco-ish in the way of these Indian shamamatul ambers, but I am not sure whether this is because of the additional dose of oakmoss and ambergris, or because of the naturally aromatic aspects of charila, an inky-smelling moss material from India that is oakmoss-adjacent and also the first material to be distilled in the shamama recipe.  Either way, my comment about MAAI wearing a fur coat stands.  This is a two-day affair and can be smelled on the skin even after a hot shower.  Considering that genuine shamama attars can take two months to distill and starts at a minimum of $2,000 a kilo for one that’s been distilled into real sandalwood oil, $360 for a 48ml bottle of perfume that not only does justice to shamama but elevates it to the small pantheon of shamama greats that exist on the market today, Ambre de Coco is both beautiful and superb value for money.          

 

 

 

Malik Al Motia

 

Photo by Bibi Pace on Unsplash

 

First, a bit of etymology. Motia (or alternatively mogra) is Urdu for Sambac jasmine, which itself is popularly known as ‘Arabian jasmine’, distinguishing it from Jasminum grandiflorum, the more classical jasmine grown in France and India.  You can buy motia in two forms – as an attar al motia, which involves jasmine petals distilled directly over a base of pure sandalwood, or as a ruh al motia, which is the pure essence of the flower, no sandalwood base.   Malik means, loosely, owner or King in Arabic, which I guess suggests that Malik al Motia is supposed to be the Supreme Boss of all Jasmines.  

 

But if you think that means you’re getting something loud, you would be wrong.  Russian Adam mentioned an interesting fact about traditional attars that I hadn’t known, which is that attar wallahs distilling in the old Indian manner produce essences that are pitched at a perfectly modulated mid-tone point, meaning that the final aroma is never too loud or too quiet.  And I find Malik Al Motia to be a perfect example of what he means.

 

This is jasmine with all the lights switched off.  It starts out as dusky, velvety, and slightly indolic in tone, similar to the darkened jasmine found in Ruh al Motia (Nemat) as well as to the soft, magic market indoles of Cèdre Sambac (Hermes).   But the leathery indoles are smoothed out by a judicious touch of the grandiflorum variety of jasmine, whose luscious sweetness and full-bodied charm sands down any rough edges on that Sambac.  Hints of overripe, boozy fruit – like an overblown banana liquor – lend a steamy tone but remain firmly in the background.  Oddly, Malik al Motia smells far more like jasmine than the Motia attar from the attar set that has presumably been used somewhere in the mix. 

 

There are resins and woods in the base, even some oud.  But these just act as the dimmer switch on the jasmine, making sure that everything, even the parts of jasmine that are naturally sunny, are subsumed into the folds of that black velvet olfactory curtain.  The rich, honeyed ‘just-licked skin’ tones of Sambac come through at the end and linger plaintively for hours.  Similar to the now discontinued Gelsomino triple extract by Santa Maria Novella, the natural end to any Sambac is that rich, skanky sourness of your wrist trapped under a leather watch-band all day under intense heat.

 

Yet Malik al Motia remains intensely floral.  Wearing feels like waking up in a field of jasmine at dusk, the air still redolent with scent.  It is not especially feminine and clearly not a soliflore.  The material’s rich indoles lend a slightly dirty feel, as does the mealy woods in the base (reading more cedar-ish than sandalwoody to my nose), but it manages to be darkly, sensually ‘adult’ without ever tipping over into full frontal territory.  Soft, black-purple velvet, a hushed ambience, your heels sinking into deep carpet.  Makes wish I still had someone to seduce.   

 

 

 

Al Majmua

 

Photo by Frank Albrecht on Unsplash

 

Al Majmua is based on the famous majmua attar, a traditional Indian blend of four other already-distilled attars and ruhs, namely, ruh khus (vetiver root), ruh kewra (pandanus, or pandan leaf), mitti attar (a distillation of hand-made clay bowls), and kadam attar (distilled from the small, yellow bushy flowers of the Anthocephalus cadamba).   Together, these attars combine to mimic the lush, earthy fragrance of India during the rainy season.  In Al Majmua, it is the green, foresty tones of the ruh khus that dominate, at least at first.  Its rugged, earthy aroma smells like the roots of a tree dipped into a classic men’s fougère, something green and bitter enough to put hairs on your chest.  In fact, there is a chalky galbanum-like note here that links Al Majmua, at least superficially, with the front half of Incenza Mysore.

 

But what I love about majmua attars, and hence also about Al Majmua, is that the juicy-sharp bitterness of the opening tends to soften into an earthy, dusty bitterness – nature’s slide, perhaps, from vetiver root to mitti.  

 

This earthy, aromatic aroma is complex and ever-shifting, sometimes letting the slightly minty yellow floral of the kadam attar peek through, sometimes the piercing, fruity-vanillic, yet funky aroma of pandanus leaf (kewra attar), which Russian Adam has cleverly accentuated by adding a cat-pissy blackcurrant up front.  But what really predominates is the earthy wholesomeness of soil and dust, emphasized with patchouli, and given a spicy, armpitty warmth by a sturdy cedarwood in the base that believes itself to be a musk of some sort.  Though the notes don’t include musk or even a naturally musky material like costus, there is an aspect to Al Majmua that smells like the creamed, stale skin at the base of a woman’s neck.  A perfumer friend of mine, Omer Pekji, recommended to me long ago to wear a swipe of Majmua attar under my Muscs Khoublai Khan (Serge Lutens), and I wonder if the reason this particular layering combination works so well is because muskiness forms the bridge between the two perfumes.

 

What I admire the most about Al Majmua is the way that the perfumer chose to simply frame the majmua attar at the center (since it is a complex-smelling thing in and of itself) and then arrange other, complementary materials around it to draw out and emphasize certain aspects of the attar’s character.  For example, a silvery-powdery iris is placed in just the right place to highlight the dustiness of mitti, the cedarwood to underline the majmua’s slight bodily funk, the patchouli to draw even longer 5 o’ clock shadows under the jaw of the ruh khus, and so on.   

 

Fresh over animalic.  Earthy but not pungent.  Imagine Green Irish Tweed sprayed over a deer musk attar that faded down a long time ago.  Indians love majmua attars for their complex, aromatic character and so do I, but I like Al Majmua the best when it is almost done.  Because, just as the slow, gentle fade-to-grey starts to happen, there is a magnificent moment where the natural sandalwood smells like – similar to some parts of Musk Lave and Jicky – idealized male skin.   Meaning, skin after a hot shave, application of an old-fashioned but honest sandalwood tonic (Geo F. Trumpers, say), and then an hour of gentle exertion in the cold air.

 

 

 

Mysore Incenza

 

 

Adjust your expectations.  You see, I know what you’re thinking.  You see the words ‘Mysore’ and ‘incense’ and, like Pavlov’s dog, you immediately salivate, expecting something warm, ambered, and resinous, like Sahara Noir or Amber Absolute mixed with the best, creamiest version of Bois des Iles or Bois Noir (Chanel) that ever existed, but somehow better, you know, because it is all artisanal and therefore deeper, richer, more authentic than anything you can buy on the shelves of your local department store or even niche perfumery.

 

Mysore Incenza is not that.  In fact, so large was the gap between my expectations and reality that I had to wear it five times in a row to come to terms with what it is rather than what I thought it was going to be.   In pairing the extremely high-pitched, dusty, lime-peel notes of frankincense with the extremely soft, ‘neutral’ woody tones of the vintage Mysore sandalwood (from 2000) included in the attar set (read my review here), a transubstantiation of sorts is performed, and something else entirely emerges.

 

Specifically, this new creature is born in the surprising mold of Chanel No. 19 or Heure Exquise (Annick Goutal), with one small toe dipped into the Grey Flannel genepool on the way.  At least at first.  It glitters in this high, pure register, an explosion of Grappa, lime peel, and wood alcohol chased by baby powder, a striking frankincense, and what smells to me like the dusky, cut-bell-pepper dryness of galbanum and the slightly shrill smell of violet leaf.  This creates a dry, clean, woody aroma that smells purified and ascetic.  This kind of frankincense, perhaps changed by the presence of the sandalwood, smells unlit – slightly waxy, slightly powdered, and definitely not smoky, although it occurs to me that the perception of smokiness is as personal and nuanced as your political beliefs.

 

There is no warmth, no sweetness, and no comfort at all.  Don’t look towards the sandalwood to provide any relief, either.  Mysore Incenza is cleansing, angular, and ‘holy’ in the same way as other famously austere scents in incense canon are, such as Incense Extreme (Tauer), Encens Flamboyant (Annick Goutal), and Ambra (Lorenzo Villoresi).  These are all fragrances that steer away from softening the jutting sharpness of frankincense with amber or vanilla or flowers, choosing instead to focus on the dry, musky-soapy, ‘hard core’ character of resin that radiates hard, like tiny particles of mica or dust leaping off the bible when the priest thumps it to make a point in the angriest of angry sermons.   Mysore Incenza keeps you kneeling straight, anxiously waiting for the priest to say that you can sit back down again.

 

Although technically beautiful, it is most definitely not my kind of thing.  My personal tastes run towards hedonism and gluttony rather than asceticism.  I put the hair shirt away a long time ago.  People who loved Grandenia will also love Mysore Incenza, as there is something of the same vibe.    

 

 

 

Le Mitti

 

Photo: The clay bowls of Indian earth loaded into the still to make mitti attar.  Photo by Pranjal Kapoor, with full permission to use.

 

As Russian Adam warns, Le Mitti is less of a perfume and more of a bottled emotion, so expect a maelstrom with a short but dramatic trajectory from start to finish.  Like Mitti from Oudologie (review here), Le Mitti is a departure from the mineralic, petrichor effect of very traditional mitti attars, in that it is smoky to the point of smelling charred.  I like this way of approaching mitti, as it feels more modern and exciting.  What is lost in all this delicious smoke, however, is that essential feeling of something wet (rain) hitting something dry (the parched red soil of India), which in effect activates the geosmin in the earth and makes that pure ‘after the rain’ effect ring out.  Try Après L’Ondée, if that’s what you’re looking for, or a traditional mitti attar.  But remember that Le Mitti is a perfume, not an attar, and is therefore more of an imaginative interpretation than a dogged replication.

 

So, what does Le Mitti smell like?  Like a perfect storm of peanut dust, tar, soot – charred remnants of a wood fire, soot snaking up the wall in black streaks.  It is Comme des Garcons Black without the anise or the clove.  I love it.  But it is definitely a hybrid mitti rather than a pureline one.  It joins the earthy red dust of Indian clay bowls to the dry, sooty scent of an Irish cottage without ventilation.  As you might imagine, it is hilariously atmospheric.  Don’t wear it unless you’re prepared for people to ask if you’ve been near an open fire recently.

 

 

 

Gul Hina

 

Photo by Photos by Lanty on Unsplash

 

Gul Hina, or Gul Heena, or sometimes even Attar Mehndi, meaning ‘flower of henna’, is an attar derived from distilling henna leaves (Lawsonia Inermis) directly into sandalwood oil.   As you might guess from the name, the attar comes from the same plant as the popular red dye that is used to paint elaborate patterns onto the hands and face of brides in most Indian weddings, be it a Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh ceremony.  There is also a Ruh Mehndi, but since it is very expensive at $43,000 per kilogram (while the attar ranges between $500 and $5,000 per kilogram), it is rarely used commercially.  Well, to be honest, neither the attar or ruh of henna is well known outside of India and is therefore under-utilized in Western niche or artisanal perfumery.   Strangelove NYC’s fallintostars is an exception – it uses a heena attar distilled by M.L. Ramnarain.  (Review here).  

 

Gul Hina by Areej Le Doré is an entirely different experience to most Gul Hina attars I have tried.  The scent of mehndi attar is that of earth, hay, flower petals, ink, baked clay, and iodine.  (The ruh smells greener, with a  tobacco-ish facet).  It can smell rather austere.  But the Areej Le Doré approach to Gul Hina is to bathe the henna flower in the prettiest of magnolia blossoms, rose, and jasmine, so that what emerges is a sort of Venus on a Half Shell – a pearlescent, creamy, and indubitably feminine experience.  This is not the hot baked earth and hay that I am used to in mehndi.  And I’m not complaining.

 

It strikes me that this would be perfect for a bride, especially one that is also getting those intricate henna patterns painted onto her hands and face.  Henna on the arms and face; Gul Hina on the wrists and neck.  A synchronicity of henna for good health and a happy marriage.

 

First, Gul Hina smells vaguely candied, but indirectly so, like floral gummies rolled in dust and lint.  Then you notice the magnolia petals floating in a pool of cream.  Unlike in other takes on magnolia, there is no lemony freshness and no juicy, metallic greenery at its heart.  Here, the petals feel impregnated with the cream in which it floats, like biscuits or croissants dipped into condensed milk before baking a bread pudding.  These sweet, milky notes mingling with the clearly floral elements of magnolia remind me of some aspects of Remember Me (Jovoy).

 

The jasmine is next to break free of this creamy mass.  Clear as a bell, this is a naturalistic jasmine, like jasmine petals dropping and wilting off a vine in high summer.  Petals fully open, a ripe smell, with something fecund and though not quite clean, not exactly indolic either.  Still, it is enough to give the pretty magnolia some much-needed kick.  A little funk in your cream.  The rose, when it emerges, is extremely subtle.  Rose rarely plays such a back seat, but here it plays nicely in floral tandem with jasmine and magnolia that it approaches that ‘mixed floral bouquet’ effect that Creed puts in all its older feminines, like Vanisia and Fleurissimo.      

 

To be honest, I am not sure what to think about the far drydown.  With the white musk and the sandalwood, there is a nice element of perfumey, musky bitterness that creeps in.  On the one hand, this sort of drydown is always very pretty (think Coco Mademoiselle, without the patchouli), but on the other, it doesn’t sit well with the magnolia cream pudding aspect, which in consequence begins to smell a little less like a milky dessert and more like that fake croissant scent they pump around the supermarket to get shoppers moving towards the baked goods section.

 

But even if it is ultimately not quite my thing, I can’t imagine why Gul Hina wouldn’t be a huge success with brides to be, women who like pretty florals, and fans of milky floral gourmands in general.  Overall, I admire Gul Hina for being a symbolic scent pairing to the more pungent smell of henna ink painted onto a woman’s body on her wedding day.  It doesn’t smell like any mehndi attar I have ever smelled before, but my experience with mehndi is limited and I fully expect someone who is fully familiar with it to smell this and say, but of course, this is pure mehndi!

 

 

Source of samples:  My samples were sent free of charge by the brand.  This does not affect my review.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Fahrul Azmi on Unsplash 

All Natural Attars & CPOs Collection Cult of Raw Materials Floral Independent Perfumery Review Sandalwood The Attar Guide Thoughts

The Areej Le Doré History of Attar Collection Thoughts and Reviews

16th September 2022

 

Thoughts

 

Don’t buy the Areej Le Doré History of Attar collection of attars if you are looking for another Walimah or Russian Musk attar by Russian Adam – a regular perfume composition, in other words.  Instead, buy the History of Attars collection if you value having a reference library for traditional distilled attars, made by artisans using pretty much the same equipment (a deg and bhapka) and distillation techniques practiced in India since the time of the Indus Valley Civilization, 3300 BCE-1300 BCE. 

 

It takes enormous skill and knowledge to make an attar in the traditional way, and having practiced it for over five thousand years, Indians are the masters of this art.   Although the attar maker behind the History of Attar set of attars has not been revealed by Russian Adam, the traditional seat of the attar-making world has long been Kannauj, the capital city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.   Kannauj-based attar-makers supplied the princes of the Turkish-Mongolian (but culturally Persiatic) Mughal Empire with attars for more than three centuries and have a long history of trading with the Middle East (the word ‘attar’ is Farsi in origin but due to the boundary-crossing nature of attar making, the word is pretty much the same, with minor changes, in Urdu, Hindi, and Arabic).   Surrounded by silt-rich fields and valleys that grow an extraordinary range of exotic flowers, aromatics grasses, roses, and herbs, Kannauj is justifiably called the Grasse of the attar world.  Read about the most famous single-material Indian attars here and complex Indian attars here.

 

However, the traditional attar distillation industry is under threat.  Though you can read more in detail about why here, the main reasons are (1) the depletion of genuine santalum album oil, the traditional carrier oil into which the fragrant material materials – rose, jasmine, etc. – are distilled, (2) the high costs and labor intensity attached to harvesting, sourcing, and distillation of the raw materials to the standards expected in traditional attar distillation, and (3) the changing perfume tastes and buying power of the market that buys attars.

 

It is no wonder, then, that many of the small, independent attar-making houses have gone out of business.  At its height, approximately sixty percent of the population of the 1.7 million-strong city of Kannuaj was employed in the attar industry.  Until the restrictions on sandalwood oil production came about in the nineties, there were over seven hundred distilleries operating in Kannauj, for example.  Now there are only a hundred and fifty.  The traditional attar making industry has shrunk by almost eighty percent over the past three decades.

 

Sandalwood is perhaps the biggest issue, as it is responsible for about 50% of the aroma of a traditional attar (sandalwood being both a great-quality carrier that only improves with time but also deeply fragrant in and of itself).  Read more about why sandalwood is such an amazing material here.  Materials such as rose and jasmine have always been expensive to produce, because they are labor-intensive, and a great quantity of their petals required to produce even a small amount of a ruh or attar.  A ten milliliter bottle of genuine rosa damascena oil (ruh gulab) costs approximately $250 in Kannauj, but the same amount of synthetic rose oil costs only $8

 

You might think that all this preamble is a lot of bla, bla, bla.  But since the History of Attar collection of traditionally distilled attars is such a different product for Areej Le Doré to offer, it is worth spending a little time on clarifying why and how these products differ.

 

Russian Adam does not distill traditional attars himself.  Although he does distill his own ouds and some sandalwood oils for its sister outfit, FeelOud, Adam outsources distillations of specific materials to local artisans.  These oils are then used in the Areej Le Doré perfume compositions, both spray-based and oil format.  When these oils are mixed together with an oil carrier, these make what Areej Le Doré calls ‘attars’ but are technically ‘mukhallats’.  

 

Most perfumes in oil format called ‘attars’ are actually mukhallats.  See for example the 2021 Amouage ‘attars’ discussed here, as well as Ensar Oud’s ‘attars’.  This is partially because the word ‘attar’ originally meant anything fragrant or good-smelling, and has therefore become synonymous with ‘perfume’ – and specifically oil-based ‘perfume’ – to most people.  There is, however, some critical differences between the construction and artistic intent of a distilled attar and that of a mukhallat.  Unlike traditional attars, which are distilled, mukhallats are mixed, using already distilled or compounded materials, with a focus on raw materials culturally significant in the Middle-Eastern perfumery, such as ambergris, oud oil, musk, resins, and amber accords.   Mukhallats are definitely more perfumey and ‘finished’ in form – closer to what most would consider a real perfume. Traditionally distilled attars are far simpler and focused on praising the spiritual bounty of nature – closer to an ‘essence’ or ‘enfleurage’ than to what most people think of as a perfume.  Mukhallats tend to be easier to make because it involves mixing materials that have been distilled elsewhere, and the labor is all in the composition (rather than in the distillation).

 

Because traditional attar distillation is an extremely complex operation involving many people, weeks, complex procedures, etc., Adam commissioned an attar maker (attar wallah) to make these attars.  Despite some disappointment about this expressed online, this is basic quality assurance.  If you want a Chanel tweed jacket, you don’t buy a pattern and try to make it yourself.  Leave it to the experts. 

 

Yes, the History of Attar set of distilled attars is expensive.  But traditional distilled attars – genuine ones – are expensive, due to the labor and materials involved.  For example, a traditionally-distilled hina or shamama attar with the full whack of natural raw materials starts at a minimum of $2,000 per kilo.   And it takes over one month of uninterrupted distilling time to make a real shamama attar. Even in India, where labor in cheap,  that adds up to over 700 man hours.  Some will argue that you can buy an Indian attar for $5 on eBay or IndiaMart, and indeed, you can.  However, it will not be a genuine distilled attar.  It will contain a synthetic solvent (like IPM or DPG) or a substandard natural replacer (like Moringa oil) instead of Indian sandalwood.  Most, if not all of the other raw materials will also be likely synthetic.  And it most certainly will not have been distilled in a deg and bhapka but knocked up in someone’s back office masquerading as a lab.

 

It is ok if you are not interested in traditional distilled attars or if you are interested but don’t want to spend this much.  This collection isn’t for everyone.  (Also, attars themselves aren’t for everyone).  Only buy these if you are the type of person who values having a reference library of top-notch examples of a genre or raw material, against which you can judge the quality of other perfumes or oils.  I would compare this collection to the oud sampler you can get on Ensar Oud’s site.  It is handy as a baseline.  If you are content to limit your investment to the spray perfumes that Areej Le Doré will soon release based on these very attars and are only mildly curious as to how the spray fragrances relate back to these attars, then skip ahead to the reviews below.  They should tell you everything you need to know.

 

If you do buy this set, however, and are new to attar perfumery, be prepared for the fact that traditional Indian distilled attars are not perfumey-smelling.  Think of traditional distilled attars more as essences than perfumes per se, simply suspended in sandalwood oil.  Traditional attars are simple in structure; they start with the scent of the fragrant raw material that has been distilled, and end with the famously buttery-peanutty aroma of real sandalwood.

 

If Indian attars ever do smell complex, it is for one of two reasons.  First, some fragrant materials, like vetiver root, are complex-smelling materials in and of themselves, and so lend the attar the illusion of a more fully worked out ‘perfume’.  Vetiver root, when distilled as a ruh khus, for example, can stretch from hazelnut and grass to rose, earth, and smoke.  Second, there is a category of traditional attars known as complex attars, which are not single distillations of one material but co-distillations (for example, rose, jasmine and vetiver root in one still) or mixed with other attars and choyas after distillation.  Attars such as majmua and shamama fall into this category. 

 

The History of Attar attars are not complex-smelling attars.  They are single distillation attars, meaning that only one fragrant material was loaded into the deg and then distilled over the base of sandalwood.  This was an intentional choice on the part of Russian Adam, I believe, as he wanted customers to experience the raw materials in their purest form possible.

 

Traditional distilled Indian attars present the raw material in a way that will surprise people used to their portrayal in commercial perfumery.  For example, jasmine – motia in attar speak – does not smell as clean, bright, or creamy as is commonly portrayed in commercial perfumery.  In motia attars, I notice that jasmine can smell dusky and a bit dank, with some gasoline or plasticky nuances that tend to get filtered out for the commercial perfume experience.  If you buy this collection of attars, therefore, expect some olfactory surprises!  Do not adjust your TV set; this is all perfectly real.

 

The History of Attar attars all end up in exactly the same place, which is a base of real santalum album sandalwood.  As a bonus, Russian Adam has added a quarter tola of sandalwood  oil distilled by FeelOud from vintage Mysore sandalwood from 2000.  This is to give people an idea of what good quality santalum album smells like. The length of time it takes for each attar to get to the Mysore sandalwood base differs, with the more ephemeral materials like rose (Gulab) reaching their destination in an hour and the more tenacious materials like tuberose (Champa, Tuba) taking slightly longer.  But the end destination never changes.  If you love the scent of real, honest-to-goodness Indian sandalwood, you are in for a rare treat.  If you don’t have a particular yen for it, then it will be like being served the same dessert six days in a row.  (Honestly, the people in the latter group don’t deserve good sandalwood at all).     

 

 

The Reviews

 

 

Champa

 

Photo:  Vinayaraj, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

 

Champa attar is the most famous floral attar ‘type’ from India, possibly popularized beyond the borders of India by its use in nag champa agarbatti (Indian incense sticks), shampoo, and soaps.  Distilled from the champaca flower, a bright yellow flower revered across the Indian subcontinent and much of tropical Asia as a symbol of sacred femininity, champaca tends to smell rich and creamy, similar in profile to magnolia, but with a denser, muskier body weight, and hints of bubblegum, green apple peel, mint, and apricot. Though champaca can be quite musky at times, it is traditionally associated with cleanliness.   In fact, the word ‘champa’ gave rise to the word ‘shampoo’ by way of the Sanskrit word for champaca, ‘champo’, which means ‘to massage’.  

 

This particular Champa attar smells (typically for champaca) headily botanical, with a sharp green tea element freshened with pops of mint, grass, wood, and something akin to furniture polish.   You can tell that it is a floral – something about the heady, steamy atmosphere – yet it doesn’t smell particularly fruity, bright, or feminine in the way you think an attar squeezed from a yellow flower is going to. 

 

I pick up on an intense ‘darkly stewed tea’ element, with a sweet, powdered incense quality in the background, although this impression could be the automatic linking my brain does between the scent of traditional agarbatti[1] and actual champaca.  Although this doesn’t make much sense, since most Nag Champa on the market these days haven’t been within 100 km of real champaca, the association lingers, rendering this attar distinctly Indian in character.

 

The most interesting part of Champa is when it starts to degrade on the skin.  By which I mean the yellow flower itself begins to wilt into a damp, almost fetid organic soup of crushed stamens and soggy stems.  It smells musky in a very natural, attractive kind of way – like a young woman, freshly washed head to toe in Timoteí, rolling around in wildflowers and chamomile buds, only to emerge hours later stained with plant juice and soaked in that fresh-sweet-salty sweat that only the very young seem to produce.  This ‘decaying at the edges’ aspect – the slight tip of the hat towards the barnyard floor – smells freakishly sensual, mostly because it is so clearly natural in origin.  Whoever thinks that flowers can’t smell anything other than sweet or clean should smell this.

 

After this, there is a brief detour into jasmine-like territory, with a sour, plasticky edge I associate with Sambac at the end of its natural life.  Sometimes champaca can smell a little like jasmine, though, only a bit coarser and not as ‘clear’.  If you’ve ever smelled the underside of your wrist after removing a rubber watch at the end of a hot day, you’ll know what this stage of Champa smells like (only mixed with something vaguely floral).    

 

Champa winds up, about two hours later, in pure sandalwood territory.  Because all of these attars end with the same sandalwood finish, it is worth describing this once and then moving on.  If you want to study this basenote in isolation, Areej Le Doré has provided a whole quarter tola of vintage sandalwood in the set, called ‘Sandal’.  I describe it below.

 

 

Sandal

 

Photo by Isaac Martin on Unsplash

 

This is the essential oil of pure santalum album (meaning ‘white sandalwood’), the species of sandalwood rightly prized for being the most fragrant sandalwood of all.  Sandal was distilled from a vintage, well-aged batch of real Mysore sandalwood (22 years old at the time of writing).   Due to current restrictions on Mysore sandalwood, this is a genuine rarity.  

 

How does it smell?  Well, to paraphrase Teri Hatcher in Seinfeld, it’s real and it’s spectacular.  But lean in, folks, because real Mysore sandalwood is actually very quiet.  A fun fact is that, when you first smell Mysore sandalwood – or indeed any santalum album at all, whether it is grown in Mysore or not – you have to make a physical effort to shake off any association with the loud, buttery, incensey scent familiar to you in commercial perfumery, because that’s an association largely formed thanks to widespread use of sandalwood replacers like Javanol or Ebanol.  Commercial perfumes pre-1980s might have contained a certain quantity of real santalum album, but after that, you have been raised on the alluring lie that is sandalwood synthetics.  Therefore, a person’s first sniff of real Mysore sandalwood oil can be disorienting.   

 

At first, Sandal smells like freshly-felled lumber, with that slightly vaporous, high-pitched tone that all wood esters emit.  This is a clean, soft, slightly peanutty aroma, with only the faintest whisper of rose and milk stirring in the undercarriage.  Later on, it develops, in small tonal waves, into a warm scent that is typical of all s. album oils in its savory, milky-but-also-arid warmth.  It smells rugged but also weirdly flat, like the surface of cream, with a musky, spicy element that reads sometimes like ambrette or carrot seed, and sometimes like cumin or black pepper.  It remains extremely quiet and tonal, however, a gorgeous beige-blush-buff thing you instinctively want to drip-feed into your amygdala.  There is none of the deep incense or amber tonalities that Mysore oils sometimes boast, but it is fairly rich and sturdy. 

 

 

Tuba

 

Photo: Jayesh Patil, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Now this will be a surprise to anyone used to tuberose in the commercial perfume context.  In traditional Western perfumery, tuberose tends to be one of those white floral notes you either love or hate.  I, um, have my issues with it.  It is just so strong and sweet, with this overlay of bubblegum, melted butter, candy, and cream that tends to suffocate.  It is just not my style.  It smells aged and ladies-who-lunch-ish and hotel lobby-ish.  There is a handful of tuberose perfumes that I love, but these have to be either so odd that its psychotic quirks suddenly become playful rather than annoying (Daphne by Comme des Garcons) or so green and medicinal that it tips over into bitterness (the opening of Carnal Flower, Tubéreuse Criminelle).  

 

But Tuba doesn’t smell like any of these iterations, let alone anywhere near the big classical, shoulder-padded versions that haunt my nightmares.  The opening is earthy but delicate – small tart green leaves, clay, an earthy Rooibos tea, and mint, all suspended like mist droplets in a curtain of camphor.  It smells dun-colored rather than the hot pink synesthesically associated with tuberose.  In fact, it is less flower than a newly opened jar of that Borghese Advanced Fango Active Purifying Mud, full of Siberian ginseng root and chaga mushroom extract.  Earthy, quasi-medicinal smelling things like this give me far more pleasure than a bouquet of flowers.  

 

Yet, there is also a small but still clearly tuberose character in all of this, which I find extraordinary.  It is as if someone took the freshest, softest leaves at the center of Carnal Flower’s evergreen box hedge opening and washed them in this creamy greige mud until soft, limp, and almost denuded of color.   Leaning savory rather than sweet, the slow fade into the equally savory sandalwood gives the impression of a barely set bread pudding, its layers wobbly to the point of collapse, flavored with miso paste rather than vanilla.  Tuberose must be tenacious even in attar form because Tuba takes more than two hours to disappear entirely into the sandalwood base.  Color me charmed.    

 

 

 

Genda

 

Genda attar is made from marigold (tagetes minuta), which, for a flower, smells uniquely herbaceous, bitter, and spicy.  Its astringent tonality has something in common with saffron, and indeed, the two make for good bedfellows.  Genda attar is uncommon outside of India, but marigold itself is used quite cleverly in some other mukhallats and perfume oils, one example being Aroosah by Al Rehab.

 

This Genda attar is – again – a shock to the senses if you are expecting something recognizably floral.   It smells distinctive without you being able to say exactly what it is that distinguishes it.  But if you relax your nose (like your eyes when looking at one of those Magic Eye paintings), strange and not unalluring shapes begin to emerge from the fog.  First comes a slash of bitter herbs (unidentified, medicinal in purpose), followed by the tacky glucose coating on candy cigarettes, a wash of chamomile tea, a slight hay-like note, latex paint, and either mint or camphor, all wrapped up in an accord that can only be described as a first cousin once removed to nail polish remover.  It is slightly animalic, but mostly high-pitched and vaporous, with its individual nuances shifting around so quickly that it is hard to pin them down. 

 

The flightiness of this herbal-acetone ether makes me think of Borneo oud, which also smells minty, woody and slightly bitter, with a vaporous intensity that makes your head spin if you get too close.  In terms of floral-essence-to-sandalwood trajectory, Genda sits firmly in the middle of the pack, taking about an hour and a half to wind down.  Delightfully odd.

 

 

 

Motia

 

Photo:  Reprinted with kind permission of the photo author, Pranjal Kapoor

 

Out of the three species of jasmine most commonly distilled in attar making[2], motia (or mogra, as it is sometimes called) is the most popular, and is made from Jasminum sambac, the famous ‘Arabian’ jasmine.  Ruh motia itself is almost exclusively distilled in Kannauj these days (whereas solvent-extracted Sambac absolutes and concretes can be found elsewhere).

 

Now this is where things get really strange.  If you know your Sambac jasmine, then you walk into Motia having a pretty good idea of what this is going to smell like – minty, fresh, a bit coarse (in a good way), sexy, slightly sour-leathery in the lower register, etc.  Good ole Sambac jasmine, in other words, and yes, quite recognizably distinct from the classical, sweet grandiflorum type.

 

However, for much of its lifespan, Motia doesn’t smell much like jasmine of any species at all.  You do get a floating layer of green floral soap that may or may not be jasmine, but this nuance is far more wax than flower.  There is a strong aroma of propolis, as well as flashing hints of that grapey benzyl acetate high note that some jasmine materials push to the front, so the jasmine clearly is there, somewhere.  But, in passing through that dusky almond-green floor wax accord, the sound it emits seems to be muted.  It smells to me like what I imagine the pearly white fat remaining from a jasmine enfleurage might have smelled several hundred years ago, when enfleurage was discovered as an extraction technique.

 

I like Motia very much, perhaps because off-center approaches to floral essences as characterful (and recognizable) as jasmine are always more interesting to me than the standard soliflore treatment.   I get a real kick out of the fact that this smells more of cream of wheat and wax and propolis than of jasmine itself.  In fact, Motia reminds me that there is this strange alchemy that occurs when jasmine meets sandalwood that transmogrifies the flower and the wood into something that smells like a warm, silky bowl of porridge.  This wheaten, nubby cream accord strongly recalls other jasmine-sandalwood accords such as that found in the central axis of Dries Van Noten (Frederic Malle) or in Feromone Donna (Abdes Salaam Attar). 

 

Motia is a real education for the nose.  In the ‘strange but true’ category, I also have samples of the Areej Le Doré spray perfumes that are based on these attars, and the one based on this motia attar most definitely smells like Sambac jasmine. 

 

 

 

Gulab

 

Photo:  Reprinted with kind permission of the photo author, Pranjal Kapoor

 

When rose petals are distilled into pure sandalwood oil, the result is an oil known the world over as ‘attar of roses’, or sometimes even Attar Gulab, as here (Gul means rose in Hindi, although the word is sometimes also loosely interpreted as ‘flower’.)  Attar of roses production takes place over nine months of the year, mostly using Bourbon roses (Rosa bourboniana) rather than rosa damascena (which, technically, is used to produce Ruh Gulab, or rose otto, i.e., an essential oil distilled in much the same manner as an attar, only not into a base of sandalwood oil or another solvent. Ruhs are 100% pure essences, rather than 50% fragrant hydrosol, 50% sandalwood oil)

 

Anyway, technicalities aside, describing what rose smells is probably as redundant as describing what coffee or chocolate smells like.  These are smells hardwired into our core memories.  But if I told you that while rose itself has over 300 compounds, the main ‘flavor’ compounds you are smelling are citronellol, geraniol, and eugenol, does that at least help you decode a bit of the mystery of what makes a rose a rose?

 

For me personally, learning that roses can be broken down into the main building blocks of lemon-lime (citronellol), green-minty (geraniol), and clove-pepper-spicy (eugenol) was critical to me understanding what I was smelling when I sampled my first rose outside the cannon of commercial perfumery eight years ago, which was Al Ta’if Rose Nakhb Al Arous from ASAQ.   Now with more experience, I know that the chances of Ta’if Rose Nakhb Al Arous being a pure rose otto are slim to none, but still, this particular oil upended my set-in-stone idea of roses as being soft, sweet, and feminine.  In contrast, the ASAQ smelled like freshly peeled lemons and spicy black peppercorns.  Smelling it slapped me awake.

 

I mention this as preamble to describing this Gulab attar.  If you go into it expecting a big, rich, or sweet affair, you’ll be disappointed.  This is a very traditional rose attar scent, its noise undistorted by the oil format.  It smells high-toned and delicate, with undertones that split off into tart-lemony and peppery-minty directions (without getting sidetracked).  Not surprisingly, due to the citronellol and geraniol compounds, the rose itself is a volatile creature that flares brightly and then immediately begins to soften away into a barely there smudge of rosiness.  When it reaches melting point with that beautiful sandalwood base a scant hour later, it smells very close to what most people’s fantasy of what an attar might smell like, in other words a rosy sandalwood scent with a very simple yet moving beauty to it.  

 

 

 

Source of sample:  Areej Le Doré kindly provided me with the attar set for free.  It normally costs $375.  I paid a small customs fee.

 

Cover Image:  My own photo.  Please do not use or distribute without prior permission.

 

 

[1] Champaca was used in the old, traditional way of making nag champa agarbatti (Indian incense sticks) that prevailed in India before the formula was cheapened in order to satisfy foreign demand for cheap incense.  In addition to champaca, the original formula for agarbatti included some very expensive naturals such as Assamese agarwood, Mysore sandalwood, expensive floral essences such rose, kewra, saffron, henna flower, and spikenard, an aromatic Indian herb.  These aromatic materials were bound by honey and halmaddi, a fragrant gum from the Ailanthus triphysa tree.  Important yogi would traditionally use nag champa in rituals, and it is still the prime component of any major Hindu event.  Therefore, nag champa was originally a highly prized sort of incense.  Mass production and cost-cutting over the years has meant that the Indian pan masala incense you buy these days is usually very low quality and, indeed, possessed of that hippy vibe that tramples on any cachet the original nag champa once enjoyed.

 

[2] The other two species are Chameli and Juhi.  Chameli attar is made from Jasminum grandiflorum, the type of jasmine grown in India and in Grasse and used in classic French perfumery.   Juhi attar is made from Jasminum auriculatum.  The auriculatum variety (Juhi attar) is simply a three-petalled subset of the sambac jasmine, and so the differences between them are negligible.  The differences between sambac and grandiflorum, on the other hand, are more significant.

 

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Iris Ghalia by Ensar Oud

17th August 2022

 

 

Iris Ghalia by Ensar Oud makes for an unconventional iris but a reassuringly traditional Ghaliyah*.  It takes the gin-and-ice ethereality of orris and dispassionately sets it up to either thrive or fail against an onslaught by grungiest, most uncouth cast of characters ever licked up from a zoo floor – castoreum from the anal glands of a beaver, warm-scalpy costus root, calcified urine scraped off a rock (hyraceum), and saliva-ish musk grains scooped out of the undercarriage of some poor unsuspecting Tibetan deer.  And that’s before we even talk about the marshwater skank of natural ambergris.

 

Yeah, it was never going to be a fair fight.  If you have any experience at all, then you go into Iris Ghalia knowing that it is only a matter of time before quivering silver bloom of the iris is subsumed by the powerful animalics.

 

But the perfumer has sought to stack the deck a little in favor of the iris by flanking it with a sharp, fresh accord that is one third citrus peel, one third plant juice, and one third piano rosin.  Therefore, you get that first dopamine hit of warm, plush iris (smelling divinely of antique wood furniture, old books, and closed-up mansions) and just as the sugary deer musk bubbles up to nip at its heels, your nose flashes on the shrill, metallic greenery of violet leaf and the funky cat pee fruitiness of blackcurrant leaf.  Together these notes form a citric-resinous barricade around the iris, allowing it to stand up and assert itself just a little longer.

 

Iris Ghalia also benefits by being a spray and not an attar or an oily distillate, because a note as ephemeral as iris needs its own space (think a whole castle rather than a room).  For a while, the notes teeter, achieving a precarious balance between something very classical and something very grunge-indie-artisanal.

 

Of course, in the end, it is inevitable that the warm animalic notes begin to tighten around the trembling neck of the iris like a dirty fur stole.  The musks, which start out smelling as sweet and as dusty as powdered sugar sifted over a hot wolf, grow ever staler by the minute, a time-lapse video of animal fur collapsing into decay over the course of a week.

 

All this might prove heavy going indeed were it not for the persistent effervescence of a bright Coca Cola note running like ambient noise in the background.  I suspect that some combination of the iris and the powdery musks is what’s conjuring this effect.  But at times it also smells like all those minor aspects of benzoin – brown sugar, crackling brown paper, camphor, mint gum, and yes, Coca Cola – that only ever come out when benzoin is left alone to do its own thing rather than called in to serve as a member of the fantasy amber trope or as a rough stand in for vanilla.  No benzoin listed, by the way.  Pure conjecture on my part.  

  

Anyway, no matter how it’s configured, the contrast works.  And it seems to be a series of contrasts, rather than just one thing.   Notes-wise, you have something quite funky and animalic (scalpy) – the musks, the ambergris, and so on – jutting right up against something quite ethereal or even effervescent – the iris, benzoin, the powdered sugar of the Tibetan deer musk.  But there is also a textural contrast between the greasy/leathery and the dusty/sparkling.   In terms of ‘taste’, the contrast between the intensely sugariness of the musks and the sourness of the funky, leathery castoreum in the tailbone is clearly no afterthought either.  (Flanked by the saliva-ish musks, I find the murkiness of the castoreum to be very similar to the bases of other Ensar Oud scents, most notably Chypre Sultan, but the innovation here is all in that Coca Cola effervescence).    

 

All in all, a novel idea.  The sharp, greyish, concrete-like violet leaf (think Kerbside Violet by Lush) shoring up the elegant woodiness of the iris, the powdered sugar musks, the swelling chorus of animal gland secrete, just licked skin, and that miles-deep, bubbly Coca Cola sweetness.  Could I pull it off on the regular?  Probably not – it feels too much like hard work at times, and it is incredibly heavy.  Yet I found Iris Ghalia a tremendously exciting scent to wear.

 

*Ghaliyah, meaning ‘most precious’ or ‘most fragrant’ depending on the source, is a common type of mukhallat in the Middle East.  These were once all-natural affairs containing real ambergris, musks, oud, and spices, offered primarily to royal princes and members of the ruling class.  

 

 

Source of sample: Ensar Oud very kindly sent me a sample free of charge for review purposes (I paid a small customs fee).  I freely acknowledge that I am in a privileged position, as a fragrance writer, to receive free samples of the most expensive or rarest fragrances in the world.  The hope is that I perform some sort of service for the reader by reviewing them.

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Dorothea Bartek on Unsplash 

 

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Chypre Sultan by Ensar Oud

11th August 2022

 

Always brave, I think, for a perfumer to set their cap at making a chypre in this day and age.  Most falter not because they can’t find an oakmoss replacement or the low-atranol stuff, but because they are so focused on getting the moss element right that they miss the whole point of a chypre in the first place, which is that abstract, kaleidoscopic richness, that sweet-and-sour balance that makes your mouth both salivate and shrivel up a bit.   Good chypres feel murky and on the knife edge of bitter to me – a mysterious conflagration of forest floor and a miso-based tare that took hours to make.  

 

Chypre Sultan feels like a real chypre because it treats the chypric model (bergamot, moss, labdanum) more as a suggestion than a straitjacket.  Bergamot?  Forget bergamot, too stuffy, let’s put yuzu in instead.  Labdanum?  Booooring.  Tends to take over.  Put in the quietest of sandalwood instead, creamy and substantial enough to anchor the scent.

 

In playing fast and loose with the rules, Chypre Sultan successfully captures the mysterious umami character of chypre that eludes the grasp of others.  The opening is winey and dark, a dense carpet of forest floor notes – minty wet moss, woods, artemisia, hay, sage, perhaps even a touch of rubbery myrrh – which give it a distinctly medicinal tinge, similar to Tiger Balm.  It wears like the deepest green velvet this side of Scarlet O’ Hara’s curtain dress.

 

Naturally, being an Ensar Oud creation, Chypre Sultan is kitted out with the most exquisite medley of natural oud, castoreum, and musks, which weighs down the flightier herbal and citrus notes, and creates the ‘pea souper’ murkiness so essential to a chypre’s character.  It is so thick that I can almost taste it at the back of my mouth.

 

The castoreum alone is extraordinary – leathery, almost burnt in its dryness, and in conjunction with the minty-vegetal tones of the (genuine) oakmoss, distinctly savory in tone.  The musk element is not animalic or heavy-smelling in and of itself.  In fact, it seems to be there only to give the castoreum and oakmoss this buffed-out, diffused ‘glow’ effect.  Imagine burying your nose in a man’s leather jacket and then walking around in a ‘head space’ cloud of those same molecules all day long.  This feels like that.

 

Surprisingly for such a dense, winey stew, I can clearly smell the jonquil.  Jonquil is a type of daffodil (narcissus) that smells like hay but also quite like jasmine under some conditions.  At some point, the sweet, sunny wafts of hay and jasmine begin to shake loose of the darker backdrop, and the effect is like a sudden shaft of sunlight piercing the gloom of a medieval forest.

 

Bear in mind that this floral effect is really subtle.  There is, however, a moment when the savory (almost celery-like) oakmoss meets the jonquil, and I think of Vol de Nuit.  It is a similarly ‘long simmered greens’ train of thought that connects the two.  But of course Chypre Sultan is an indie-artisanal perfume, while Vol de Nuit is a perfume made in the grand manner of French classical perfumery, so both the finish and the intent are very different.  Chypre Sultan is, naturally, far richer, more pungent, and rougher around the edges than Vol de Nuit.   

 

But there is a distant link, nonetheless, and you might be the type of person who prefers the raw authenticity of the natural ouds, musks, or oakmoss that an artisan outfit can offer.  Chypre Sultan is Vol de Nuit if she got up from her table at Le Cinq, delicately wiped her lips on the Irish linen napkin, and disappeared off into Fontainebleau forest to roll around in the muck and the hummus and the animal carcasses, only to emerge naked ten hours later with nothing more than a smirk and eyeliner smudged all over her chin.  

 

There is only one slightly difficult moment for me, and that is when all the minty herbs and hay-like florals fade out, leaving only the surround system of the castoreum, musk, and oud to play out their slightly gloomy brown tune.  Without the distraction of the fresher notes, the oniony-sweat nuances of oakmoss, complete with that slight over-stewed celery tea note, start to wear on me a little.  However, the rich, rubbery castoreum, musk, and oud step in to smooth this over and it steadies itself, finishing out the day (and this is a serious all-day kind of thing) in a softly murky, leathery-foresty haze that hovers rather than ‘sits’ on your skin.

 

I am hard-pressed to say what Chypre Sultan might be compared to, because a perfume by an oud artisan like Ensar Oud is always going to be on a different level of pungency and purity to a commercial perfume.  So, allowing for the sheer ‘apples and oranges’-ness of the comparison, I suppose that Chypre Sultan reminds me a little of Diaghilev (Roja Dove) in terms of the bitter, foresty greenness and masculine-leaning character.  However, Diaghilev has a stouter floral core and, being a commercially-produced rather than artisanal perfume, lacks the leathery castoreum-musk depth of Chypre Sultan.

 

Chypre Palatin (Parfums MDCI) is also a fair comparison, but is much sweater and creamier, its florals appearing almost powdery in comparison (Chypre Sultan is a powder-free zone).  The Vol de Nuit linkage is but a fleeting impression and probably a figment of my overactive imagination; Dryad (Papillon) is another possibility because of its costus note. 

 

But in fairness, Chypre Sultan is far less classical in structure than these two fragrances, and in its ‘brewed up in a wild jungle’ intensity, comes closer to the tannic, crunchy-organic Peruvian Amazon experience that is Carta Moena 12|69.  In terms of murkiness, complexity, and that ‘Chinese meal’ completeness you get with a good chypre, it drifts along the same orbit of Kintsugi (Masque Milano) without smelling like it at all.  Either way, Chypre Sultan is very much its own thing, and that thing happens to be a force of nature chypre.

 

 

Source of Sample:  Ensar Oud very kindly sent me a sample free of charge for review purposes (I paid a small customs fee).  I freely acknowledge that I am in a privileged position, as a fragrance writer, to receive free samples of the most expensive or rarest fragrances in the world.  The hope is that I perform some sort of service for the reader by reviewing them.

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Philipp Pilz on Unsplash 

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The Attar Guide: Sandalwood Reviews P-S

28th March 2022

Hello fellow sandalwood freaks!  Remember to read the introduction here and the sandalwood primer here.  Also, Part I of the sandalwood reviews (0-M) here

 

 

Precious Woods (April Aromatics)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Precious Woods is a contender for the best woody perfume on the market today.  Although natural perfumes can sometimes be muddy, this one has impressive scope.  The top notes are dark and oily, almost pungent, with a full helping of aromatic fir balsam, pine, and the lactic sourness of sandalwood.  It ain’t pretty, but it is real.  As lung-filling as walking through a forest densely knotted with fir and cedarwood trees, the opening almost recreates the effect of the topnotes of Norne by Slumberhouse – while they do not smell alike, there is the same general sense of notes crowding in on you too thickly.


Soon, though, the initial tension dissipates.  Through the camphorous murk comes a wisp of incense smoke, weaving in and out, cutting the density, and paring back the oily balsams until you see the real subject matter of the scent standing there unobscured, namely the richest cedar in existence.  For much of the mid-section of Precious Woods, there is an almost equal dance between cedar and incense.

 

It smells richly spiced, slightly smoky, and muscular.  I am reminded, whenever I wear this, of the discipline it must take to direct attention to one material, without feathering off into extraneous detailing or piling just one more thing on.  If you have ever worn a perfume and lamented the perfumer’s inability to ‘leave well enough alone’, then try Precious Woods to see what curation smells like.

 

The best part of the scent is the aromatic, creamy brown sandalwood that rises up from the base.  It has the same spiced gingerbread sweetness and dairy-rich mouthfeel as in Neela Vermeire’s first three fragrances or vintage Bois des Îles (Chanel), other sandalwood-rich scents.  Precious Woods is admittedly an expensive choice for when you want a woody perfume, but if you really, really want a woody perfume, go straight in at the top end with Precious Woods and you won’t regret it.

 

The oil is also remarkable, but quite different from the eau de parfum.  It opens with an oud-like note, which is to say wood that is a little leathery and sour.  There is also a plasticky nuance to this topnote, like wood varnish or the terpenic whoosh from a newly-opened can of latex paint.  Right behind this accord is the gluey, peanutty rawness of freshly-split lumber, pointing to the presence of sandalwood.  But there is also quite a lot of cedarwood, its damp armpitty nuance reminding us of why so many perceive cedar as smelling a bit funky.

 

All the basic building blocks of the eau de parfum are present and correct in the oil, but the difference is that, in the oil version, they are all there at once, rather than unfolding gradually.  Crucially, an oud-like note replaces the coniferous balsam opening of the original.  With the fecal, coffee-ish properties of cedarwood on full display, the Precious Woods perfume oil initially smells quite like The Body Shop Sandalwood oil designed with higher quality materials and a much bigger budget.

 

Soon, however, the Precious Woods oil segues into a long mid-section that is roughly similar to that of the eau de parfum.  Thanks to the patchouli, cistus, and buddha wood, the dark aridity of the cedarwood is fleshed out and thickened by nuances of whiskey, amber, and woodsmoke.  This gives the wood a slightly sweeter, more relaxed character.

 

In the oil, the general impression is that of a log of wood fluffing out in anticipation of its serving of double-cream sandalwood.  Does this arrive?  Actually, no – or at least not to the extent it does in the original eau de parfum.  If you want a more sandalwood-focused experience, therefore, choose the eau de parfum.  If you are looking for a rich, smoky cedarwood experience, then the oil version of Precious Woods is the better option.  Both are insanely good. 

 

 

 

Pure Sandal (Al Haramain)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

The name must be one of the cheekiest pieces of misdirection in the business, but though it is neither pure nor sandal, Al Haramain’s Pure Sandal is a pleasing little thing.  It at least makes a valiant effort to recreate something of the sweet-and-sour aspects of a Mysore oil using synthetic sandalwood molecules, which is more than can be said for many other oils with sandalwood in the name. 

 

The first clue to its synthetic construction lies in the booming sillage of the perfume when first applied to the skin.  It immediately fills the room with a loud woodiness in a way that no pure sandalwood oil does.  Rich and sour at first, the scent eventually develops a slightly sweet, powdery finish that nonetheless remains fresh.  Men could easily wear this.  Pure Sandal is a reasonably pleasant attempt at a sandalwood aroma, one that, if you are into layering, will do a creditable job of lending simple rose oils or attars a ‘sandalwoody’ boost.

 

Apart from the obvious tomfoolery over the name, this is not a bad option for those who want a sandalwood fix but who find themselves on a tight budget.  Personally, I would just adjust the name to read Al Haramain ‘Pure Sandal’ rather than Al Haramain Pure Sandal because those inverted commas convey a more honest message.

 

 

Photo by Abby Savage on Unsplash

 

Royal Parvati (Ava Luxe)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Royal Parvati is Jicky (Guerlain) as seen through an indie sandalwood haze.  The resemblance to civet-laden Guerlain classics is helped along by (I suspect) either a dollop of black-brown ambergris, with its intimate, halitosis-like funk, or a synthetic civet material.

 

The lime-peel brightness in the opening recreates with eerie accuracy the famous ‘curdled cream’ topnote of both Jicky and Shalimar.  In the case of Jicky and Shalimar, it is the meeting of lemon and vanillin that prompts this effect.  In Royal Parvati, it is likely the cream of the sandalwood interacting with the silvery, high-toned topnotes of the Peru balsam or orris root.  It never fails to amaze me that the complex note interactions that makes a Jicky or a Shalimar so distinctive can be arrived at – whether accidentally or otherwise – by smashing other materials with broadly similar effects into each other at high velocity.

 

Over time, the filthy ambergris or civet swells up even further, impregnating every fiber of the creamy woods.  Royal Parvati eventually settles on the aroma of split logs in an Indian sandalwood forest – humid and milky – but with the crotchy funk of a hot woodsman who has marked his territory by rubbing his nether regions into the grain of the wood.  The result is a deeply musky, civety wood scent that gives you all the naughty bits of an unneutered Guerlain without weighing you down in baby powder.  In my humble opinion, Royal Parvati is one of the true standouts of indie oil perfumery.

 

 

 

Sandal 100k (FeelOud)

Type: essential oil

 

 

Sandal 100k is distilled from the buried roots of old Santalum album trees harvested and cleared from land in Indonesia.  Completely forgotten about, the rootstock of these noble old trees lay in the ground until the locals figured out there was precious oil in them there roots!  Sandal 100k was distilled by Russian Adam of FeelOud, one of those oud pioneers who upped and left a comfortable, suburban life in the West to spend their lives distilling precious oils in the humid, fly-ridden jungles of the Far East, simply for the love of real oud and sandalwood oils.

 

To make the oil, the roots of old trees – all aged at least between eighty and a hundred years – were dug up, cleaned off, and set out to dry.  The roots were then broken down into small shards, and finally, pulped into a sawdust-type mixture which was placed in the distilling pot.  Technically, S. album roots enjoy the same sandalwood bragging rights as heartwood from a one hundred year old s. album tree because it is both the right species (S. album) and the right age.

 

Sandal 100k smells bright, greenish, and terpene-rich at the offset, with all the nutty, savory sourness characteristic of Santalum album perched just behind it.  The green rootiness dies back quickly, allowing the salty, buttery sides of the oil to emerge.  For the first part of the ride, therefore, the oil lingers in the aromatic, fresh category of Santalum album, but as time goes on, it reveals a rich, sweet nuttiness that qualifies it as the perfect sandalwood for everyday use.

 

 

 

Sandal (Al Shareef Oudh)

Type: essential oil

 

 

Sandal is a blend of Indian sandalwood (Santalum album) and Australian sandalwood (Santalum spiccatum), cleverly mixed to ensure that one fills out the gaps in the other.  The Australian sandalwood adds a rugged, hearty aromatic body that gives the soft, pale, creamy Indian sandalwood a backbone, and the milkiness of the Indian sandalwood tones down the blunt, piney greenness of the Aussie stuff.  The idea is carried off to perfection.  It is sweet, creamy, and incensey in the Mysore fashion, but also nicely outdoorsy and fresh.  The two oils complement each other very well, and neither dominates.

 

If you like the musky, armpitty feel of the cedar-sandalwood blend in Tam Dao EdP by Diptyque or the brusque creaminess of Wonderwood by Comme des Garcons, then know that Sandal by Al Shareef Oudh shares a similar aroma profile.  It is sweet, nutty, and aromatic, but also blandly creamy – a perfect balance of the rough and the smooth.  Unlike the commercial Diptyque fragrance, however, Sandal’s central accord is durable, meaning that it hits its stride and stays there for the entire day.  Doubtless Sandal would not satisfy a Mysore purist, but as an everyday sandalwood wear, it is a great option.

 

 

 

Sandalwood (Nemat)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

The Nemat version of sandalwood is famous for being a good, hippy-style representation of what sandalwood smells like.  However, to my nose, it smells like amyris or another wood oil with some creamy sandalwood synthetics thrown in for volume.  It smells good but generic.  The creamy loudness of the sandalwood synthetics masks a certain varnishy, pinesol tone to the underlying wood.  The best one can say about it is that it develops a rather attractive raisin-like sweetness in the drydown.

 

 

Photo by Austin Wilcox on Unsplash

 

Sandalwood Spirit (Abdul Samad Al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

ASAQ’s Sandalwood is a lush, tropical version of sandalwood, its generously humid wood fleshed out by notes of coconut milk and flaked coconut.  The faintly gluey nuances up top are markers of authenticity, as is the oil’s quietness.  However, it would not surprise me to learn there was a synthetic smoother or two in the mix here, helping to create the perfectly rounded impression of what smells like expensive European sunscreen.

 

Soft, milky, with coconut cream notes dissolved in a clean, white musk trail, Sandalwood Spirit wears more like a finished perfume than an essential oil.  It is quite powdery in the drydown, and even features a hint of rose hidden within its folds.  It will win over anybody who prefers discreet smells over loud or pungent ones, even if that means making a few concessions on the purity front. 

 

 

Photo by Sam Hojati on Unsplash

 

Santal Carmin (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Santal Carmin by Atelier Cologne is a wonderful and slightly odd sandalwood fragrance that smells more like hot milk, Petit Beurre biscuits, and the inside of a new car than actual sandalwood.  Its creaminess is slightly generic, featuring a paint-by-numbers porridge accord that one often experiences in more gourmandy sandalwoods.  But it has its attractions too, such as the flash of something citric up top to lift the scent into the air, and that guilty-pleasure nursery pudding facet in the drydown.

 

The dupe smells just as chemically-engineered as the original and follows the same basic blueprint with regards to texture, structure, and development.  The sweet saffron-laced milk-and-biscuit accord kicks in a touch earlier in the original, while a very tart lime topnote extends the impression of freshness for far longer in the dupe.  The original is more creamily suede, whereas the dupe is more creamily pleather.  But these are minor differences.  If you enjoy Santal Carmin but don’t fancy the price tag (and who does?), then this dupe is an excellent substitute.

 

 

 

Santal Mysore (Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: tincture

 

 

This sample is a tincture, not a distillation, so there is a blast of perfumer’s alcohol to contend with at the start.  This makes sense, as Dominique Dubrana makes all-natural, spray-based perfumes, and thus makes all his tinctures by hand too.  Experiencing a material like Mysore sandalwood through the medium of a tincture rather than an oil allows one to glimpse facets of the material that might escape notice in a pure oil.  It is almost as if the tincturing liquid stretches out the space between the molecules, allowing us to see them more clearly in isolation.

 

The Santal Mysore from La Via del Profumo reveals a surprisingly floral nuance to the sandalwood, a mélange of rose and gardenia over a salted butter and cream version of the famed wood.  It is savory and nutty, with a texture close to cream cheese.  It is beautiful but ephemeral.  I find myself applying it over and over to rewind to the moment where that gardenia bomb detonates.

 

 

Photo by Maude Frédérique Lavoie on Unsplash

 

Santal 33 (Le Labo)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Famously the signature scent of thousands of hipsters in certain areas of Manhattan, Santal 33 by Le Labo has become a bit of a design cliché – the olfactory equivalent of the Barcelona chair or the man bun.  But just because everyone is wearing it doesn’t make it a bad fragrance.  It is maybe even a darned good fragrance, as long as you are able to park your expectations at the door.


For one thing, despite the name, Santal 33 is really a leather-focused scent, with a salty, green cucumberish quality that is almost aquatic.  It opens with a powerful blast of chemical violet, salt, leather, and that aqueous herbal element, making me think of vetivers like Fleur de Sel by Miller Harris.  But focusing too closely on the individual elements is of little use here because the total effect is so forceful that you just have to give yourself over for the ride.  Santal 33 is intensely masculine: full of raw oily leather, cedar, and balsam.  It makes me think of a lifestyle concept store – one of those cavernous, white empty studio spaces where they place a tangle of parched white driftwood in one corner and a red pleather couch in the other.


Only much later on does the typical aroma of Australian sandalwood makes it presence known, with its light green aroma of dried coconut husks and freshly-hewn cedar logs.  In general, this is a dry, woody-leathery scent with a green, sea frond aspect, rather than the lactonic sandalwood its name seems to suggest.  It smells slightly of books, the raw, harsh chemical breeze of salt and Iso E Super whitewashing the scent until the grain of newly-printed paper appears.

 

The perfume oil of Santal 33 is, for me, infinitely preferable to the eau de parfum.  It smells immediately of the scent’s most vital elements, namely that tough, violety leather and green coconut, but with all the petrochemical harshness removed.  If you like Santal 33 but are nervous of its chemical-driven loudness, then allow me to beckon you over to the perfume oil corner.  Good stuff.

 

 

 

Santal Royale (Ensar Oud)

Type: essential oil

 

 

Unlike Santal Sultan below, Santal Royale is a pure Mysore oil, distilled from vintage stock (thirty to forty years old) of red Mysore heartwood.  Also, in contrast to Sultan, which has been aging in the bottle since 2005, Santal Royale is a relatively young oil, having been produced in 2013.  It is a very interesting experiment, therefore, to compare the two oils, seeing as one comes from non-Mysore s. album but has been aged for almost fifteen years, while the other comes from a vintage Mysore stock of wood but is a relative ‘young pup’ in the bottle.

And aroma-wise, there is a difference.  Whereas aging has rendered the Sultan smooth and buttery, Santal Royale still retains the lively sparkle of freshly-cut wood.  This is especially apparent in the topnotes, which are fresh and silvery, with hints of menthol, crushed peanut shells, and rubber.  Above all, it is bright, sandalwood floodlit from all sides, little veins of sap and salt sparkling like diamonds in the grain of the wood.

There is zero greenness, and no camphor or pine.  There is a hint of mint at the start, but the cushioned mintiness of a menthol cigarette more than fresh herb.  The main characteristic defining the heart is a very salty, bright blond wood note.  On his website, Ensar mentions that it possesses notes that could remind people variously of ambergris or musk.  It does not remind me of deer musk at all, but I can see where the ambergris comparison comes in, in that they share a sparkling minerality characteristic of white ambergris.

It is not as dark or as velvety as Santal Sultan, but with its bright, tenacious ‘salty peanut shell’ aroma, Santal Royale probably comes across to people as more sandalwood-ish at its core.  In the drydown, a sugared thread of incense crystals dances in and out of the savory, nutty aroma.  Texture-wise, it is far more robust and tenacious than Santal Sultan and might even be described as invigorating.  It has a lively, movement-filled presence on the skin.  

 

 

 

Santal Sultan (Ensar Oud)

Type: essential oil

 

 

Santal Sultan proves that santalum album grown outside of the Mysore region can be every bit as luscious as anything grown in Mysore itself, providing that care is taken with the quality of the wood and the distillation process.  When I say quality, I mean oil distilled from properly mature s. album heartwood or roots – over a hundred years old for preference – and by careful distillation, I mean someone who knows how to supplement elements that might be missing to make up the traditional Mysore flavor profile.

Santal Sultan is an oil that meets all these criteria.  It is made from a distillation of a hundred-year-old roots of santalum album trees in Aceh, a semi-autonomous Indonesian region located on the northernmost tip of Sumatra – which takes care of the age issue.  Then, the robust reddish-brown depth missing from the pale rooty oil was added back via a co-distillation of the Aceh roots with red heartwood from wild Tanzanian sandalwood trees, which lends the oil a rich, almost incensey depth.  Taken together, the two woods create a true Mysore aroma.  Now that is alchemy.

Note-wise, Santal Sultan opens with a smoky, rooty smell that recalls a mixture of orris butter, green wood, burning rubber, and leathery oud oil.  There is an almost vaporous, solvent-like quality to the topnotes that risks getting you high if you sniff too closely.  This collection of aromas, which might be loosely categorized as antiseptic, gives the oil a medicinal austerity that remains lightly present throughout.

The oil settles quickly thereafter into a classic Mysore profile: buttery, salty, savory-sweet, with a faint backbone of reddish, aromatic wood dust and the sort of ambery warmth associated with labdanum.  It is rich and smooth, like a piece of wholemeal toast slathered with a soft salted butter and a pinch of cassonade.  There is also a noticeable vein of spice running through the oil – nutmeg pulsed lightly with black pepper. For all its buttery, spicy, incensey richness, however, this oil is also very soft.  This is the oil I would buy for meditation and yoga, were I constitutionally suited to any of those sitting-still-for-long-periods activities.

If I were to point a beginner in the direction of one oil that demonstrated – reliably – all the classic characteristics of a Mysore sandalwood oil, then Santal Sultan would be it.  In the absence of Mysore-grown oils that have been properly matured, this oil is probably the best example of a Mysore-type sandalwood oil on the market today. 

 

 

Photo by Max Griss on Unsplash

 

Serenity Sandalwood Oudh (NAVA)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Beautifully raw and aged Sandalwood from India and Egypt with Fossilized Sandalwood all blended into a deep, smokey Indian Oudh with hints of our originally named: Arabian Oudh and Egyptian Temple Oudh (from the original ICONS series).

 

Setting aside the fact that sandalwood does not grow in Egypt and that fossilized sandalwood is not a material used in perfumery, Serenity Sandalwood Oudh smells neither like real sandalwood nor the fantasy kind.  Rather, it follows almost to a T the lines of the idea put forth in Alkemia’s Arabesque, i.e., a creamy, woodsy amber with a moreish crystalized sugar finish.  More crème brulée than wood, in other words.

 

Don’t get me wrong – Serenity Sandalwood Oudh smells absolutely delicious, and for those specifically looking for a sparkly, sugary ‘white’ amber (creamy rather than resinous), this will not disappoint.  But if you are looking for an authentic Indian sandalwood aroma or a glimpse of the famed, er, Egyptian sandalwood?  Look elsewhere.  This is a pretty ambery-woody affair with an effervescent, powdery finish.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course.  It just does not do what it says on the tin.

 

 

 

Sondos (Sandal Rose) (Al Rehab)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

I would be shocked to discover that Sondos (otherwise known as Sandal Rose) contained any real sandalwood or indeed, any real rose.  Nonetheless, every time I smell this cheap little perfume oil, my nose is fooled into thinking it is smelling a light, delicate Indian sandalwood kissed by a bright rose.

 

The sandalwood note is remarkable for its fineness, by which I mean that it does not contain any of the brutish, terpenic sourness of Australian sandalwood.  It just smells soft, slightly golden, clear, and sweet-nutty.  This points to the use of a synthetic sandalwood molecule such as Javanol or Ebanol in the mix somewhere.  But really, when the effect is as pleasurable as this, who cares if the sandalwood is real or not?  At this price, I certainly don’t.  

 

The rose note has been well chosen too.  Fresh but gently rounded, with nary a hint of harsh lemon or hotel soap, it exists purely to add an innocent flush to the cheeks of the sandalwood.

 

But be sure to inhale quickly, for this is an experience that lasts scarcely ten minutes before disappearing completely.  A delight for rose and sandalwood lovers, you will forgive its short duration in exchange for its unassuming prettiness and shockingly low price.

 

 

 

Wild Mysore Sandalwood Sample (via Sultan Pasha)

Type: essential oil

 

 

This sample was provided to me as part of a larger sampler that included Sultan Pasha attars as well as samples of certain raw materials, such as oud and sandalwood.  It is a vintage, wild Mysore sandalwood oil (exact age unknown), and, during my research, served as a reliable baseline for how Mysore should smell.  The aroma profile of this sample is gentle, blond, with an olfactory range stretching from raw wood and lightly toasted peanut shells to a warm, dry-creamy aromatic aroma with some sourish, lactonic notes.  It is the quietest of all the sandalwood oil samples I own.  However, its shyness and delicacy are part of its charm.

 

 

About Me:  A two-time Jasmine Award winner for excellence in perfume journalism, I write a blog (this one!) and have authored many guides, articles, and interviews for Basenotes.  (My day-to-day work is in the scientific research for development world).  Thanks to the generosity of friends and acquaintances in the perfume business, I have been privileged enough to smell the raw materials that go into perfumes and learn about the role they play in both Western and Eastern perfumery.   Artisans have sent vials of the most precious materials on earth such as ambergris, deer musk, and oud.  But I have also spent thousands of my own money, buying oud oils directly from artisans and tons of dodgy (and possibly illegal) stuff on eBay.  In the reviews sections, I will always tell you where my sample came from and whether I paid for it or not.

 

Source of samples:  I purchased samples from Ava Luxe, NAVA, Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics, Abdes Salaam Attar, Al Rehab, Nemat, Al Haramain, Sultan Pasha Attars, and Le Labo. The samples from Ensar Oud, FeelOud, Al Shareef Oudh, Abdul Samad Al Qurashi, and April Aromatics were sent to me free of charge either by the brands or a distributor.  

 

 

Note on monetization: My blog is not monetized.  But if you’d like to support my work or show appreciation for any of the content I put out, you can always buy me a coffee using the little buymeacoffee button.  Thank you! 

 

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

Attars & CPOs Cult of Raw Materials Mukhallats Review Round-Ups Sandalwood Single note exploration The Attar Guide

The Attar Guide: Sandalwood Reviews 0-M

24th March 2022

 

Hello fellow sandalwood freaks!  Remember to read the introduction here and the sandalwood primer here.

 

 

2016 Mysore Special Reserve (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: essential oil

 

 

Opening with the milky peanut shell aroma characteristic of Mysore, complete with gluey, solvent-like topnotes, the 2016 Mysore Special Reserve quickly segues into a heart of aromatic sandalwood with zero sweetness or creaminess.  Imagine a log of sandalwood split open with an axe, the air suddenly fizzing with camphor, mint, and red dust.

 

Later, there are hints of sweet milk and yoghurt, as well as green rose petals.  Its general character is clean, aromatic, and tending more towards camphoraceous-minty than creamy-sweet.  Sinewy, therefore, rather than voluptuous.  2016 Mysore Special Reserve also smells undeniably young.  Its minty rawness will likely gain more depth and creaminess with careful aging.  However, there is tenderness in its sedate, peanutty milkiness, which is what makes it a beautiful choice to wear right now.  Subtle and fresh, 2016 Mysore Special Reserve is a great option for those who want the luxury of wearing a Mysore oil every day without the fuss or distraction of a more aged oil. 

 

 

 

2017 Deep & Buttery Mysore (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: essential oil

 

 

This is a result of a very interesting experiment whereby JK DeLapp wondered if sandalwood could be treated or distilled to smell like an oud.  He gave the sandalwood chips a good long soak in water before distilling, a method usually reserved for Hindi-style oud oil distillations.  Disturbingly, the experiment works.

 

What started out life as a blameless sandalwood has been pressed and massaged into the shape of a particularly feral oud oil distilled from wood that has been soaked for over fourteen days.  The fermented flavor is exactly that of Hindi, and indeed, this oil could easily be mistaken for one were it not for the fact that, behind the initial wave of funk, there is no hay or smoke, only the aromatic blondness of Mysore sandalwood.

 

Despite the name, this oil is not particularly creamy, deep, or buttery.  Rather, it is all freshly-stripped bark and crushed pinecones.  With an undercurrent of bile duct secretion.   

 

Further on, the oil develops a leathery facet, like the cured leather of horse saddles in a tack room.  Mingling with the piney, silvery freshness of the wood, the outcome is one of green leather with a camphoraceous undertone.  But there is a lingering pungency that never lets you forget about that long, moldy soak.

 

A Mysore sandalwood that smells like a Hindi oud oil, huh.  The phrase ‘who asked for this?’ comes to mind.  This is definitely worth testing if you want to see what is possible when you experiment with different soaking times and distillation methods (not to mention different woods).  However, if you are looking for the classic, buttery Mysore sandalwood profile, then look elsewhere.  For my personal tastes, this is an interesting experiment but also a waste of perfectly good Mysore sandalwood.

 

 

 

2017 Royal Reserve Mysore (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: essential oil

 

 

The 2017 Royal Reserve Mysore begins in much the same vein as the 2016 version, with a gluey, peanut-shell delicacy that is all silvery topnotes and little else.  But it soon develops a robust heart that diverges sharply from the 2016 version by way of a phenomenal myrrh note that smells like wet, loamy earth, freshly-sliced mushrooms, and resin.  The age-old loveliness of the typical Mysore aroma – aromatic dryness tugging against creamy sweetness – follows on the heels of this myrrhic wave.

 

Oddly enough, for a younger oil, the 2017 version does not smell as green or as minty-fresh as the 2016 batch, but rather, earthy, rich, and spicy.  Whether you prefer one over the other will depend on whether you favor fresh and green over earthy and ‘red’, or vice versa.  My preference is for the 2017 batch.

 

 

 

Absolute Sandalwood (Clive Christian)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Absolute Sandalwood combines an ashy tobacco note with aromatic sandalwood and a whole pain d’épices worth of rich spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, and clove) for a result that splits the difference between Egoïste (Chanel) and Journey for Men (Amouage).

 

If you are looking for sweet and creamy a la Bois des Îles (Chanel) or Samsara (Guerlain), then know that this is not that.  But if you like a spicy, rugged masculine take on sandalwood, then Absolute Sandalwood is a winner.  With the Coca Cola richness of Egoïste coming to play, and a touch of warm resin flirting around the basenotes, this is the sort of stuff that might reasonably be described as ‘handsome’.

 

It is rich, warm, and thoroughly satisfying.  Absolute Sandalwood remains true to the Clive Christian approach with this line of concentrated perfume oils, which is to say it is relatively sugar-free and tending towards the masculine side of the spectrum.

 

 

 

Photo by Marion Botella on Unsplash

 

Alec d’Urberville (Arcana)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: The profligate essence of an aristocratic libertine. Amber resin, charred Madagascar vanilla, French cognac, clove, sandalwood, and dark musk. Limited Edition.

 

 

Alec d’Urberville is a turbo-powered fist bump of sweaty-metallic clove and rugged sandalwood, with a thick, gooey molasses accord tucked into its trunk.  The interplay between sour, sweet, and burnt spice gives it an interestingly smoky char.  It continues on in this vein for most of the ride before quieting down to a dank sandalwood with liquor and vanilla bean paste rubbed into the grain.

 

For fans of spicy-woody perfumes, Alec d’Urberville is an interesting proposition.  Understand that you must be able to tolerate clove notes in order to make it past the first hour or so.  To me, it reads like an easy-going perfume oil version of Diptyque’s cinnamon-and-opoponax masterpiece, Eau Lente.  I recommend it highly to people who spend a lot of time outdoors, because, when mixed with the musk of one’s own body after physical exertion, it forms a halo of fiery woods and golden vanilla around its wearer that is sustenance onto itself.

 

 

 

Arabesque (Alkemia)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: An exquisitely spiritual blend of beautifully aged Arabian sandalwood, Mysore sandalwood, precious Egyptian kyphi, sweet orris root, benzoin resin, cassia, and blessed spikenard.

 

 

Despite the initial blast of clean, terpenic wood, Arabesque is not an especially sandalwood-forward blend.  After the blond woodiness of the topnotes fades, it develops into a powdery benzoin-driven amber with the glitter of iris and lemon sugar on top.  This is Alkemia’s most popular blend, and I can see why.  It is sweet, sparkling, and soapy – a freshly powdered Siamese kitten in scent form.

 

But it is not sandalwood.  Instead, it is the interaction between the iris (dusty, silvery) and the benzoin (vanillic, lemony, cinnamon-spicy) that really drives this car.  Kyphi, the ancient Egyptian version of barkhour – compressed incense blocks of powdered sandalwood, resins, and aromatics – contributes a vaguely gummy, incensey sweetness that underpins the benzoin and iris.

 

It is a lovely perfume.  But the whole ‘aged Arabian sandalwood’ backstory makes my palms itch.  Arabian sandalwood, aged or otherwise, does not exist because sandalwood trees do not grow in the Middle East.  There are, of course, Arabian sandalwood perfume oils.  These are largely cheap sandalwood synthetics mixed with other oils to achieve a certain ‘Arabian’-flavored exoticism.  Although most of the fragrance world is driven by fantasy and make-believe, indie companies like Alkemia and Nava – another serial offender – really ought to stop flogging the idea of exclusivity or rarity in connection to materials bought off the rack at The Perfumer’s Apprentice.  

 

Of course, as consumers, we should also try harder not to fall quite so hard or so fast for marketing guff like this.  Given the current cost and rarity of real Mysore sandalwood oil, we should all assume that a blend costing about twenty dollars for fifteen milliliters will not contain any of it. 

 

And to be fair, for Alkemia, and most of the American indie oil sector, sandalwood is more a fantasy of a precious raw material than the precious raw material itself.  Which, by the way, is fine.  It is the premise of the World Wrestling Entertainment, i.e., if we are all willingly involved in the suspension of disbelief, then nobody gets hurt. But sprinkling the word ‘Mysore sandalwood’ in the notes list willy nilly like that?  Quit your bullshit, Jan.

 

Rant aside, Arabesque is a thoroughly loveable perfume oil and will please fans of soft spicy-ambery scents that purr rather than roar.  It shares some ground with Iris Oriental (Parfumerie Generale), Fleur Oriental (Miller Harris), and even Sideris (Maria Candida Gentile), albeit far simpler than any of these.

 

 

Photo by Rachael Gorjestani on Unsplash

 

Arrival of The Queen of Sheba (Possets)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Mysore sandalwood, suede, frankincense, patchouli, 4 vanillas. This blend is tough and tender at the same time, like the queen herself. This one makes vanilla turn tricks as an oriental ingredient and all of the fabulous elements get along so well. It is an instant sex classic.

 

 

Let’s be clear.  Not a single drop of Mysore sandalwood oil was harmed in the production of Arrival of The Queen of Sheba.  Like many fragrance fans, I care more about the magic a talented perfumer can pull off in a composition than whether the materials they use are natural or synthetic.  The most stunning perfumes in the world – Mitsouko, Shalimar, Chanel No. 5 – are a mix of synthetic and natural materials, but blended in such a complex, abstract manner that you only notice their overall beauty.

 

I do not have a particular fetish for all-natural perfumes, or perfumes that mythologize one of the constituent raw materials.  But I do not particularly agree with the widespread practice of being disingenuous with customers over the naturalness or source of certain materials.  None of the American indie oil perfume houses can afford to import or buy genuine Mysore sandalwood oil in the quantity or price required to make perfumes that sell at twenty dollars per six milliliters.  One might argue that the Mysore sandalwood narrative so frequently used in the American indie sector is a harmless piece of fiction – a social pact between company and customer.  Still, the fake sourcing narratives rankle with those who have smelled the genuine materials or know even a little about the difficulty of obtaining them.  

 

Marketing shenanigans aside, Arrival of The Queen of Sheba opens with a blast of photograph-drying chemicals, momentarily catching me off guard and making me wonder if I am in for a bit of a wild ride here.  But no.  While Sheba boasts four types of vanilla, one molecule less or one molecule more makes not even the slightest bit of difference to the creamy blandness of the outcome.  Don’t get me wrong – The Queen of Sheba is genuinely very nice, drying down to a pale woodsy affair with soft milky suede accents.  But for the price, it is not doing very much.

 

I think the main problem in Arrival of The Queen of Sheba is that it features the signature Possets vanilla (or four different variations on it) in a starring role instead of relegating it to the back where it can do no harm.  When pushed to the fore, you can see plainly that it is the sort of vanilla that smells a bit plasticky, like melted ice-cream or a vanilla candle at the Yankee Candle store.  It is not offensive or jarring, but it does smell slightly cheap.

 

 

 

Bois Exotique (Ava Luxe)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Bois Exotique is a puzzle.  It features a sharp, almost rooty sandalwood note (surely synthetic) over an amber and patchouli base that reads as creamy, soapy, and vaguely minty.  The balmy mouthfeel of the sweetened patchouli is close to the waxy white chocolate texture of Hiram Green’s wonderful Arbolé Arbolé.  (In terms of overall aroma, however, they are nothing alike).

 

There is also an attractive Coca Cola note at the beginning, common to many superb sandalwood fragrances such as Bois des Îles and Egoïste, both by Chanel.  Yet, undeniably, the quality and density of this scent places Bois Exotique in the same category as other indie perfume oils rather than alongside those belonging to classic perfumery.  There is both a handmade quality and a loose, casual structure to Bois Exotique that reminds me of popular ‘sandalwoody’ indie oils, such as Alkemia’s Arabesque or Nava’s Santalum.

 

Still, no shade intended.  There is something deeply pleasing about the dichotomy in Bois Exotique between the bitter, woody facets and the sweet waxy-milky facets.  Powdery incense notes shift in like a sprinkling of crystallized sugar on top of plain bread.  The combination of bitter and sweet adds a frisson to the scent.  At points, it is as moreish as chocolate.

 

It is this clever counter-posing of notes that helps me to finally settle the overall place of Ava Luxe in the pecking order as somewhere between the American indie oil sector and niche.  Her work is more nuanced than most indie oil companies, and she is deeply beloved by her loyal customer base.  Yet the uneven quality and low quality of some of the raw materials rank her output at just slightly below other American indie perfume brands such as DSH Perfumes, Aftelier, and Sonoma Scent Studio.  Still, when something works, it really works.  And on balance, Bois Exotique works.

 

 

 

Dabur Chandan Ka Tail (Oil of Sandalwood)  

Type: essential oil

 

 

Dabur sandalwood oil is pure Santalum album from India, though not from the Mysore region.  It is sold as an ayurvedic medicine rather than a perfume, a fact many sandalwood fans (including me) choose to ignore, using it as perfume instead.  It comes in a small glass container with a rubber cap to allow penetration by a syringe, but for perfume purposes, it is highly advisable that, once opened, you decant the oil into another container so as to avoid contamination from the rubber cap.  Personally, I am not that meticulous, so my bottle of Dabur oil sits happily in its original bottle, and if there is a little rubbery taint to the topnotes, well then I do not mind.  It adds character.

 

Dabur is a solid Santalum album oil, as equally unpretentious in aroma as it is in price.  The topnotes are tainted with a bitter, smoky rubber overtone, which I genuinely enjoy.  Once past that, the oil settles into a sweet, buttery sandal aroma with miles of depth.  Like all s. album oils, it is not loud, but it is certainly a great deal more robust than more delicate artisanal oils.  It is also not as linear, thanks to those notes of rubber, smoke, and fuel exhaust.  I do not know if the supply of this oil is sustainable, so I am planning to stock up.  Though it works brilliantly under commercial perfumes that need a sandalwood boost, it is also a thoroughly satisfying wear on its own.

 

 

Photo by Laura Mitulla on Unsplash

 

Khaliji (Al Rehab)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Khaliji is the most daring fragrance in the Al Rehab rollerball line-up.  In pairing a fresh, aromatic lemongrass with an armpitty cumin, it arrives at a compromise between a good Southeast Asian curry and the undershirt of a Cairo taxi driver in high summer.  It is equally repellent and attractive, which is, of course, precisely what makes it interesting.

 

Its vegetally-green cardamom note momentarily recalls the water-logged ‘figgy’ sandalwood of Le Labo’s Santal 33.  But in truth, the strongest point of comparison is to the aromatic, cumin-flecked woody notes of Le Labo’s Rose 31.  In case that comparison got your hopes up, let me equivocate.  First, there is no rose in the Al Rehab (some will not miss it).  Second, the scratchy synthetic wood aromachemical that defines the Le Labo is absent, replaced by a smooth, featureless sandalwood accord.  Third, the curried-armpit nuance is stronger in the Al Rehab. 

 

I find Khaliji to be a striking fragrance, with a deeply aromatic drydown that lasts forever on the skin.  Get past the shock of the cumin-and-lemon tandem in the opening and you are good to go.  It would make for an excellent masculine, its swampy, spice-laden woodiness blooming beautifully on sweaty male skin in summer.  The juxtaposition between the fresher aromatic notes (lemongrass, cardamom) and the warmer, dustier ones (cumin, sandalwood) is very well handled, especially for a low-budget oil perfume such as this.  The final impression it leaves is that of savory bread pudding made entirely of creamed woods.

 

 

 

Majan (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

 

 

Majan is a sort of twin to Molook, except where Molook is a duet between Hindi oud and ambergris, Majan is a duet between sandalwood and ambergris.  As in Molook, the quality of the ambergris used in Majan is sublime – softly fecal, marine, warm, deep, and with tobacco and leather tonalities for depth and vigor.  Something about it feels aged, like the pages of an old manuscript, but there is a feathery sweetness there too.  The vintage feel is enhanced by the slight civet-like undertone of the ambergris.  Wearing it may remind vintage lovers of older ambergris- and civet-heavy fragrances such as Patou Joy parfum and Dioressence.

 

Working backwards from the base – ambergris – to the top, the first half of this attar is almost purely sandalwood, with a side of musky rose.  The sandalwood used in Majan is very high quality.  There is quite possibly some amount of Mysore sandalwood here, although it is might also be oil from the newer Santalum album plantations in Australia mixed with a sandalwood synthetic or two to get it to sing.  Whatever the material, the opening is a joyously creamy sandalwood affair that will tug on the heartstrings of any sandalwood aficionado.

 

The prevalent aroma, to start with, is slightly oily, peanut-like, and raw, like a freshly-split log of wood, which is typical of genuine Mysore sandalwood.  The lumberyard notes soon soften as they melt into a warm, rosy, milky aroma associated with fine sandalwood.  Rose adds a flush to the cheeks of the wood, and vanilla a sweet creaminess – but these are bit players, there just to help flesh out the aroma of the sandalwood.

 

At some point in the life of the attar, the sandalwood and rose drop away completely, revealing the warm saltwater taffy of that wonderful ambergris.  The switch is complete, leaving very little overlap between the first layer (sandalwood-rose) and the second (ambergris).  However, when the two main players of any attar are as incredible as natural sandalwood and ambergris, then it matters not if they aren’t seamlessly knitted together.  Majan is first rate work, and my personal favorite from the older Amouage line just behind Badr al Badour.

 

 

 

Memphis (NAVA)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Company description: Sandalwood, Spicey [sic] Berries, Egyptian Musk, Citrus, Heliotrope

 

 

I am beginning to suspect that the strangely waxy-gluey nuance at the top of most NAVA blends is their version of sandalwood.  Pitched halfway between furniture polish and vegetable oil, it casts an unattractive layer of sealing wax over the other notes, obscuring and muffling their sound to such an extent that one sometimes smells very little indeed.  I am at a loss to name what natural or synthetic sandalwood smells like this, but its blond, pale nature does indeed suggest a sandalwood note of some derivation.

 

As with most NAVA blends, the muffling wax ladled over the opening of Memphis eventually dissipates somewhat to reveal something of the underlying structure, which here consists of sharp fruit, citrus, and an accord that I would describe as ‘generic men’s aftershave’.  Mixing with the blandly oily sandalwood, this forms an accord that is both fresh-bitter and milky-gluey.  This might have been a better perfume had the dial been moved more definitively towards one or the other, but as it is, Memphis is the epitome of ‘almost there-ness’.  I don’t think Elvis would have been particularly moved by this either. 

 

 

 

Mysore 1984 (Ensar Oud)

Type: essential oil

 

 

This oil, a vintage Mysore oil unearthed and verified by Ensar Oud himself, was allegedly stored for decades in a rusty old tin by a guy who had no idea he was sitting on a pot of gold.  (Maybe it is true, I don’t know. In the artisanal sector, swallowing a bit of guff comes with the territory).  Anyway, in what seems to be an almost predictable piece of good fortune, the same vendor managed to unearth a second tin of the same oil, sold it to Ensar, and is now once again available for purchase.  As ever, once it is gone, it is gone.  Perhaps by the time this Guide finally gets published, it is already a relic.

 

Griping about implausible backstory aside, the 1984 Mysore from Ensar Oud is, for me, the epitome of what a Mysore sandalwood oil should smell like.  Most people smelling Mysore sandalwood for the first time are surprised at how distant it is from the fantasy version presented in commercial perfumery, where a cocktail of sandalwood synthetics and vanilla are used to fluff out its proportions to stadium-filling volume.

 

Having said that, Mysore 1984 smells more like the fantasy of Mysore sandalwood long held in my head than any of my other Mysore samples, meaning it skips completely over the blond “peanutty” and terpenic portions of Mysore to get straight to the meat of the aroma.  It is boomingly sweet, indecently rich, red-brown in aroma, and possessed of an incensey depth suggestive of resin and amber.

 

In fact, this oil does not possess any peanut-shell rawness at all, displaying instead a gouty roundness suggestive of maturity.  It teeters between sweet and salty, perhaps tipping the scales a little more towards sugar than the salt.  But it contains just enough resin and wood notes to counter the sweetness, and so everything is held in perfect balance.   Later, the oil develops that dry-creamy push-pull effect so characteristic of fine Mysore – the buttery, sour cream facets pushing back against the dry, aromatic dustiness inherent to sandalwood.  I love it in the wistful, quasi-resentful way one loves any non-renewable resource.  

 

 

 

Mysore Sandalwood (Gulab Singh Johrimal)

Type: essential oil

 

 

At first, this oil is quite sharp, green, and bitter.  It also smells smoky, as if the oil has crossed paths with a campfire. Immediately detectable are the keenly terpenic, head-spinning rawness that sandalwood shares with industrial glue, which makes me think that the oil is genuine but just needs to settle a bit.

 

The next stage is more characteristic of Santalum album, with its salted peanut savor and cloudy milkiness.  However, it lacks the fatty, double-creamed body of the other samples, and comes across as a sort of de-fatted version of the real thing.  With its brusque, astringent woodiness, it reminds me more of the inside of a wood carver’s workshop than a true Mysore.  It is perfectly nice, but not worth the price I paid for it, which was $25 for one milliliter.

 

 

 

Mysore Sandalwood (via Josh Lobb of Slumberhouse)

Type: essential oil

 

 

Josh Lobb very kindly included a sample of Mysore sandalwood oil in an order I made with him in 2017, presumably the same sandalwood he uses in Slumberhouse blends that feature it prominently, such as Grev.  It is always interesting to smell the oils and absolutes that artisanal, small-batch perfumers use in their perfumes, because if the customer is not going to be wearing it neat, then the raw material or essential oil itself does not have to display the same range of nuances or subtleties – it just has to be strong enough to make its voice heard over a cacophony of other materials.

 

This is the case here: the sample smells rather pungent and cheesey, like a Laotian plantation oud oil with lots of stale, dusty ‘off notes’ that might make wearing it neat a bit of a trial.  However, in a blend, it is potent and creamy enough to broadcast a message of ‘sandalwood’ in large neon letters, which is all that is really required of it.  Worn neat, the drydown of the oil smells furry and slightly foul, as if cross-contaminated with deer musk or ambergris.

 

 

 

Mystery Indian Oil

Type: concentrated perfume oil

 

 

Kindly included in a care package of attar and oil samples sent to me by an American-Indian friend, this oil seems to be a no-name oil picked up in one of the perfume shops in Mumbai or Delhi, of which there are hundreds.  I include it here because, although its provenance is murky, its aroma is somewhat typical of what one might expect of an oil like this, and therefore my description might be of use.

 

The topnotes smell tainted, as if it has encountered heavy metals, rubber tubing, and smoke, before being filtered to remove most – but not all – of the impurities.  Many sandalwood oils, especially the cheaper ones, smell contaminated in this manner, but with a bit of patience, one can learn to tolerate and even appreciate the odd little bits of detritus floating in and around the pure sandal aroma.  Similarly, one of my favorite Western niche sandalwood perfumes – Etro’s Sandalo eau de cologne – smells like an industrial accident at first but ultimately manages to frame it as an elegant quirk rather than a defect.

 

What makes the mystery Indian oil a bit different, however, is its strong current of sour, greenish terpenes and nail varnish, making me suspect that the oil has been cut with paraffin, D.O.P., or a low quality santalum spiccatum.  This ‘inferior wood’ impression dissipates after a while, allowing us to glimpse the smoky, buttery sandal aroma lurking underneath.  It is more sandalwood-ish than truly sandalwoody, but again, I have smelled far worse.

 

The best way to describe the sandal oils one buys in Indian shops is that they put on a good impression of real sandalwood oil, but only in fits and bursts.  This oil is no exception.  Its smoky-creamy midsection is genuinely pleasing, but when a sharp, aftershavey base arrives to obscure the sandal, it gives up any pretense of being real sandalwood.  Still, the fresh, almost bitter shaving foam finish to this oil would make it a good option for men who prefer barbershop-style sandalwoods over the sweet, creamy version that women instinctively prefer.

 

About Me:  A two-time Jasmine Award winner for excellence in perfume journalism, I write a blog (this one!) and have authored many guides, articles, and interviews for Basenotes.  (My day-to-day work is in the scientific research for development world).  Thanks to the generosity of friends and acquaintances in the perfume business, I have been privileged enough to smell the raw materials that go into perfumes and learn about the role they play in both Western and Eastern perfumery.   Artisans have sent vials of the most precious materials on earth such as ambergris, deer musk, and oud.  But I have also spent thousands of my own money, buying oud oils directly from artisans and tons of dodgy (and possibly illegal) stuff on eBay.  In the reviews sections, I will always tell you where my sample came from and whether I paid for it or not.

 

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Ava Luxe, Oil of Sandalwood, Arcana, NAVA, Possets, Alkemia, Amouage, Al Rehab, and Gulab Singh Johrimal. The samples from Ensar Oud, Rising Phoenix Perfumery, and Clive Christian were sent to me free of charge either by the brand or a distributor. Other samples were kindly donated to me by Josh Lobb and Basenotes friends. 

 

 

Note on monetization: My blog is not monetized.  But if you’d like to support my work or show appreciation for any of the content I put out, you can always buy me a coffee using the little buymeacoffee button.  Thank you! 

 

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.