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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.

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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.

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.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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Attars & CPOs Cult of Raw Materials Mukhallats Sandalwood Single note exploration The Attar Guide

Sandalwood: A Primer

23rd March 2022

After the brief introduction to sandalwood here, let’s take a deeper dive into this God of All Woods.

Why is Santalum album so magical?

Santalum album, meaning ‘white sandalwood’, is not the only species of sandalwood on the planet. But it is widely considered to be the best. Why is that?

Thanks to scientific analysis, we now know that Santalum album smells richer and more intense than any other type of sandalwood because it contains the highest percentage (between seventy and ninety percent^[i]) of santalol, the molecule responsible for the characteristically complex aroma of sandalwood, which darts between woody, creamy, lactic-sour, fragrant, sweet, rosy, and milky-green.

Other species of sandalwood, such as Australian Santalum spicatum, for example, contain a much lower concentration of santalols (between thirty-five and thirty-nine percent) and therefore feature far less of that characteristic sandalwood aroma. They produce an effect that, while still pleasant, does not scale the heights of Santalum album oil.

Can I still smell Santalum album? Or am I too late?

Not too late at all! Remember, as stated here, while real Mysore sandalwood oil from vintage, well-aged stock is a genuine rarity, its species – Santalum album – is not. Santalum album is the species of the sandalwood tree traditionally grown in Mysore, but it can also grow (and thrive) in regions other than Mysore, where climate conditions are optimal. These places include Indonesia, Tamil Nadu, and Northern Australia. Naturally, when the Santalum album species of tree is grown in an area or country other than the Mysore region, it is not technically Mysore sandalwood. It is, however, still Santalum album. And it is still absolutely gorgeous.

Can I still get my hands on Mysore sandalwood oil, though?

Yes, but tread carefully. For reasons outlined here, export of Mysore sandalwood outside of the borders of India is technically illegal.

It is, of course, still possible to buy small quantities of real Mysore sandalwood oil. But given that demand far outstrips supply, be aware that the risk of adulteration is high. Seek out small samples of Mysore sandalwood oil that comes from old, wild trees and that has benefited from aging. Sandalwood oil is like oud oil in that it smells the best when it comes from old trees (between eighty to a hundred years for preference) growing in the wild and has been allowed to age in the bottle.

Instead of taking your chances on eBay and or Etsy, buy directly from trusted artisan and small-batch distillers like Rising Phoenix Perfumery, Ensar Oud, Feel Oud, and Al Shareef Oudh. These artisans distill oil from vintage stocks of Mysore, but also from new trees being grown on the Mysore plantations.

Photo by Sophie Louisnard on Unsplash

Is that Mysore sandalwood in my attar?

Honestly? Probably not.

Beyond the pure essential oil itself, most attars, mukhallats and concentrated perfume oils boasting the presence of Mysore sandalwood do not contain even a drop of the real thing. This is also true of commercial or niche perfumes that claim to feature Mysore sandalwood. Santalum album, its species? Yes, sure. The actual species itself is not in short supply. But actual Mysore sandalwood oil? Fuhgeddaboudit.

So learn to treat all mention of Mysore with a healthy dose of side eye. The only attars that genuinely contain Mysore Santalum album are either vintage attars from the 1990s (or earlier), or modern attars produced by small-batch artisan attar makers, such as Sultan Pasha, Ensar Oud, Rising Phoenix Perfumer, et al, all of whom understand their customers and know that they will pay a premium for attars made with even minute quantities of Mysore sandalwood.

These days, Indian attar-making families and distilleries still making attars in the traditional manner (deg and bhapka) likely use a different variety of sandalwood oil for the bases of their attars, such as the Australian variant or even amyris, which is not even sandalwood. However, the modern attar and fragrance factories of Mumbai likely use cheap filler oils like paraffin or D.O.P.

What does real Mysore sandalwood smell like anyway?

People are almost always surprised when they smell real Mysore sandalwood oil. Mysore sandalwood’s fêted role in big 1980s compositions such as Guerlain’s Samsara or Amouage’s Ubar leads to its common misdiagnosis as something that projects creamily and loudly across a room. If a Westerner were to describe the smell of Mysore sandalwood, they would probably use words such as powdery, sweet, buttery, and creamy.

But in fact, this is an effect almost always created using sandalwood synthetics rather than the raw material itself. Western perfumery has always leaned on a complex array of aromachemicals to get the sandalwood oil to speak up in a composition, nudging its naturally shy aroma into a rich sonic boom. The same rings true for its use in attars and mukhallats.

The quietness (or loudness) of sandalwood in any attar very much depends on the role it plays in the overall composition. In complex attars such as shamama and majmua, it is very difficult to identify the aroma of sandalwood, as its ‘library’ voice tends to be overridden by the stronger spices, aromatic, and florals. However, in single-material attars such as motia or mitti, the quiet creaminess of the sandalwood carrier oil is a vital part of the composition. Some attars and mukhallats place the aroma of sandalwood at the heart of a composition, choosing to highlight its tender beauty. For example, Amouage not only has Sandal, a sandalwood soli-wood, so to speak, but also Majan (ambergris and sandalwood) and Ayoon al Maha (sandalwood and rose).

A good rule of thumb for spotting a sandalwood synth is that if a perfume – be it an attar or Western spray – smells immediately of rich, loud, creamy sandalwood, then you may be reasonably sure that there is some sandalwood synthetic somewhere in the mix, boosting the aroma of the natural oil. Some people are sensitive to sandalwood synthetics and can pick them out of a line-up. I personally cannot, and therefore even mukhallats featuring sandalwood synthetics smell good to me.

After long exposure to the fake, loud sandalwood that passes for ‘Mysore’ in most commercial perfumes and modern mukhallats, the reality of what the essential oil smells like is eye-opening. At first, the prevailing aroma is slightly raw and pale, the scent of a freshly-cut log of wood and nothing more. It smells streamlined, shorn of extraneous detail or fuzz. The topnotes feature a steamy, vaporous texture akin to the haze of molecules that fizzes from the top of a container of industrial glue or ethanol. These vapors have an almost hallucinogenic effect on the senses.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not uncommon to find fresh, silvery, or green topnotes in Mysore oil, depending on the age of the heartwood from which it was distilled, and the number of years spent maturing in the bottle. Mysore often displays some of the terpenic (pine- or camphor-like) greenness associated with Australian sandalwood (s. spicatum). However, where they do appear, the terpenes in Santalum album are much softer than in the Australian type – a gentle, almost milky green freshness rather than the solvent-like screech of lemon and pine.

There is also a clear peanut-like odor inherent to the scent of Mysore sandalwood oil, less the aroma of the nut itself than its papery husk and skin. There may also be a scent of neutral oil, like vegetable or sunflower oil, which, when mixed with the peanut aroma, produces a flattened, roasted-nutty effect. The overall texture is at first vaporous, then cloudy. It is not immediately creamy, although it will increase in creaminess. The aroma is very quiet and does not project far off the skin.

Later, the aroma becomes slightly deeper and more complex, with a milky undertone developing. It is still not fatty or creamy, tending instead towards the scent of lightly soured milk or yoghurt. The thin, lactic sourness is given body by a nutty texture akin to crushed, pounded peanut shells, husks, and nuts. It remains acidic and greenish for some time, but there is now a hint of rose in the milk.

Further still, most s. album sandalwood oils – even those that are not Mysore – gain a toasty depth more suggestive of thick, red-brown logs than light, raw blond wood. Although never as spicy or as musky as modern sandalwood bases in perfumery, the oil does develop some mild nutmeg-like elements and becomes increasingly creamy. In some sandalwood oils, a sweaty spice note can appear, a nuance often replicated in Western perfumery via the use of cumin, funky-musky cedarwood, or even carrot seed (a good example being Santal Blush by Tom Ford). This nuance is why some perceive sandalwood as smelling of body odor.

The aroma of Mysore sandalwood is soft and calming. It takes its own sweet time to cycle through different facets: raw lumber, blond peanut shells, green roses, buttermilk, salted butter, and finally a reddish-brown depth, aromatic (dry) wood, incense, hints of amber, spice, and full-fat cream. Texturally, Mysore displays the same push-pull between aromatic-dry and creamy-sweet common to all Santalum album oils.

Compared to, say, oud oil, S. album sandalwood oil is far more linear. It can be as complex as oud, but its range of complexity is spread out across a shallower line than that of oud. If oud and sandalwood oils were charted on a graph, for example, the sandalwood would be performing a small but complex series of movements between points one and four, while the oud would be making jagged leaps between one and ten and back to five, and so on. Both materials can be superb, and a preference for one or the other might depend on one’s appetite for turbulence and drama (oud oil) or gentle, unassuming beauty (sandalwood oil).

Photo by jean wimmerlin on Unsplash

The Other Sandalwoods: If Not Mysore, then What?

If you are a Mysore freak, then feel free to skip this part. But if you are even a little curious about what the other, non-Mysore variants of sandalwood oil smell like, then read on! Invest in a sampler from Eden Botanicals to get your nose on most of these.

Santalum album – Tamil Nadu type

Santalum album grown in the Tamil Nadu region of India. Warm, woody, and sweet, with no rough edges, Tamil Nadu oil is relatively close to the aroma of vintage Mysore sandalwood oil and does not contain any of the harshness of Vanuatu types of sandalwood.

Aroma: Creamy, sweet, with a Mysore tonality.

Australian Sandalwood (Santalum spicatum)

A different species than Santalum album, the Santalum spicatum is a species native to Australia and grown sustainably in plantations there. It is not as rich in santalols as santalum album and therefore does not smell as nutty or as creamy. Most commercial perfumes employing a sandalwood effect use the Australian type of sandalwood (in conjunction with sandalwood synthetics). It is much cheaper than Santalum album species, but most would also say that it is also markedly inferior to Mysore, with a sharp, yoghurty aroma, and sawdusty texture. Most will also pick up strong terpenic (pine-like) notes in the aroma profile.

However, because it is sustainably managed and therefore in abundant supply, Australian sandalwood is enormously useful in perfumery. With clever positioning of sandalwood synthetics and other notes such as rose or vanilla, it can achieve a very credible sandalwood result in a finished perfume.

Aroma: A cedar-adjacent aroma profile, with the sourness of a freshly-split pine log.

Santalum austrocaledonicum (Vanuatu and New Caledonia types)

Native to the islands of Vanuatu and New Caledonia in the South Pacific, Santalum austrocaledonicum is a light, fragrantly woody species of Santalum that possess a surprisingly high proportion of santalols (approximately sixty percent). However, there is a blunt, sour smokiness to its aroma that many people find off-putting. It eventually evens out into a creamy, fragrant ‘true sandalwood’ aroma but the journey to get there is kind of rough.

Aroma: fragrant, but slightly harsh, sour, and smoky.

Australian plantation-grown Santalum album

This is not Mysore, but rather the same species of tree (Santalum album) grown in plantations in Australia. The oil is sustainably produced, and in aroma is quite close to the aroma of Mysore oil, namely, soft, sweet, warm, woody, gentle, creamy-milky, and full-bodied. It is unknown whether the Santalum album species grown in Australia will ever match the depth and beauty of Mysore Santalum album, but first reports are positive. Due to the crucial matter of aging, Santalum album oil from new plantations will not smell as richly golden as older specimens of Mysore oil now, but in time, it is likely that they will.

Aroma: milky, sweet, with a true Santalum album ‘flavor’.

Amyris balsamifera

Not a sandalwood at all, but an entirely different species of wood that exudes a highly-fragrant oleoresin. Oil produced using amyris smells a little terpenic (pine-like), fragrantly bitter, and smoky. It is pleasant on its own, and often used as a replacer oil for sandalwood, although in truth, it is no match for the complexity of the Mysore aroma.

Aroma: clean, terpenic, with bitter, smoky topnotes

Sandalwood synthetics

The main synthetics used to amplify or replace natural sandalwood oil are Ebanol, Javanol, Sandalore (all by Givaudan), and Polysantol (by Firmenich). Though the specifics are not all that important to the layman, it is important to note that they each provide a slightly different effect. For example, Ebanol is used when a soapy-musky dimension to the sandalwood is sought, Sandalore apes the creamy aspect of sandalwood, and Polysantol is used for maximum diffusion and amplification of the sandalwood aroma.

The use of sandalwood synthetics is so prevalent in the fragrance industry that their aroma has become intertwined with that of natural sandalwood oil in the minds of fragrance wearers. For example, vintage Samsara (Guerlain) once contained great quantities of real Mysore sandalwood oil – some say up to forty percent of its composition. But there are, and have always been, huge amounts of Polysantol in the formula too, making it very difficult to separate the loud, booming creaminess of the synthetic from the quieter savory-nutty aroma of the natural sandalwood.

Cover Image: Photo by Joel & Jasmin Førestbird on Unsplash

[i] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/bengaluru/Demise-of-sandalwood/articleshow/12078008.cms

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Ambergris Attars & CPOs Cult of Raw Materials Mukhallats Review The Attar Guide

The Attar Guide: Ambergris Reviews G-Y

4th March 2022

Ghaliyah Kacheri (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: mukhallat

An ambergris-forward version of the Ghaliyah series produced by Rising Phoenix Perfumery. Ghaliyah Kacheri adds a Hindi oud oil to the blueprint, but surprisingly, the Hindi keeps its big mouth shut until the far reaches of the drydown. What is most noticeable at first is the creamy, apple-peel freshness of champaca flower mixed with a silky, wheaten sandalwood-ambergris foundation. There is a golden tone to it, like flowers drenched in the saltwater glitter of ambergris.

The sour smoke of the Hindi oud breaks through after an hour, fusing with the salty, creamy florals to give the scent the patina of aged woods, leather, and campfire smoke. The contrast between the fermented funk of the Hindi and the rosy, shampoo brightness of the champaca is the key to its charm. Ghaliyah Kacheri is a clever and unusual floral ambergris with a great payoff. Sillage-wise, however, be aware this version is quite muted compared to the other Ghaliyah mukhallats in the series.

Molook (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

Molook is a paean to the glories of two of the stinkiest raw materials in all of perfumery, namely, ambergris and the most animalic of Hindi oud oils – the kind revered in the Emirati market. The Hindi is up front in all its creamy, sheep-cheesy glory. But it is the ambergris that really shines in this mukhallat. Redolent with the fetid marine stink of the softer, darker types of ambergris, the note still bears some resemblance to its original whale dung sheathing. Its fecal warmth acts as a magnifying glass for the oud, heating it up until a three-dimensional picture of animal fur has been rendered.

I suspect that many Western noses might be initially put off by the hot, sour blue cheese aroma that swells up on the skin the minute you dab it on. But that is just Hindi oud for you. Its heavy breath of fermentation and tanned leather is what most people in the Arabian Peninsula identify as the real smell of oud.

Although I personally prefer the smell of what is marketed these days as Cambodi oud – fruitier, sweeter, and less animalic – there is no denying that something about Hindi oud keeps my nose returning to my wrist. Its odd sourness is deeply compelling, and more mysterious and interesting overall than Cambodi oud. The aroma of the Hindi oud settles eventually, becoming rounder and warmer (although not sweeter) as the ambergris takes over, softening the blunt twang of the oud with its salty, musky glow.

Insofar as any mukhallat can be said to lean towards one gender or another, Molook leans masculine. It is fascinating to wear, especially for those interested in getting a picture of what a high quality Hindi oud or natural ambergris smells like.

Photo by roberta errani on Unsplash

Pure Amber (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

Like so many mukhallats with the word ‘amber’ in their title, this is not amber at all but rather, ambergris. To anyone unfamiliar with ambergris – or indeed to anyone actually expecting amber – the opening could prove to be quite a shock. It is as earthy and stale as a clod of soil freshly dug up beside a marina where the carcasses of several marine mammals have begun to slowly rot. There is a distinct dung-like facet to the aroma but let me reassure you that the damp soil effect ensures the scent remains fresh-dirty rather than fecal-dirty.

Many ambergris oils or blends have a natural line of intersection with civet. But Amber makes it clear that this is a different animal altogether. Ambergris is a little stinky in that slightly rude, open-hearted way of farmland and the seaside, but not at all sharp, like civet can be. Pure Amber showcases the earthy, fungal undertones of ambergris, with a sideswipe of fresh horse dung for good measure. It warms up into the pleasant scent of freshly-mucked-out stable, complete with nuances of clean earth and warm straw. Equestrians and horse enthusiasts will understand that this is the scent of beauty itself.

Later, other nuances drift into the picture, principally an arid, aromatic sandalwood, and the vanillic smell of old books. It is at this stage that one realizes that Pure Amber is really a simple blend of two exquisite materials – white ambergris and sandalwood. The drydown is a careful balance between the nutty warmth of sandalwood and the mineralic radiance of ambergris. Those obsessed with the evocative scent of antique bookstores and long, windswept Atlantic beaches may want to lay their souls on the line for a sample.

Royal Amber Blend (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

Royal Amber Blend is a lower-priced reiteration of the Royal Amber AA Blend, below, and therefore a more streamlined version of the same basic scent profile. Like its progenitor, it features a medicinal, iodine-tinged amber note over a funky grade of ambergris. However, Royal Amber Blend lacks the sweet, taffy-like depth of the labdanum in the original. Instead, it is unsweet, greenish, and moldy in the vein of sepulchral ambers like Ambra Nera (Farmacia SS. Annunziata), occupying a sourish register that will be unfamiliar to those used to the vanillic ambers of mainstream perfumery. With its muscular, briny-herbaceous undertones, Royal Amber Blend actually smells far more Indian than Middle Eastern in style.

Photo by Maskmedicare Shop on Unsplash

Royal Amber AA Blend (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

A very complex and interesting mukhallat. As with most mukhallats, it doesn’t have the traditional top-down structure that we are used to with Western alcohol-based spray perfumes. Instead, when it is first dabbed onto the skin, the notes appear as a thick blanket of scent before spreading out in concentric waves to reveal the basic facets of the scent. Body heat intensifies and warms the notes so that they become ever more radiant.

Royal Amber is primarily all about the ambergris. The ambergris note is unabashedly inky and medicinal at first, denoting the helping hand of saffron, a material with iodine-like properties. This combination pulls the scent down a hospital corridor towards the operating theatre in much the same way that White Oud (Montale) does.

While the iodine note never disappears entirely, it is soon joined by the more attractive facets of natural ambergris, namely newspaper and sweet marine air. After a protracted period of salty sea air, the central accord takes on a far thicker and tarrier nuance, indicating the use of soft, dung-like black ambergris or, at the very least, a dark grey-brown specimen. The tarry facet is further accentuated by an unlisted labdanum resin. In its combination of sweet, sticky resins and animalic, leathery notes, Royal Amber shares common ground with the earlier Slumberhouse releases, such as Vikt and Sova.

Hearty, a bit rough around the edges, and with a one-two punch of ambergris and labdanum, Royal is simple but incredibly satisfying. It strikes me as the perfect scent for someone who spends a lot of time outdoors on beaches or in forests, preferring the scent of sticky tree sap and sea salt on their skin to the smell of perfume.

Photo by Kier In Sight on Unsplash

Royal Amber Spirit AAA (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

It is educational to apply Royal Amber Spirit AAA side by side with ASAQ’s slightly lower-priced amber blend, Amber Jewels. There is a price difference of approximately $100, but the step up in quality and complexity is greater than the price differential suggests. While Amber Jewels is a straightforward portrait of ambergris, Royal Amber Spirit AAA dresses the ambergris up in exotic jewels and finery.

Amber Jewels is light in texture and body, with a slightly raw, marine quality that persists for most of the fragrance, before fading into the caramelized tones of labdanum amber in the base. It smells fresh – ozonic almost – as if filtered through a herb-laden breeze carried straight from the ocean.

Royal Amber Spirit, on the other hand, is immediately heavier and more sweetly ambery. Although the raw marine quality of ambergris is present and correct upon application, it quickly becomes fused with a luxuriant, balsamic amber that feels pashmina-thick. Compared to Amber Jewels, it is infinitely more textured and three-dimensional. It maintains a salty-n-sweet ambergris tenor almost all the way through, though it is pleasurably muffled by a waxy layer of amber in the final stretch. A judicious dose of dusty spice – saffron, cinnamon, and clove perhaps – swims around in the treacle-like murk of the amber, adding a pleasant heat. What emerges is a warm, dusty leather with rich, balsamic touches.

There is also, I believe, a touch of sweet myrrh – opoponax – in the mix, present in the form of a bubbling, golden resin that encompasses both the waxy, honeyed texture of almond butter and the verdant bite of lavender. The opoponax adds a herbaceous dimension that freshens the breath of the scent’s resinous backdrop. The scent finishes in a blaze of ambery-woody warmth that, though now lacking the salty radiance of ambergris, still feels multi-dimensional in scope.

I recommend Royal Amber Spirit AAA to serious ambergris fans with a discerning palate and the means with which to pay for it. Be warned that it is tremendously expensive at $469 per tola, give or take. Is it worth the price of admission? In my opinion, yes.

Royal Ambergris (Arabian Oud)

Type: mukhallat

Coming as close to the aroma of an ambergris tincture as one can get in oil format, Royal Ambergris is a superb ambergris attar. It shares similarities with both Sweet Blue Amber by Abdul Samad Al Qurashi and Amouage’s Amber attar but is drier than the former, and more natural in feel than the latter.

At first, it smells of clean marine silt and low tide, but then smooths out into the enticing aroma of warm hay, clean horse stables, fresh sea air, and the great outdoors. Later, a tiny bit of golden sweetness creeps in. In general, this is an ambergris that tilts more towards earth and tobacco than resin. Highly recommended both for layering and wearing alone.

Sandal Ambergris (Aloes of Ish)

Type: mukhallat

As advertised, ambergris and sandalwood. The ambergris opening is earthy to the point of smelling like freshly-cut mushrooms caked in black soil. The fungal dampness feels clean and saline rather than sweet.

After a transition that smells of wet and then dry newspapers, the emphasis shifts to the sandalwood in the base. At this price level ($20 or so per quarter tola), it is improbable that this is pure Indian sandalwood. But even if the natural oils are fluffed out a little by synthetic sandalwood, the overall effect smells so natural that it is difficult to find fault. The sandalwood accord is buttery, salty, papery, dry, and aromatic. It is also durable, lasting for the better part of an entire day.

It is interesting to compare something like Sandal Ambergris with the Santal Ambergris tincture by Abdes Salaam Attar (La Via del Profumo). Both address the same theme and focus on the same two materials, and though one is all natural and the other not, they are both very pleasing takes. As always, however, you get what you pay for. The quality in the La Via del Profumo version is clearly superior, while the Aloes of Ish oil involves a little bit of willful fantasizing on the part of the wearer.

Saqr II (Al Shareef Oudh)

Type: mukhallat

Saqr II is a mukhallat composed in honor of nature in all its brutal beauty. It focuses on ambergris (long golden beaches), oud (forests), Ta’ifi rose (flowers in inhospitable terrain), and Himalayan musk (animal fur). Saqr II provides the wearer with a truly kaleidoscopic experience – the florals, exotic woods, and musk all rushing out at you in a giddy vortex of scent – but maintains a rigorous clarity rarely experienced in such complex blends. The wearer can smell every component of the blend, both individually and as part of the rich, multi-layered fabric of the perfume.

The play of light on dark is well executed. The tart green spice of the Ta’ifi rose lifts the perfume, while salty-sweet ambergris lends a sparkle. These brighter elements prevent the darker oud and musk from becoming too heavy. The bright rose burns away, leaving a trail of leathery, spicy oud wood that is addictive, drawing one’s nose repeatedly to the skin. The oud here is smooth and supple, with nary a trace of sourness or animal stink. The musk, perceptible more as a texture than a scent, blurs the edges of the oud and rose notes into furred roundness that gradually softens the scent’s austerity.

The slight out-of-focus feel to this blend makes it far more approachable for beginners than many others in the Al Shareef Oudh stable. There is even a little tobacco-ish sweetness thanks to the ambergris. However, typical for the house, none of the materials have been dumbed down for a Western audience. The blend smells classic in a certain rose-oud way, but it is not clichéd. Its balance of dark and bright elements, sweet and non-sweet, dirty-musky and clean, is what makes it such a masterful example of its genre.

Saqr II is complex, beautiful, and above all, easy to wear. I love the fuzzy golden timbre of the ambergris in this scent, which lends it a tannic apricot skin edge. It is my personal favorite of all the Al Shareef Oudh mukhallats and the one I would recommend to beginners as a great primer on the brand’s overall approach and aesthetic. Beyond that, it is one of the most beautiful perfumes I have had the pleasure of smelling in my life.

Sweet Blue Amber (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

Sweet Blue Amber is essentially a hunk of brownish-grey ambergris left to macerate in carrier oil until maximum halitosis has been achieved. The first time I tried it, I was repelled. The opening howl of civet struck me as foul, and the body of the scent thin and wafty. It smelled uncomfortably like someone with very poor dental hygiene breathing on me in a packed space.

But now, with several years of ambergris experience under my belt, I can say that Sweet Blue Amber is just a very faithful rendition of grey or brown ambergris. This grade of ambergris is admittedly funky, but it eventually mellows out into a salty, skin-like scent that is very sensual in an organic way.

I like to layer Sweet Blue Amber under certain Western scents like Shalimar or Mitsouko to add a bodily funk missing from the modern versions. Jacques Guerlain once said that all his perfumes contained something of his mistress’ undercarriage in them, but even he would have scandalized at what Shalimar smells like with a layer of Sweet Amber Blue lurking beneath. Shalimar doctored in this way smells utterly carnal, the ferocious civety skank of the Sweet Blue Amber glowing hotly through the smoky vanilla of Shalimar, like tires on fire at a bacchanal.

A bottle of Sweet Blue Amber could be a brilliant DIY solution to fixing perfumes in your collection that have lost their animalic spark through reformulation, age, or the banning of nitro musks. Imagine the current versions of Bal a Versailles and No. 5 restored to their former animalic glory. The possibilities seem endless. Buy a tiny bottle of Sweet Amber Blue and have fun with it!

Photo by Andrea Cairone on Unsplash

Truffe Blanche (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Truffe Blanche is so-named because it contains white Alba truffle extract, orris pallida, and white ambergris from the West of Ireland. However, it does not smell particularly ‘white’, at least not in the manner that most people would interpret it in the context of a scent, i.e., creamy, cloudy, milky, icy in texture, with lots of white musks, blond woods, and so on.

Instead, Truffe Blanche is quite an earthy, dusty scent, its character driven in the main by a smoky birch tar, which loses no time in mopping up all the juicy sweetness of the Meyer lemon and florals used up top. Thanks to the benzoin, birch, a charred (meaty) guaiac wood, and white ambergris, Truffle Blanche smells most enticingly of old books, desiccated wood, soot, black leather, and the remnants of ash in the grate. The camphoraceous facet of benzoin is in evidence here, too, but the scent never feels fresh or minty.

As the scent develops, a few of the sweeter, more animalic notes make a run for it. Escaping from underneath the rafters of that leathery dust are a bittersweet ‘roasted’ caramel note, a dry vanilla bean, and a pungent, honeyed civet. The contrast between dusty library papers and syrupy-dirty civet is tremendously effective. Truffe Blanche succeeds because it manages to both smell great on the skin and evoke a place or a mood.

Oddly, Truffe Blanche smells very differently on the skin compared to on the toothpick I used to fish out a drop. On wood, it smells immediately like a dry, caramelized vanilla – almost purely white ambergris and benzoin, with a faint smudge of soiled panties. On the skin, the dusty, smoky effects of the birch tar are far more in evidence and linger longer. However, it is worth noting that it too winds up in the same dry, ambergris-civet vanilla and benzoin track.

Truffe Blanche is, for me, one of the all-time standouts of the Sultan Pasha Attar range. If you too love the scent of dry vanilla pods, white ambergris, books, and dusty libraries, then this is most definitely worth your time.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Sheikh al Faransi (Abdul Karim Al Faransi/Maison Anthony Marmin)

Type: mukhallat

Sheikh al Faransi is a bestial blend of ambergris, oud, and amber that is intensely evocative of the sea, mountains, earth, and rot. It opens on a note of sweet varnishy decay, like a mixture of mold on an apple and mildewy furniture left to fester in an abandoned mansion. Something about the blend seems on the verge of collapse, which introduces the thrill of uncertainty.

Slowly the halitosis stink of grey-brown ambergris begins to peek out through the woody rot, bringing with it its unique alchemy of sea air, silt, and horsehair. It is met with a light dusting of icing sugar, likely an amber and sandalwood sweetener placed there to offset the suggestive saltiness of the ambergris.

For the longest time, the perfume lingers in a midsection of sea salt and sweet powdered amber. But the drydown is pure ambergris in the fullness of its mammalian splendor. It is gorgeous, and 180° removed from its rotting, feral, damply-fruited start. For a mukhallat, it is decidedly non-linear and exciting to wear. Recommended to those who are looking for a wild ride.

silencethesea (Strangelove NYC)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

silencethesea immediately joins the ranks of ambergris perfumes to try before you die. Although there are other notes or materials, to my nose, this smells as close to a pure ambergris tincture as is possible in niche perfumery.

Ambergris can smell very differently from piece to piece, grade to grade, etc., but the ambergris in silencethesea smells like a deserted beach in winter. It has a dry, oceanic smell, like the smell of stones and rocks left to dry in the sun after the tide has gone out. Dry salt, minerals, and the stony loneliness of inanimate objects on a beach with no people around to witness it.

Silencethesea smells completely organic to me – elemental, and a bit wild. It has the type of aroma that one finds utterly normal in nature but does not expect to find in a personal perfume, and thus, it feels shocking. It is raw and slightly intimate.

There is no warmth to the aroma, apart from the vague funkiness inherent to ambergris that reminds us that this is a substance that originated in the intestine of an animal. Wearing it is like wearing no perfume at all, because it smells more like the cold air in one’s skin and hair after a long, solitary walk on a windswept beach than a perfume. This is not a perfume for community or cuddling or clubbing. It is for the pleasures of solitude.

Photo by Shibi Zidhick on Unsplash

White Cedar Rose (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

This scent is dominated by a buttery, grass-fed coconut milk accord with an oddly meaty ‘lime peel’ quality to it. Coconut can smell both creamy and savory, an effect that is pushed to breaking point here. In fact, if beaten any further, one suspects that the lactonic accord at the heart of White Cedar Rose would start forming small lumps of butter.

The cedar helps stabilize things by bulking out the coconut milk and adding a saline muskiness. But the citrusy, rosy brightness that cuts through the salted butter and coconut is what ultimately turns this simple coconut tanning cream into a delightful rum-and-coconut cocktail treat not far removed from Creed’s Virgin Island Water.

Once the crazy lactones calm down a bit, I can perceive more clearly where the beefy saltiness is coming from – a golden, toffee-like, but also downright marshy ambergris and civet pairing in the base. The creaminess of the coconut and the bright lime notes slot into place over this sexy, skin-like ambergris for a result that is just wonderful. The clean smokiness of the cedar notes combines with the salty, sweaty skin notes and coconut milk to conjure an image of steamy lumberyards and beaches. If you love Virgin Island Water by Creed, Sex and the Sea by Francesca Bianchi, or even Cadjmere by Parfumerie Generale, then make it a priority to sample White Cedar Rose.

Yeti Attar 2012 (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: mukhallat

This is the single best double billing of ambergris and sandalwood currently in production. (Though, given the ominous 2012 tag in the title, I am not so sure about the ‘currently in production’ bit). Still, if you can get it, you are in for quite the experience. Yeti Attar coats the skin in a liquid hug of savory-sweet sandalwood with nuances of creamed coconut, peanut shell, and melted Irish butter. There is little better, when you are a sandalwood lover, than smelling the real deal and in such generous amounts.

Yeti Attar has a relatively simple structure – sandalwood, then ambergris, and then sandalwood again, like the best sandwich you ever ate but don’t remember ordering. When materials are as good as these – like the best conversationalists at a party – your job is simply to introduce them to each other and then leave them alone to do their thing. The ambergris used here is a subtle, golden one, with a spectrum of aromas ranging from earthy tobacco to damp newspaper and finally to dry, salty newspapers left out on a beach to curl up and yellow at the edges.

It is difficult to smell the ambergris in its totality when you smell it directly from the skin, and in fact, its nuances only reveal themselves in full when sniffed alongside something else on your other hand. This phenomenon is true of all attars featuring the finest grades of white ambergris – the scent profile is hauntingly subtle but its effect on the overall scent profound and noticeable. Once my nose smells another attar, and then returns to the Yeti Attar, I suddenly grasp all the facets of the ambergris used. Strange sensation!

The ambergris used here is soft, earthy, saliva-ish, intimate, and golden, like just-licked skin. It is not overbearing, dirty, or animalic in a horsey way. Yeti Attar 2012 is sensual and delicate to the point of being ethereal. A must-try for any sandalwood and ambergris lover.

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Amouage, Maison Anthony Marmin, Arabian Oud, and Mellifliuence. The samples from Rising Phoenix Perfumery, Abdul Samad al Qurashi, Strangelove NYC, Al Shareef Oudh and Sultan Pasha were sent to me free of charge either by the brand or a distributor. The sample from Aloes of Ish was sent to me by a Basenotes friend.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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Ambergris Attars & CPOs Cult of Raw Materials Review Single note exploration The Attar Guide

The Attar Guide: Ambergris Reviews A-E

2nd March 2022

Afrah (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

The only nice thing I can say about Afrah is that its three-way clash between the fruity, musky ‘shampoo’ aroma of champaca flowers, the licorice-like basil, and the marine bilge unpleasantness of a soft, pooey (black) ambergris is, uh, original.

The opening is heady, with the champaca taking on the form of sticky peach syrup mashed into a sweaty clump of indolic flowers. The basil gives the champaca a salty, minty licorice kick that lightens the load somewhat, but, in general, Afrah is heavy going. There is something indigestible about its cyanide-ish brew of white flowers, honey, peach, and bitter almond. It is alluring and toxic in equal measure, reminding me of Hypnotic Poison (Dior) in feel, if not in aroma.

My main objection is that the civety stink of the ambergris refuses to play well with the other notes. It manages to recreate with uncomfortable accuracy the sweaty, sugared pungency of the skin of someone with a medical condition like Type 2 diabetes. I think should stop here lest I offend anyone who loves it.

Photo by Yulia Khlebnikova on Unsplash

Ambergris Civet Caramel (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Ambergris Civet Caramel opens with a blast of intensely aromatic aromas, chief among them the ferrous twang of burnt caramel and the bitter, woody edge of freshly-ground Arabica beans. In fact, the aroma is so true to life that it feels like you are standing directly behind the barista at some artisanal Ethiopian joint while they grind the beans to go into your pour-over.

The bitter char on the caramel saves the blend from excessive sweetness, and the coffee grounds give it a woody edge that is a pleasant surprise in a scent with the word caramel in its title. Red-gold hints of maple syrup and autumn leaves thread through the coffee and caramel gloom, making me wonder if that a touch of immortelle has been roped in to add its handsome, late October sunshine appeal.

The ambergris makes its presence known very quickly for such a bolshy crew, elbowing past the maple caramel, singed coffee grounds, and autumn leaves to assert its marshy presence. The ambergris used in this blend manifests as an unclean combination of licked skin and unwashed hair. This salty funk blends well with the dry caramel for an effect that is far woodier and far less gourmand that one might imagine.

Gourmand fans – try this. But be aware that you really need to love less conventionally pleasing accords, such as burned coffee grounds and salty marine funk, to fully appreciate it. Fans of the half-edible, half-woody Parfumerie Generale scents such as Coze and Aomassaï will click with it. Pink Sugar lovers need not bother.

Ambergris Grade I (Majid Muzaffar Iterji)

Type: mukhallat

Ambergris Grade I is an interesting take on ambergris. It does not initially smell of ambergris, but rather of bright soapy lemon and indeterminate fruits. Later, however, hints of an outdoorsy sweetness with a side order of salt and lightly-toasted tobacco leaf signal its presence. Most tinctures of white ambergris share a certain lightness of aroma that smells very little of anything save for mineralic rocks baking in sunshine and fresh sea air. And this is the case here.

The mineralic glow of this grade of ambergris is the same as that used in exclusive Western perfumes such as the now-discontinued (but brilliant) Angelique Encens by Creed, and the glittery Encens Mythique d’Orient (Guerlain). Not only does ambergris act as a fixative in these perfumes, but it magnifies the effect of the other materials – incense, rose – rendering their texture airy and almost effervescent. The cool thing about Ambergris Grade I is that it allows us to study this effect in isolation.

Ambergris Mukhallat Arabiya (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Ambergris Mukhallat Arabiya is less of an ambergris scent and more an archetypal attar smell, i.e., starchy saffron and high-pitched roses blended together. This familiar rose-saffron pairing is enormously popular and thus finds traction in every single attar house. The problem is that it runs the risk of being a little too familiar. Either you have to put a twist on it for it to stand out or else you produce a version that out-exquisites all others in the crowded field. Ambergris Mukhallat Arabiya, though competent, fails to do either.

The model makes sense from a compositional point of view. The pungency of the leathery saffron is mitigated by the soft sweetness of the rose, and in return, the rose gains a backbone. This rose-saffron attar idea has been lifted wholesale into Western perfumery. Most Western oud-themed niche perfumes are constructed around a central axis of rose and saffron, with a dollop of synthetic oud added in for extra screech woodiness. This template, repeated from brand to brand, has inculcated in Western customers such a strong association between the materials of oud, rose, and saffron that, like Pavlov’s dog, all we have to do is smell saffron and we fill in the oud blank on our own.

And this is what happens here. When you first smell Ambergris Mukhallat Arabiya, the spicy rose-saffron duet makes the mind flash on oud. There is no oud here, of course. However, if you are a Westerner and want to have a rosy saffron mukhallat that recalls the traditional rose-oud-saffron triad without paying oud prices, then Ambergris Mukhallat Arabiya may do the job. It is a somewhat traditional, sharp, and spicy blend, tilted towards the austere.

The delicate sweetness of ambergris is nowhere to be found in this scent. It is missing, presumed dead under the pungent weight of the other materials. Briefly there is the suggestion of something radiant, sparkling, and metallic lifting the spice and flowers, which could be the cited ambergris. But in terms of actual aroma, the ambergris is undetectable. It is simply a decent rose and saffron mukhallat.

Ambergris Taifi (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

The thrillingly tart, peppery scent of the Ta’ifi rose fills the nose upon application. The scent of a Ta’ifi rose always reminds me of a raw beef filet encrusted in green peppercorns and harsh lemon peel, and this bears true here. However, this version of Ta’ifi rose is far softer than the purer versions I have smelled from both Abdul Samad Al Qurashi and Al Shareef Oudh. Its lack of purity translates into a smell that is less pungent, which might be more appealing to noses unused to the nose-searing properties of the unadulterated stuff.

This mukhallat possibly contains a small quantity of Ta’ifi rose mixed with a greater quantity of rosa damascena oil from another region, such as Turkey or Bulgaria. Or it might be that only Bulgarian rosa damascena was used, as rose oil harvested from Bulgaria features many of the same sour, herbaceous aspects of the Ta’ifi rose. Either way, it doesn’t really matter (except to a purist) for this rose note is sublime – fresh, tart, with a pickled lemon edge that makes you want to smack your lips.

Ambergris Taifi becomes rosier and creamier as it develops, blooming into a rich and durable red rose accord that shimmers on top of the golden, salt-marsh ambergris beneath. The ambergris does not assert its presence strongly aside from a salty radiance. Instead, it acts as a heat lamp, magnifying the rose and causing it to vibrate in 3D splendor. The blend finishes in a blaze of salted caramel and rose, casting a pink glow around the wearer. For those who can stomach the price, this is a great rose-ambergris mukhallat.

Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash

Ambergris White Blackberry (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Fruit is difficult to capture well in attar and mukhallat perfumery because there are no natural enfleurages or extracts of fruit, leaving the perfumer with the choice between Jolly Rancher synthetics or naturals with a somewhat fruity character, like osmanthus or ylang. Berries in particular are hard to get right.

When a synthetic fruit note is used alongside a bunch of naturals, its synthetic character can often become painfully apparent, like plopping a fake Nike trainer down beside an authentic one. Place a fruit synthetic alongside real ambergris, for example, and it has the potential to stick out and catch on you, like a clothes pin forgotten inside a sweater.

Thankfully, this is not the case in Ambergris White Blackberry. The blackberry note, though certainly synthetic, manages to be dark, plump, and slightly syrupy, with none of the ‘overexposed photograph’ shrillness of most synthetic berry notes. This is probably due to the softening effect provided by a tandem of sweet, creamy amber and the earthy, musty ambergris. Neither the amber nor the ambergris clouds the structure, however. The texture remains crystalline, allowing the luscious berry to shine through uninterrupted.

There is also a momentary hit of spice – cinnamon or clove perhaps – but this recedes quickly, leaving the focus on the blackberry. The blackberry note is fleshy, but thankfully, doesn’t attempt photorealism. It is more the suggestion of pulp and stained fingers than the metallic brightness of most synthetic berry notes.

Two ambery accords are notable here. First, a traditional amber accord with perhaps a hint of maltol, acting like a simple sugar syrup to buffer the first explosion of berry flavors upon application. Then, the earthy, almost fungal tones of the ambergris, which here smell like a clod of clean, wet marine soil freshly dug up near a harbor. The mixture of the sweet and earthy really makes this an amber-ambergris duet really worth wearing.

This is one of the few fruity mukhallats that I can recommend without reservation, even to those who normally find fruit notes in perfumery off-putting. The sweet, earthy magic of the ambergris is suggestive of the ground from which the blackberry bushes sprang, giving us the full blackberry-picking fantasy of ripe fruit, leaves, and humus-rich forest floor. A true Pan’s Labyrinth scent.

Photo by emy on Unsplash

Ambergris White Chocolate Opium (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Ambergris White Chocolate Opium opens with a rich, nutty accord that smells like the steam that rises off a pan of flaked almonds fried gently in brown sugar. This accord is enrobed in a silky white chocolate casing that manages to be creamy without being sweet. Think translucent nut nougat dipped in artisanal white chocolate, with perhaps a tiny sprinkling of sea salt and black pepper for contrast. It is admirably restrained, teetering on the edge of full-on gourmand territory but ultimately pulling back to give you a taste of chocolate and nuts without any of the calories, bloating, or regret.

Slowly, the ambergris in the blend begins to make its presence known. A sweet and salty smell, full of brisk air and sunshine. There is something of old paper here but also freshly upturned soil. There is the sleepy suggestion of mustiness, like the mildewy aroma that clings to clothes taken out of storage for the winter season. This aroma is not unpleasant because it never comes across to the nose as unnatural. It simply mirrors the familiar scents of home, namely, closed-up closets, earth, newspapers, salt, vanilla extract, and the crumbed tobacco leaves from cigarettes.

Unfortunately, the rich white chocolate accord does not last past the first hour and is disappointingly faint from the second hour onwards. Longevity is good, but with the scent whittling down to a mere shadow of itself within hours, it is like buying an expensive balloon at a fairground and having it deflate to the size of a condom within minutes. Still, something about the smell of salty, creamy white chocolate in Ambergris White Chocolate Opium is so pleasing that one is tempted to forgive its wimpy performance metrics. Maybe.

Ambergris White Gold (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Ambergris White Gold is a great option for those who like the idea of ambergris but can’t deal with its often very animalic properties that often resemble halitosis, low-tide effluents, and dirty horse stables. This is the friendliest, most approachable ambergris mukhallat on the block. Opening with a thick caramel note so intense it approaches bitterness, Ambergris White Gold soon evens out into a musty, vanillic accord that smells like a cross between Communion wafers and old paper. Underneath these softly sugared ‘white’ elements, there is an undertow of stale saliva and warm horse flank. These notes merely nod at the presence of real ambergris but are not dirty enough to scare the truly skank-averse.

The blend is based on white ambergris, which is the finest and most expensive grade of ambergris. White ambergris does not smell foul – in fact, it barely has a smell at all other than the scent of fresh, mineral seaside air. If you smell white ambergris for a long time, you will also notice the subtle aroma of sea salt, paper, vanilla, and tobacco leaves. These more delicate properties of ambergris have been enhanced in Ambergris White Gold through the addition of a caramelized amber note up top and a dry, minty vanilla in the base. The overall effect is of a sweet, papery vanilla with facets of white sugar, pastries, salt, and clean marine air.

I recommend Ambergris White Gold to people who like the cleaner, sweeter side of ambergris, as well as to those who love gourmand notes such as salted caramel, pastry, vanilla, and mint toffee. The closest equivalent to this in the niche sector would be Dzing! by L’Artisan Parfumeur, which employs a similar gourmand approach to an animalic material (musk). Think of Ambergris White Gold as a sheaf of old manuscript papers, grown dusty and sweet with time, and finally, lowered into steaming vats of hot condensed milk and sea salt.

Amber Jewels (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

Lovers of ambergris owe it to themselves to smell something like Amber Jewels at least once in their life, if only to establish a benchmark for quality. The notes list says ambergris only, but forget that, as there is clearly a lot of labdanum doing the heavy lifting in the lower register. The opening is pure marine air, thick, pungent, but also hyper-clean, as if all the elements have been doused in disinfectant. It smells huge with a capital H – a hulking block of dusty rock, baking in the sun, the air fizzing with hot sea minerals, salt, and ozone.

Under the dusty minerals and caked-on sea salt, there is something balsamic shifting, keeping everything moist. This comes across as something thick, tarry and black, with a rubbery sweetness in its undertow. This charred rubber is a facet common to many ambergris-based fragrances. It carries a tinge of smoke too, similar to the petroleum honk of some jasmine materials. The sweet tar sitting under the marine notes acts as a layer of insulation for the more diffuse ambergris topnotes.

The ambergris is eventually joined by a rather masculine leather-amber accord, likely to be labdanum. This base thickens and sweetens the ambergris somewhat, cloaking its salty sparkle in a dense blanket of leathery resin. It is important to note, however, that the amber-ambergris accord never tumbles too far down the well of sweetness. This is not the affably herbaceous amber of, for example, Ambre Precieux (Maître Parfumeur et Gantier) or Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens). In fact, it retains a slightly rough, textured woodiness that is very characterful. It is precisely this salty, woody edge that will recommend itself to fans of amber scents that walk on the macho side of the fence. Although not equivalent or even similar in smell, Ambra Meditteranea by Profumi del Forte has a similar brusqueness, so fans of that might want to give this a try.

Photo by J Lopes on Unsplash

Amber Ood (Gulab Singh Johrimal)

Type: mukhallat

Despite the name, Amber Ood is neither amber nor oud but ambergris, and specifically the black, soft kind of ambergris so fresh it resembles the whale turd from whence it came. Freshly dotted on the skin, Amber Ood smells like old peanut butter, ancient fishing tackle that has been shat on by seagulls, and the halitosis stench of someone who’s dislodged a kernel of corn from their back molars after not having flossed for two months.

I would love to be able to tell you that it gets better.

Both Indians and Arabs seem to love the fouler pieces of ambergris (black ambergris), finding the smell intensely erotic and skin-like. But although the smell does eventually reveal some interesting hints of old newspaper, tobacco, and marine soil, Amber Ood retains this turd-cum-halitosis stench all the way through, ceding only to a bitter fir balsam and Ambroxan pairing at the tail end that smells like it has been cross-contaminated with a splash of Dior Sauvage. The Ambroxan does nothing to mitigate the essential foulness of the smell. Rather, it accentuates it, broadcasting the stench like an airborne virus.

Ambre du Soleil (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Ambre du Soleil is a bright, lemony frankincense and bergamot blend over a rugged ambergris. I suspect that the ambergris tincture was made from black ambergris, because there is a softly dung-like aspect to it at first that might seem fecal to some. It might even have been boosted by a drop of civet. But mostly this smells like pure ambergris tincture to me, made from a non-white grade of ambergris.

Later, the blend develops into a natural, warm marine aroma, with tinges of low tide and earthy, raw tobacco to remind us of its origin. Ambre du Soleil is an excellent example of the depth that natural ambergris can add to a blend, serving as an amplifying glass for all the other elements in the mix.

Ehsas (Al Haramain)

Type: mukhallat

A musky, salty ambergris-based fragrance with more than a lingering air of cheap men’s sports cologne. Ehas opens with a citrus and white musk combination that is about as comfortable as someone squirting lemon juice into your eye.

The ambergris note adds a dirty, musky salinity, and there are some nice green florals in the mix, but really, nothing in this mukhallat distinguishes it beyond the standard Iso E Super- or Ambroxan-powered sports dross so popular in modern masculine perfumery. If you like this sort of nose-singing rubbish, just buy Sauvage and be done with it. No need to get fancy schmancy with an attar.

Encens Mythique d’Orient (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

Encens Mythique d’Orient by Guerlain is a resinous ambergris fragrance with a bright rose and lots of aldehydes. It is a rather complex fragrance, and not easy to dupe. When worn on its own, the dupe captures the general feel of the scent quite well, but worn side by side with the original, some vital differences emerge.

The first difference is texture. The steam-pressed hiss of aldehydes of the original is missing in the dupe, leading to a slightly flattened effect, as if all the air had been let out of the tires. The original has incredible body and lift, with salty ambergris adding a rough, animalic sparkle. The dupe lacks the radiance central to the character of the real Encens Mythique d’Orient and therefore most of the point.

The other main difference is in the quality of the rose. Whereas the original uses a sharp Ta’if rose – dry, peppery, and neon pink – the dupe uses an ordinary Turkish rose synth and tries to beef it up by adding a jumble of mint, blackberry, and raspberry notes, a discordant mishmash that doesn’t feature at all in the original. The dupe is also less finely soapy-musky than the original, veering off instead into berry jam territory.

Sometimes, the most important question to ask of dupes is whether someone would mistake it as the original when smelled in isolation, or in the wild. I think that the dupe is recognizable – just about – as Encens Mythique d’Orient. But it can only sustain the illusion for a short time. In the end, the dupe morphs into a blackberry musk with a curiously waxy edge, reminiscent of Mûre et Musc by L’Artisan Parfumeur. If you are fond of this particular L’Artisan Parfumeur scent, then you will probably like this dupe for what it is, rather than caring about what it is not. Those specifically in search of Encens Mythique d’Orient, however – well, this ain’t it.

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Majid Muzaffar Iterji, Al Haramain, Amouage, Agarscents Bazaar, and Universal Perfumes and Cosmetics. The samples from Abdul Samad al Qurashi and Sultan Pasha were sent to me free of charge either by the brand or a distributor. The sample from Gulab Singh Johrimal was sent to me by a Basenotes friend.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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Ambergris Attars & CPOs Cult of Raw Materials Mukhallats Single note exploration The Attar Guide

The Attar Guide: Ambergris – A Primer

28th February 2022

What is Ambergris?

There is a common belief that ambergris is whale vomit. But it is now largely believed to be a waste product from the small intestine of the sperm whale that is excreted from the anus along with its poo.

Based on best available evidence, here is how ambergris is thought to be formed:

The sperm whale (a massive mammal) will typically eat up to a ton of squid and other sea creatures a day. The squid beaks, pens, and other indigestible detritus will build up in one of the whale’s four stomachs until it becomes an irritant, whereupon the whale will vomit most of it up. However, some of these beaks and indigestible materials pass through to the gastrointestinal tract.

Once in the gastrointestinal tract, the mass that will later become ambergris begins to form around the squid beaks and other detritus. Because the intestinal tract is really only designed to hold liquid feces and slurry, the whale’s body produces a soft, waxy material to wrap around the beaks and protect the tract from any sharp edges.

This material is thought to be made up of a mixture of ambrein – a fatty cholesterol-type material responsible for the odor of ambergris, bile duct excretions (epicoprostanol), gut effluvia, and liquid feces, which build up to form a solid lump of material called a coprolith. Over time, the pressure from liquid feces hitting this solid lump of hard material increases, finally propelling the ambergris to be excreted along with the (normal) liquid slurry.

That is, if the whale is large enough. In some cases, smaller whales are unable to pass the ambergris, so the mass continues to build until it tears the rectum, causing the whale to die and the ambergris to be released into the ocean.

In other words, ambergris is the result of either a massive poo or a violent death caused by a massive poo.

It takes time (and seawater) to make good ambergris

When ambergris is freshly excreted, it is soft, black, and dung-like in both shape and odor. In its fresh state, it is practically useless as a perfumery ingredient.

Ambergris bobs around in the open ocean for anywhere between ten to twenty years before washing ashore. During this time, it is bleached into its familiar grey-white appearance. The seawater effectively cures and weathers the ambergris, turning it into the hard, waxy substance so prized in perfumery. Washed ashore, it will often bake and cure further under the sun, taking on the mineralic smell of the sand or stones with which it mixes.

Amber ≠ Ambergris

There is some confusion over the terms amber and ambergris – and this confusion dates all the way back to the Middle Ages. The word amber, which comes from the Persiatic word anbar, was the word used in Middle English (Anglo-Saxon language) to describe ambergris. But simultaneously, the word amber evolved in the Romance languages (Latin, French) to mean amber resin – specifically the hard, yellow tree resin that was washing ashore along the Baltic coast at the same time. Since both ambergris and the amber resin were both egg-sized lumps of material washing up on beaches, it is easy to see why people confused amber with ambergris.

The people of the Middle Ages attempted to cut down on confusion by using color theory to distinguish amber from ambergris. Hence, amber resin was originally known as ambre jaune (yellow amber) and ambergris as, well, ambre gris (grey amber), thus-called because of its greyish-whitish cast. However, this only perpetuated the myth that amber and ambergris originated from the same source, differing only in color.

Of course, nowadays everyone understands that ambergris and amber are not from the same family. Here are the main points of comparison:

Ambergris is of animal origin (a sperm whale); amber is of plant origin (a Baltic pine tree).
Ambergris has a low burning point (a heated needle passes through it easily); amber has a high burning point (200C+)
Ambergris is porous, opaque, waxy, lighter than water (it floats); amber is hard, transparent, and heavier than water (it sinks)
Ambergris can be used directly in perfumery through tincturing; amber resin is not used directly in perfumery because it does not produce its own essential oil*

*There is a fossilized amber resin oil produced through the process of dry distillation, whereby the amber resin is burned, producing a smoky, tarry-smelling oil. However, this is not an essential oil of amber, but a by-product of burning. Fossilized amber oil, when used in a perfume composition, produces a smoky, balsamic effect, and must be dosed very carefully in order not to overwhelm the other notes. It is sometimes called black amber, and is used in some niche perfumes, such as Black Gemstone (Stephane Humbert Lucas).

Amber in modern perfumery is therefore a fantasy composition – an accord – rather than an actual material. It is an abstract idea of warm, honeyed, sweet, and resinous flavors rendered by a combination of labdanum (rockrose extract), vanilla, benzoin, and sometimes copal resin. Ambergris itself may have been once used in the place of labdanum, but that is certainly no longer the case. If you are curious to know more about amber, the accord, and the fragrances that feature it, then there is no better resource than the amazing series on amber by Kafkaesque here and here.

The Legality of Ambergris

In most countries, it is perfectly legal to buy and sell ambergris.

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) is the international body that governs, among other things, the trade and use of ambergris. Since 2005, CITES has agreed that ambergris is a ‘found’ material equivalent to flotsam or biological waste like urine and feces, and therefore it is not illegal or unethical to buy and sell lumps of ambergris that wash up on the shore.

However, CITES is not a government and cannot make laws: it is an international agreement to which states sign up voluntarily. That means that signatory countries can choose to enact national laws that adhere to the CITES framework…or not. Either way, a national law made by a government will always supersede the authority of the CITES agreement.

So while it is currently perfectly legal to salvage and sell lumps of ambergris that you find on a beach in the European Union, the UK, and New Zealand, it is illegal in Australia, where it is strictly considered to be a whale product and therefore protected under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 1999.

In the US, the legal situation is a little less clear cut. Sperm whales are a protected species under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, which technically means it is illegal for anyone to sell, trade, buy, or otherwise profit from ambergris (because it is a by-product of an endangered species).

However, enforcement of this act is lax in America, and natural perfumers buy and use natural ambergris in their perfumes without fear of indictment by the Federal authorities. The general line of thought in America is that since ambergris is a found, salvaged item like driftwood or other beach detritus, and not the product of hunting or cruelty to the whale by a human, then it’s perfectly ok to sell, buy, and use it.

In other words, American authorities basically agree with the CITES view of ambergris but just haven’t put it into writing yet.

The ethics of ambergris

The consensus is that while beach-cast ambergris is fine, ambergris hacked out of a whale’s gut is not. However, in the case of Middle-Eastern attar perfumery, there is more cultural tolerance for animal-derived substances and therefore, buyers for the large attar companies don’t seem as bound by CITES conventions or ethics as buyers in the West.

For example, when a thirty-ton male sperm whale washed up dead on a beach in Holland in early 2013, with eighty-three kilograms of ambergris lodged in its rectum, the ecological NGO Ecomare oversaw the process of dissecting the dead whale and the Dutch Government oversaw the selling off of the ambergris. The largest portion of this fresh, black ambergris was bought by Ajmal, the Indian attar company that sells to a primarily Middle-Eastern market.

This case shows that there is an appetite even for the freshest, stinkiest grades of ambergris in the Middle-East. It also demonstrates that some buyers for the Middle-Eastern attar companies do not mind trawling in the grey area between hacked-out and beach-cast ambergris.

By the way, ambergris is not ‘hunted’. Ambergris is formed in the intestinal tract of a measly one percent of male sperm whales. That translates to one in a hundred sperm whales. In other words, it doesn’t really make sense for hunters to go out and try to kill sperm whales to harvest their ambergris because the sheer odds of finding it make it a losing proposition. Therefore, the incidence of killing sperm whales purely for their ambergris is low to non-existent.

The use of ambergris in perfumery

Ambergris is used in perfumery in two main ways: as a fixative and as a prime component of the perfume’s aroma. Ambergris is a superlative fixative that gives depth and a halo-like glow to the finished perfume. It deepens the impact of all the other notes in a composition and extends the perfume’s tenacity on skin. Think of it like blowing on a fading fire, one’s breath reviving the hot red brilliance of the coals. If ambergris is used as a fixative in the base of a commercially-produced perfume and is not the main note being emphasized, then a synthetic ambergris replacer is normally used in the place of real ambergris.

Ambroxide, sold under the trade names of Ambroxan and Cetalox, is a synthesized material that is almost identical in chemical make-up to ambrein, the fatty, cholesterol-like component of ambergris responsible for its odor. Ambroxide mimics the fixative properties of ambergris perfectly, is cheap to use, of consistent, replicable quality, and very easy to scale up for mass production. It makes no sense to use real ambergris if all you need it for is its fixative properties deep down in the basenotes.

The other use of ambergris in perfumery is as the main fragrant component of a finished perfume, meaning that the perfume will smell quite strongly of ambergris itself. Ambergris has a very complex scent profile which depends on the type and grade used, but it is not very easy to define. Some perfumes focus on capturing the more tangible facets of ambergris scent profile, such as salty, marine, sweet, tobacco-like, earthy, or even dusty vanilla-paper facets. Often, perfumes with real ambergris have a funky, civet-like character that some compare to halitosis. As a rule of thumb, real ambergris is used mostly by natural perfumers, small indie perfumers, and attar makers. Beyond a certain price point, most of the attars and mukhallats described in the Attar Guide use real ambergris rather than synthetics.

What does ambergris smell like?

The sea. Salt. A harbor at low tide. Poo. Earth. Tobacco. Rocks. Musk. A freshly mucked-out stable. Vanilla milk. Old newspaper. Ambergris can smell like any and all of these things, depending on the grade (quality) of ambergris, the age of the piece, and the specific micro-environmental conditions surrounding its formation. Each piece of ambergris smells different from the next, but its aroma and quality are classified as one of three categories, as follows:

Black Ambergris: The freshest pieces of ambergris are blackish in color, quite soft, and dung-like. Fresh black ambergris smells quite strongly of horse manure mixed with straw and marine bilge. If you have ever mucked out a horse’s stable, then you will be familiar with this smell – it is pungent, fecal, but also warm and horsey. It is not unpleasant, but it is animalic. These lower grades of ambergris have not been cured as long in the ocean and therefore retain their original poo-like shape, color, and smell. While the very soft specimens are useless to perfumers, there is great demand in the Arab world for the harder lumps of ‘fresh’ ambergris, which produce a animalistic undertone in attars and blends.

Grey (Standard) Ambergris: Aged for a good many years in the ocean, grey ambergris has an ashy grey or brownish color, and is hard. The greatest range of aromas seems to be present within this grade of ambergris, with specimens smelling alternately of tobacco, old (yellowing) newspapers, vanilla, bad breath, marine silt, damp earth, harbors at low tide, seaweed, hay, horsehair, books, and warm salt. The initial aroma is warm, salty, and halitosis-like. Once the nose adjusts to the slight fecal or bad breath tonalities, the aroma is very pleasant – rich, round, and earthy, with an undercurrent of clean seawater.

White Ambergris: The highest grade of ambergris is, as the name suggests, white. There is little to no actual aroma clinging to the actual specimens besides a hint of sweet dust, dried salt, and something mineralic. In fact, white ambergris smells like anything that’s lain on a beach under the sun for a while, meaning dusty, mineralic, faded, and pleasantly ‘au plein air’. It has a silvery driftwood feel, bleached of all color and animal tendencies. It smells light, bright, clear, and kind of sweet. It is actually a very difficult smell to define other than a subtle salty-sweet ozone aroma that drifts in and out of the outer field of one’s perception. White ambergris is the type prized for its fixative abilities and for its power to magnify all the other notes without imposing its own character on the composition. Smelled on its own, it is a very difficult aroma for the human nose to define.

N.B. These descriptions come from personal experience with smelling many different specimens of beach-cast ambergris, kindly facilitated by face-to-face meetings with the owner of Celtic Ambergris in Kilkee, County Clare, in the West of Ireland.

Ambergris in Attar Perfumery

Oil perfumes on the cheaper end of the scale likely use the same Ambroxan or Cetalox used in most Western commercial perfumes. But the more expensive, luxurious mukhallats that list ambergris as a note will contain real ambergris. Culturally speaking, there is a long-held reverence in the Middle East for ambergris both in perfumery and for other, more obscure uses, like fattening up a thin child.

Cultural preferences also come into play when it comes to the selection and buying of pieces of ambergris. The Middle Eastern customer is much keener than the average Westerner on animalic notes in their perfumes, exhibiting a healthy appetite for the darker, funkier forms of ambergris, oud, and musks. Therefore, even the fresher specimens of ambergris are appreciated and used in Middle-Eastern perfumery.

Anyone interested in ambergris might want to order samples of some single-focus ambergris oils and tinctures, in order to establish a baseline for how ambergris smells in isolation. For a high-quality tincture, order a few drops from La Via de Profumo. Dominique Dubrana, or Abdes Salaam Attar as he is more commonly known, is a highly reputable and respected perfumer that makes and sells his own tinctures, attars, and spray perfumes using only natural ingredients.

Note: This article is an updated and attenuated version of an article originally written for Basenotes in 2019 (here). It is reprinted with the kind permission of Basenotes’ owner, Grant Osborne.

Photos: All photos in this post were taken by me and should therefore only be reproduced with my permission.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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Attars & CPOs Floral Mukhallats Review Rose Spicy Floral The Attar Guide Tuberose Vetiver Violet White Floral Ylang ylang

The Attar Guide: Floral Reviews (T-Y)

17th December 2021

Tahani (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

Tahani is an exotic floral blend with a touch of fruity Cambodian oud anchoring it at the base. It opens with a very sweet, rich Taifi rose and the pleasantly bitter sting of artemisia. Nuances of apricot, rum, and leather nudge things along towards what will hopefully turn out to be an orgasmic riot of white flowers. (This is the kind of opening that portends good things to come).

Unfortunately, it loses the plot slightly in the heart, when the rich rose is joined by a soapy and far-from-brilliant white floral accord, which dulls the bloom on the other notes. The ambergris in the base does its best to fan some life back into the florals, its salty radiance for once more bitter and foresty than warm, which gives the scent a chypre-like mossiness that works against the bright, fruity rosiness of the opening. On balance, Tahani is fine but not worth the price of admission.

Tasnim (Tasneem) (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: mukhallat

Tasnim (otherwise known as Tasneem) in eau de parfum format is one of my favorite ylang compositions of all time. Its buttery, creamy banana custard is touched here and there by rubber, and given a gentle, steadying backbone of dusty woods and resins. It smells – for lack of a better word – dreamy. Like custard clouds whipped up by Botticelli angels. In the late drydown, there is a wonderful texturization akin to almonds or hazelnuts pounded down to a fine paste with cinnamon and clove. Although it ultimately winds up in the same vanilla-banana-lotion area as Micallef’s Ylang in Gold, it remains resinous and nutty rather than fruity. Think of it as a higher IQ version of the Micallef.

The attar (or more accurately, mukhallat) version of Tasnim is similar to the original eau de parfum, but because it stresses different facets of the ylang and for longer, it smells quite different for the first two to three hours. Specifically, the slightly pungent rubber and fuel-like tones of the ylang are brought out more clearly, complete with the melted plastics undertone inherent to pure ylang oil. The opening is not unpleasant, but it might be a little odd for people unused to the super potent (and not terribly floral) nuances of raw ylang. In terms of complexity, I prefer the opening of the eau de parfum because it is both softer and more traditionally ‘perfumey’, whereas the opening of the attar smells more like ylang essential oil.

The attar stays in this fruity banana-petrol custard track for much longer than the eau de parfum, affecting both the texture and the ‘feel’ of the scent. Namely, the eau de parfum possesses an innocent, fluffy softness that I visualize in pastel yellow, while the attar is a bright, oily concentrate – a Pop Art yellow smear of gouache.

The drydown is where the attar truly shows its mettle. In fact, the ever-evolving complexity of the drydown is a good example of where the attar format often trumps the alcohol-based format. In oil format, the naturals continue to unfold and retract in somewhat unpredictable ways, while the development of the alcohol-based format evolves to a point and then stops. So, while the eau de parfum displays a beautiful, nutty ‘feuilletine’ finish folded into gentle puffs of woodsmoke, the attar just gets spicier, lusher, and more bodaciously sensual.

Tasnim attar is also less sweet than the eau de parfum, a pattern I notice in all direct comparisons of the attar versus the eaux de parfum for this house. (This feature might make the attars more attractive to men). The attar eventually dries down into a rich, leathery ylang-resin affair, with the same dusty-creamy texture as the eau de parfum (think crème brulée with a handful of grit stirred through). It is more animalic than the eau de parfum, with a sort of stale, animal-ish costus note appearing in the latter hours.

Both the eau de parfum and the attar of Tasnim are beautiful. I have a slight preference overall for the eau de parfum, especially in its measured collapse from feathery custard clouds into richly nutty feuilletine. But in terms of longevity and richness, I must give it to the attar, which only gets deeper and lusher the longer it is on the skin, shedding its rather simplistic ylang oil topnotes to become a floral with an animal growl. The attar is as powerful, rubied, and pungent as a high grade ylang essential oil, while the eau de parfum is softer, milkier, and sweeter.

Tawaf (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: mukhallat

Tawaf greets you with a hallucinogenic swirl of gasoline, grape brandy, plastics, nail polish remover, and magic marker – not immensely floral, in other words, and a little shocking to those used to commercial (synthetic) jasmine. I admire its thrusting, near sexual pushiness, but it is not for those of a nervous disposition. Tawaf is not just jasmine, but a clever mixture of jasmine with its tropical partners in crime – ylang and tuberose. The flat inkiness of indole defines the opening, and although I find it more squeaky-chemical (magic marker-ish) than animalic per se, it might pin your ears back if you are a jasmine virgin.

Soon, a bitter vegetal note emerges to tamp down the purple roar a little. This is the greasy yellow-green of narcissus, with its feral undercurrent of soiled hay. In the attar format, the initial floral surge is underpinned by a pungent herbaceous note, like lavender or jatamansi, which to my nose smells disturbingly like spoiled milk. It is as intense a smell as lavender buds crushed between your fingers.

In the attar format (but not the eau de parfum), the scent takes on a silky texture, like heated beeswax slipping through your fingers. The spikiness of the lavender accent persists, but now it is the soapiness of opoponax resin being pushed to the fore, which gives the scent a pleasantly ‘barbershop’ tonality missing in the eau de parfum format. The eau de parfum settles into a powdery rose and jasmine tandem kept slightly dirty by way of the barnyardy wet-hay narcissus. In the far drydown, Tawaf eau de parfum smells rather like the classical jasmine-civet-rose combination in Joy (Patou) – a little sour, leathery, in short, a true jasmine sambac smell.

The eau de parfum and attar of Tawaf are quite different from one another, so choose with caution. The eau de parfum is sweeter, lusher, and more ‘golden’ in temperament, while the attar is oilier, more herbaceous and bitter, and with its emphasis on the lavender-opoponax accord, a virile green-blue hue on the color wheel.

The attar does not accentuate the jasmine as much as the eau de parfum at first, although it does allow the jasmine to finally break through the herb-resin miasma past hour two. In the attar, the primary focus is on the lavender-ish, shaving foam aspects of opoponax, rather than the jasmine. In the eau de parfum, the herbal shaving cream aspect barely registers, emphasizing instead that skanky jasmine blast in the opening and a classical rose-jasmine-narcissus structure thereafter.

The drydown of the attar is spicier, stronger, and more pungent than the eau de parfum, a fierce crescendo of jasmine, shaving cream, and boot polish. If you are a jasmine fiend, go for the eau de parfum, and if you like the sexy, herbal sourness of skin sweating under a wristwatch, go for the attar.

Tayyiba (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

Tayyiba opens with a bouquet of sweet, oily, and slightly pungent flowers – mostly lilac, jasmine, and ylang – creating an effect that is soapy and thick rather than fresh, as if the flowers have been muffled under a thin layer of beeswax. Later, a savory orange blossom note not a million miles away from the corn-meal masa feel of Seville à L’Aube (L’Artisan Parfumeur) sweeps in. Overall, Tayyiba is an odd but memorable treatment of traditionally sweet, clear-as-a-bell florals. It is one to sample if you like florals with a muted, salty edge.

Tudor Rose (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

Tudor Rose is one of the most accomplished mukhallats in the Mellifluence stable, and one that personifies Abdullah’s neat fusion of Eastern and Western perfumery cultures. The freshly-cut-grass earthiness of vetiver and deer musk form a thickly furred accord that wraps around the embers of a smoking rose. Its slightly sulky, ‘red-rubied rose in green velvet’ countenance recalls the animalic rose chypres of the 1970s, such as La Nuit (Paco Rabanne), L’Arte di Gucci (Gucci), or even Knowing (Estée Lauder).

However, this is an Eastern take on the rose chypre, so along with that mossy forest floor we get heavy deer musk and two types of real oud oil. By the time we hit the base, it is clear that we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto. The dark musk used here is particularly good – velvety and bitter, like 70% cocoa chocolate made liquid. The slightly stale, earthy ‘old school’ Thai oud used in the blend brings some genuinely barnyardy funk to the party, propelling it out of chypre territory and planting it firmly in the humid jungles of the East.

Tudor Rose eventually settles into the quietness of rose-tinted woods, where the sharper notes such as vetiver and rosewood continue to duke it out for some time. If you like animalic rose chypres but also enjoy the exoticism of oud and rose pairings, then Tudor Rose will reward a sampling. One of my favorites from Mellifluence.

Tyrian Purple (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

What an over-the-top, edible delight! Tyrian Purple (love the Game of Thrones-ish name) is a dollop of cooked rose jam sitting on top of a smoky, medicinal oud that has been gussied up with enough candied apricots and sugar to tip it into the gourmand category. The gourmand aspect specifically references Middle-Eastern, Indian, and Persian sweet treats such as Rooh Afza, sherbet, and kulfi-like custards flavored with rosewater, saffron, and cardamom. Osmanthus is the headliner here, creating an olfactory vision of silky rose and apricot jam, and platters of freshly-cut fruit so juicy you almost visualize beads of water popping on their skin.

Basically, if you do not smile when you put Tyrian Purple on, then there is something wrong with you. If you love fragrances such as Andy Tauer’s Rose Jam, By Kilian Liaisons Dangereuses, or Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Mood Satin Oud, then there is no reason why you would not love this too.

Ubar (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

Amouage’s Ubar is a big-boned floral built around a triumvirate of indolic white florals, ambergris, and sandalwood. Sadly, given that it has been reformulated several times since its launch, with earlier versions more heavily focused on sandalwood than flowers, it is difficult to know what version people are talking about when they refer to Ubar as being a supersonic floral. Furthermore, the quality of the ambergris and jasmine materials has been downgraded with each subsequent reform. Whatever in Ubar was once natural is now more likely to be synthetic.

However, two features mark Ubar out as being uniquely ‘Ubar’ no matter what the version. First is its lemongrass-like freshness up top (due to the bright herb called litsea cubeba) and second, its head-spinning complexity. Ubar is also a perfume an interesting dual personality – a sort of Eastern exoticism meets Western abstract floral perfumery culture clash.

So, how does the dupe fare? In fairness, one can hardly expect a dupe oil to mirror the compositional complexity of an Amouage. And indeed, while the dupe makes a creditable effort, it falls short. In particular, the interestingly bright, sour herbaceous topnote of the original is missing, replaced by a screechy citrus material that immediately sets the flavor dial to ‘harsh’.

The general texture is also off-kilter – soapy and woody rather than bright and salty. The floral bouquet is dimmed and blurred by this soapiness, like a lantern rubbed with wax before being lit. By hour three, the dupe has achieved a sort of uneasy synchronicity with the original Ubar, settling into a soft floral blur that is not unpleasant. But where the original retains a briny herbal brightness all the way through, the dupe collapses into woody vagueness.

However, if the dupe is worn alone, the resemblance to the original is possibly strong enough to pass. Adequate, in other words – but just barely.

Un Bello (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Un Bello is a juicy, peachy floral accord floating freestyle in a nineties-style aquatic musk. It smells blue, in a Calone-driven manner. Given that it accidentally recreates, in faithful detail, the original Acqua di Giò for Women, it would be unconscionable of me to recommend that anyone actually go out and buy this.

Une Vie En Rose (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Unlike most of the other rose-based compositions in the Henry Jacques stable (that I have smelled), Une Vie En Rose is rendered in the syrupy rose mukhallat style of Arabian perfumery rather than in the crisp, citronal-heavy style of the English garden. It does not smell as natural or as ripped-from-nature as Henry Jacques’ other rose-forward perfumes, therefore, but in compensation, the thickeners of labdanum, resins, and myrrh make for a more interesting ride. A smooth but animalic oud oil tucked into the seams gives Une Vie En Rose the feel of a more natural Oud Ispahan.

The innocence of the name puzzles until you remember the husky, grief-stained voice of the woman who sang La Vie En Rose. Edith Piaf would have loved this fragrance. If you adore the musky bite of oud wood smoking on a burner, or the rough sensuality of balsamic roses, then Une Vie En Rose is for you. Fans of Oud Ispahan (Dior Privée), Oud Palao (Diptyque), or even the gorgeously syrupy Rose Nacrée du Desert (Guerlain) – this is the one in the Henry Jacques collection to seek out.

Venezia Giardini Segreti (La Via del Profumo/ Abdes Salaam Attar)

Type: mukhallat

One of my favorites from La Via del Profumo, Venezia Giardini Segreti frames a voluptuous jasmine against the rough-textured tobacco of ambergris, which creates a backdrop of black tea leaves and ash in the manner of Jasmin et Cigarette (État Libre d’Orange). It is this balance between the damp, fetid lushness of the white flowers and the dryness of the leather, tea, or tobacco that makes Venezia Giardini Segreti so special.

Interestingly, there is also the burnt coffee grounds aroma of real oakmoss. This accord smells a bit like the oakmoss you get in older, vintage chypres like Givenchy III, meaning rather than fresh and bitter, it feels pre-degraded by time and exposure to the air, like green plant stems rotting slowly in murky vase water. This dusty ‘brown’ moss note ages the base of Venezia Giardini Segreti, turning the sultry flowers into the cracked-at-the-elbows leather jacket of Cabochard (Grès), Miss Balmain (Balmain), or and Le Smoking (DSH Perfumes).

Tempered in this way by the grey-green ink of oakmoss, the jasmine feels like one of those dried and salted mystery items you pick up at the Asian store to snack on. It is fantastically sexy, and I far prefer it to La Via del Profumo’s most famous jasmine creation, Tawaf. It is the perfect jasmine perfume for a Bohemian spirit.

Vetiver Blanc (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Vetiver Blanc is sexy as hell. Straight out of the bottle, it is a creamy emulsion of grass and tropical flowers, with a texture close to coconut cream. The gardenia and tuberose absolutes give up their creamy, earthy facets but none of their strident, candied, or rubbery undertones, ensuring that the florals in the blend remain low-key. It smells fertile and damp, like the hummus-rich earth under ylang bushes after a tropical storm. In this, it shares a bond with Manoumalia by Les Nez, considered by many – including myself – to be the ne-plus-ultra of the tropical floral genre.

But the galbanum and the vetiver in Vetiver Blanc run a smoky, rooty thread through the mukhallat, tethering it to the greenery of the jungles and preventing the scent from floating away aimlessly into a pool of pikake island bliss. There is sensuality, but it is reigned in. Which, of course, is what makes this even sexier.

Another welcome surprise – ambergris. The composition of Vetiver Blanc contains 35% real ambergris, procured on the West Coast of Ireland and tinctured by Sultan Pasha himself. It is white ambergris, the highest grade of all, which does not produce much of a scent of its own beyond a sweet seawater minerality. But the role that the white ambergris plays in this composition is vital. It causes all the other notes and materials to glow hotly, as if lit by some internal heat source.

The effect is a gauzy halo of buttery white florals, resins, and creamed grass, all pulsing outwards in concentric circles of scent waves that fill the room and one’s own mouth. I find this incredibly beautiful, sexy, and warm – the perfect white floral for white floral avoiders and the perfect vetiver for the vetiver-averse. It rivals both Songes (Goutal) and Manoumalia (Les Nez) for their damp, fecund sensuality, which, if you know those perfumes at all, is really saying something.

Violet Forever (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Only the hardest of hearts would not melt at the opening of this perfume. Violet Forever is a frilly bloomers explosion of sweet, powdery violets, a glitter spackle of violet pastilles pinned lightly to its fabric. It smells like all the colors associated with Easter – lilac, blush, primrose, duck egg blue.

The childlike exuberance of the opening dies back very quickly, however, transitioning into a more honeyed texture which, while still crystalline, renders the violet note syrupy and medicinal. Rose and vanilla maintain the creaminess quotient, but alas, the initial freshness of the violets is lost.

Despite this, the development of Violet Forever still holds some delights, chief among them a delicious rose jam note that marries the jellied texture of lokhoum to the nuttiness of halva. The violet becomes ever more insistently sweet as time passes, as well as unapologetically girly.

If you love violet pastilles, children’s antibiotic syrups, the scent of My Little Pony, or anything dainty and pastel-colored, then Violet Forever just might be your nirvana. For everyone else, just keep in mind that they were not kidding about the Forever part, so unless syrupy violet pastilles are your particular fetish, steer clear. Overall, the sense is of an opportunity missed. The scent briefly teeters on the brink of something great, but rapidly loses its train of thought, lazily circling back to the girlish cliché you expected it to be in the first place.

Violets Blond (Perfume Parlour)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

Dupe for: Tom Ford Violet Blonde

The dupe is almost identical to the original Tom Ford perfume, save for a slightly marshy edge to the iris in the dupe. It nails the violet and iris notes to within an inch of the original, especially the cold suede-like overtones of the orris and the powderiness of the violets. The dupe is as clean and as musky as the original. Longevity and projection are also roughly on par.

The only real difference is that the absence of the sharp, metallic violet leaf at the beginning, and a lighter, less benzoin-heavy drydown. The toned-down presence of the benzoin means that the powder is dialed down about forty percent from the original, a feature that some might enjoy or even prefer. On the flipside, this also translates into a slightly slimmer body – a thin foam pillow instead of a plump goose down one. Overall, though, this is a more than adequate replacement for the by-now-discontinued Tom Ford.

Violette Noyée (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Expectations are such weighty things, aren’t they? The minute Sultan Pasha mentioned that the inspiration for Violette Noyée (‘Drowned Violet’) was Guerlain’s classic Après L’Ondée (‘After the Downpour’), it was inevitable that that we would begin to stake out some pretty lofty goal posts in our heads.

Expectations like these are nigh on impossible to satisfy. If the perfumer produces an exact copy of Après L’Ondée in attar form, then it is just a dupe. If it diverges too far from the original template, then people will scoff that it smells nothing like the original. When a behemoth like Après L’Ondée is involved, therefore, best not to mention it at all. That way, if people find it similar, they will point it out and the whole thing becomes a ‘happy accident’ by a talented perfumer whose work happens to come close to the standard set by a Guerlain classic.

Therefore, to judge Violette Noyée fairly, you really must put all thoughts of Après L’Ondée out of your head. They smell very little alike. But they are both beautiful in their own way. Après L’Ondée is sweet and aerated, with a heart of tender violets and heliotrope gently spiced with anise and clove. The iris in the Guerlain emphasizes the delicately mineral scent of earth after a rain shower. The entire affair is delicate and gauzy.

Violette Noyee, on the other hand, has a bright, hesperidic opening that bristles with lemon and the brushed-metal greenness of violet leaf, which gives way to an earthy ‘forest’ floral. Peppy green florals such as hyacinth and lily of the valley play the main role here, rather than the melancholy purple sweetness of violet flowers. The impression is first and foremost of freshly cut grass and sunshine.

Heliotrope is strongly present in the latter stages, but compared to the Guerlain, it is neither fluffy nor gauzy, but heavily fudgy and pastry-like. The scent develops along the same spicy marzipan track as Après L’Ondée’s big sister, L’Heure Bleue, more than Après L’Ondée itself. This makes sense as the mukhallat is modeled after the rare Après L’Ondée pure parfum, which is a much heavier and denser affair than the eau de toilette (and indeed, much more like L’Heure Bleue).

Being an oil-based perfume, Violette Noyée does not and cannot truly capture the silvery weightlessness of the original, nor does it even attempt to recreate its mineral petrichor effect. But Violette Noyée should be enjoyed as its own creature rather than as a point of comparison. Its bright citrus and violet leaf notes are especially beautiful, providing as they do a fantastic contrast with the damp verdancy of the florals.

The base throws all sense of restraint to the wind and mixes the cool ‘blue’ fudge-like texture of heliotrope, tonka, and amber with spicy, hot carnation, resins, vintage-style musks, and a filthy, saliva-ish ambergris. What a mind warp to travel from cool green florals and juicy lemons to L’Heure Bleue’s dessert trolley, to finally plant its feet firmly in the stinky mammalian effluviant of ambergris. Ethereal it ain’t. But judge Violette Noyée for what it is, please, rather than for what it purports to be.

Walimah Attar (Areej Le Doré)

Type: mukhallat

The opening of Walimah Attar is strangely familiar to me, and it haunts me until I realize that it simply shares what I would characterize as the sepia-toned density common to all blends of natural floral absolutes in attar perfumery. When you mix a bunch of floral absolutes together, they conspire to make a thick, oily-muddy fug of smells only vaguely floral in dilution. Unlike the synthetic representations of flowers in mixed media perfumes or commercial perfumery, where you can clearly differentiate one floral note from another, the flowers in all-natural attars don’t give up their individual identities without a fight. They are melted down into the soup. But still, there are markers that can tip you off as to what is there.

So, for example, in Walimah, I can smell the musky, apple-peel outlines of champaca but not its softer, creamier yellow parts. The gassy miasma of benzene and grape that lingers like fog in still air tells me that ylang plays a role here, even though it doesn’t really smell distinctly of ylang. A note like lemon peel dropped into creamed white honey, with a cutting green leaf undercarriage – this is the magnolia. Finally, there seems to be a big tuberose at loose here, but it is the brown-green, angularly bitter type of tuberose one sees in natural perfumery, rather than the buttery, candied Fracas kind.

This floral miasma all boils down into a sticky, fruity, brown varnish of notes that smells more like balsamic oud than a field of flowers. There is nothing fresh or dewy here. The floral varnish smells aged and, also kind of vaporous, as if evaporating off a piece of old wooden furniture left to fester in a backroom, sending little spores of varnish off into the ether. That tells me there is lots of saffron here, with its dusty, potpourri-ish trail.

Further on, there is a fabulously grassy vetiver threading in and out through the floral fug – not fresh or citrusy like a straight-up vetiver oil, but more like ruh khus, with its soft, mossy smell of winter greens cooked slowly in olive oil. There is also, at times (but not on every testing), a trace of mushroomy earthiness, creating an impression of either myrrh or gardenia.

Texture-wise, Walimah Attar evolves slowly from a dense, syrupy brown varnish to a dusty, soapy base, with a detour here and there to the grassiness of vetiver. The funkiness of the musk gives the scent a sweet, powdery, and vaguely civety finish that, coupled with the oily, abstract florals up top, make me think of Gold Man by Amouage, particularly the vintage version. That is my way of saying that Walimah smells a little dirty in parts, a bit soupy and lounge lizardy, like poor body hygiene covered up with a floral white musk deodorizing powder.

Walimah unfolds to me as a series of block movements rather than distinct notes – first, a sharp, fruity fug of yellow and white florals compressed tightly into an oily brick, followed by the relieving, aerating soap powder of musk and old woods, and finally, darting through everything, that nutty, almost creamy vetiver note.

Although I really like Walimah Attar, it gives me a slight headache every time I wear it. Furthermore, despite its potency for the first four hours, it loses steam quite quickly thereafter. I recommend it highly for men and women who love the following fragrances: Vetiver Blanc (Sultan Pasha), De Vaara (Mellifluence), Champaca Regale (Sultan Pasha), Jardin de Borneo Tuberose (Sultan Pasha), and Gold Man (Amouage).

White Lotus (Anglesey Organics)

Type: essential oil (doubtful)

Anglesey Organics’ version of a white lotus ruh is extremely cheap, which means, of course, that it is likely not the real deal. Still, it is highly enjoyable to wear, even neat on the skin. The opening is of a honeyed white floral, with little pockets of fresh, cool nectar popping in the honeycomb structure. It is lightly creamy, but not heavy or thick. There are some woody and vegetal undertones at play in the background, with a faint tea-with-lemon facet developing much later.

Overall, this is a delicious, sparkling oil that makes you want to knock it back like a glass of iced floral cordial on a hot day. As it develops, there is a parallel to the honeyed creaminess of magnolia, but the white lotus is shot through with a crisp, watery hue that gives it the edge in hot weather. In the far drydown, alongside the tannic tea and citrus notes, there also appears a dry, resinous thickness that is especially toothsome.

Yasminale #1 (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Sweet pea, honeysuckle, Mirabelle plum, freesia – the notes list reads like a perfume made for a twelve-year-old woodland fairy. True to form, the perfume starts off as a tender-hearted floral, with a soft fruitiness that broadcasts ‘youth’ without straying into flashiness.

Things take an unexpected turn, however, when a rather adult creaminess rolls in to support the florals in the rump, an exquisite combination of jasmine, vanilla, and sandalwood that smells like one of those old-fashioned, boozy egg creams you get at a retro diner. Not a perfume for a nymph after all, but for women with deep bosoms, zero thigh gap, and serious sexual intent.

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Amouage, Anglesey Organics, Perfume Parlour, Agarscents Bazaar, Abdes Salaam Attar, Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics, and Mellifluence. The samples from Sultan Pasha and Areej Le Doré were sent to me free of charge by the brand. Samples from Henry Jacques were sent to me by Basenotes friends in sample passes.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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Attars & CPOs Chypre Floral Green Floral Jasmine Mukhallats Review Rose Saffron Spicy Floral The Attar Guide White Floral

The Attar Guide: Floral Reviews (S)

15th December 2021

Saat Safa (Al Rehab)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Saat Safa is a potent mash-up of the mossy, pungent rose chypres of the eighties, such as Diva (Ungaro) and Knowing (Estée Lauder), and the syrupy exoticism of rose and sandalwood attars from India and the Middle East. In short, it is bloody fantastic.

The opening roils with a fresh green rose bracketed by antiseptic saffron, placed there to drain your sinuses and clear a path through the tangled undergrowth. The pungent green moss notes and the burning resins give the scent an old-school ‘perfumey’ vibe, an impression that grows stronger when the spicy carnation and ylang notes creep in.

Although not as spicy as Opium (Yves Saint Laurent) or Coco (Chanel), a bridge of cinnamon and cloves connects the dots between these ruby-rich floral ambers and the mossy bitterness of Mitsouko (Guerlain) and Knowing. The sour smokiness of the ‘oudy’ base ushers in a taste of the East. And when all the notes mesh together, one hardly knows whether to be aroused or intimidated. Maybe both.

Although the base slouches into a soapy slop, due to far too heavy a hand with laundry musks, the first part of the scent is striking enough to warrant a place in the wardrobe of any spicy floral-amber or chypre lover. Amazing stuff and possessed of a quality that belies its low price.

Safari Blend (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

There seem to be two versions of Safari Blend floating around – one for women, the other for men. I tested the women’s version of Safari Blend, which is a sweet, warm blend consisting mainly of jasmine, ylang, and vanilla. The opening is almost saccharine, with a big pop of jasmine that shares certain grape soda aspects with the jasmine in Sarassins (Lutens) but none of the indole. Despite the ylang and vanilla, the blend never descends into a boneless, creamy torpor, thanks to the fruity sharpness of the jasmine. None of the green or spice notes listed for the scent emerge, which is a shame, because that is exactly the sort of counterbalance sorely missing here.

Supposedly there is oud in this, although it is so subtle that it barely registers above and beyond a vaguely tannic woodiness that sneaks into the base. This note smells more like tea leaves than oud and is so lightly handled that it is difficult to pick out among the roar of the purple-fruited jasmine. This version of Safari Blend is a bosomy, big girl’s pants kind of jasmine, the sort that is hell bent on seduction at the cost of complexity – Thierry Mugler’s Alien on steroids. In other words, it is not really suited to those who prefer darker, leathery, and more indolic jasmine scents. But for those who prefer the jiggly-belly-sweetness of Grasse jasmine? This will do nicely.

Sajaro (Imperial) (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

Sajaro Imperial is made using the best quality Turkish rose oil and Trat oud. It is roughly similar to the theme explored by Sajaro Classic, but there are key differences. Mainly, the fiery thrust of the saffron is not in evidence here, the rose is deeper and lusher, and the Trat oud adds an interesting nuance of cooked plum jam to the blend. It is at once darker and softer than the original, and, thanks to that sultry plum note, actually far more ‘Mittel Europe’ in feel than the Arabian souk summoned by Sajaro Classic’s more traditional rose-saffron-oud triptych.

Sandali Gulab (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Sandali Gulab proves the central tenet of attar and mukhallat perfumery, which is that one need not do anything more complicated than simply placing one or two high-quality raw materials together and allowing them to work their magic on the skin.

The ‘sandali’ part of the equation here is supposedly real Mysore sandalwood, although at the relatively low price point of $64, I doubt that much – if any – was used. No matter. The real star here is the very good quality rosa damascena that has been used in the blend, speaking to the eponymous gulab part. It is sweet, velvety in texture, and slightly powdery.

The rosa damascena is the same varietal of rose grown in Ta’if but when grown in Turkey, Bulgaria, India, and (formerly) Syria, the aroma profile is very different. Smelled in conjunction with Ta’ifi Ambergris, for example, it becomes clear that these roses, when grown in Turkey, are lush, jammy-fruity, and softly feathered around the edges compared to the Ta’ifi rose, which smells pungently spicy, green, and lemony.

A pleasantly dusty, waxy lacquer note dulls the sharper, higher points of the rosa damascena, and the blend soon becomes pleasantly creamy, as if a drop of vanilla has been stirred through. However, this is not vanilla, but the effect of the milky sandalwood material used. Sandali Gulab is very traditional-smelling, by which I mean that it smells like the typical rose-sandalwood attars and oils sold all over India and the Middle East. Still, this is a very nice, high quality rendition of the classic rose-sandalwood attar, and never feels derivative.

Shabab (Gulab Singh Johrimal)

Type: mukhallat

Shabab opens with a tart, winey red rose, saffron, and velvety woods, its bitterness offset by a sunny ylang note. This mélange creates a momentary impression of agarwood – yet another example of where the traditional saffron-rose pairing in Eastern perfumery helps us all fill in an oud blank that isn’t really there.

As with all the Gulab Singh Johrimal oils, Shabab is a little screechy in the first half an hour. But sit it out, because this one is worth the wait. What the scent slowly reveals is a hard-core center of salty, almost animalic woods, framed by labdanum and a brown, mossy accord, all held together by a synthetic oud or Ambroxan.

This is the rare mukhallat where the synthetic exoskeleton works to the advantage of the scent, lending it a deliberately perfumey vibe that makes it seem more complex than it really is. Shabab reminds me somewhat of the dark, spicy Lyric Woman (Amouage), or even the harsh, wine-dregs feel of Une Rose’s drydown, particularly the original version, which contained plenty of the now-banned synthetic woody amber Karanal. Some of that dirty knickers accord has been borrowed from Agent Provocateur and L’Arte di Gucci too. For the price, Shabab is impressive – a brutal rose ringed in synthetic filth.

Shadee Version 1 (Batch 2) and Shadee Version 2 (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Originally composed as a blend to commemorate his fifth wedding anniversary, Sultan Pasha has since issued several versions of Shadee (meaning ‘wedding’ in Sanskrit), each with a slightly different top note. Both samples I tested (Shadee Version 1 and Shadee Version 2) open with a strange but alluring smell of floor wax and boot polish, making me think of a combination of ylang absolute and iris, neither of which feature in this blend. Instead, Shadee has been designed around a duet of gardenia and jasmine, both florals present in the form of different species and extraction methods.

When smelled in high concentration, some floral absolutes and enfleurages can lose their typical ‘floral’ characteristics normally represented in modern commercial perfumery – creaminess or sweetness, for example – and instead bring all their weirder, less floral attributes to the party. Therefore, ylang can smell like bananas and burning plastic, jasmine can smell like gasoline and grape chewing gum, some violet aromachemicals can smell like cucumber, iris can smell like raw potato and proving bread, calycanthus can smell like blackberry wine, and so on.

Such is clearly the case here – the boot polish, fuel-like aspects of pure jasmine oil are magnified in Version 2, whereas the grass-fed, slightly saline mushroom aspect of gardenia is pushed to the front in Version 1. Neither version is particularly floral in smell at first, despite the massive overload of floral absolutes. In both, there is a dusty hay-like note, reminiscent of the flat, almost stale spiciness of turmeric or saffron. This is actually in keeping with the theme of an Indian-style wedding, where the bride typically has intricate henna designs painted onto her hands and arms before the ceremony.

The final version of Shadee is the most beautiful and the most rounded. It opens with the earthy, mushroom-like salinity of Version I’s gardenia up front, but the spicy, leathery Sambac jasmine of Version 2 is there too, playing a subtle background role. The two floral absolutes intertwine sensuously, flowing into one earthy, spicy, honeyed accord. Again, there is nothing overtly floral about these pure floral enfleurages. Rather, they display a dark, chestnut-honey tenor more aligned with earth and leather than a flower.

The creaminess of the blend intensifies with the addition of a very good sandalwood, but it is also generously spiced with the astringent herbs and botanicals of a traditional Indian shamama, such as saffron, henna, turmeric, and a host of other unknown ingredients, but which may include spikenard, kewra, or cinnamon bark. Towards the end, a slightly dank musk accord pulls the earthy, spicy, creamy floral into the undergrowth.

Shadee exemplifies what I think makes Sultan Pasha such a good perfumer. He looks at a theme and takes the less obvious route towards expressing it. The Shadee attar could have been a crude, spicy caricature of an Indian wedding (more Bollywood than real life) but this is refined, waxy, and slightly strange in the best way imaginable.

In its marriage of earth, spice, and flowers, Shadee approaches the orbit of traditional Indian attars such as majmua or shamama but ultimately spins away in a different direction. It is, in some way, complimentary to Sultan Pasha’s other Indian-inspired attar, Shamama, in that they both draw from a rich Indian cultural heritage of attar-making, but ultimately divert to a more Arabian-inspired finish of animalic musks, resins, or precious woods.

Shafali (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Shafali’s combination of dusty oud, saffron, sandalwood, and rose manages to smell like the inside of an old furniture shop, complete with the pleasant aroma of neglect – wood spores, old lacquer, dried roses, and dusty yellow packets of henna and saffron tucked into drawers. In fact, Shafali reminds me of Swiss Arabian’s Mukhallat Malaki, which also has a similarly attractive ‘dusty old furniture’ vibe.

Given the relatively low price of Shafali, it is safe to assume that there no real Mysore sandalwood or oud oil was harmed in its making. They are effectively mimicked, however, by way of a clever use of synthetic replacements or other oils blended to give the desired result. The antiseptic sting of saffron is authentic and helps us draw the imaginary line to the medicinal, leathery mien of real oud oil. It does not smell animalic, dirty, or foul in any way – just ancient.

Though Shafali is unlikely to contain much, if any, real oud or Mysore sandalwood, the result still smells wonderful – a dried, spicy potpourri of roses over dusty saffron and sweet-n-sour mélange of blond woods that recalls a more exotic Parfum Sacre (Caron).

Shafali’s drydown is extremely soapy, which is less pleasing. But for two thirds of the journey, before it turns to hotel soap, Shafali is the archetypal perfume that Westerners imagine Scheherazade herself might have worn, and that alone is worth the price of entry.

Sharara (Gulab Singh Johrimal)

Type: mukhallat

An inoffensive floral musk with a smattering of lily of the valley, or whatever synthetic perfumers are using these days to create a muguet-like note. Fresh, soapy, and curiously muted, I can only see this appealing to young women who are frightened of any smell that raises its head above the laundry line.

She Belongs There (Olivine Atelier)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

She Belongs Here is a fresher take on the heady white floral theme typically pursued by Olivine. Opening with the peachy-jasmine flutter of frangipani mingling with the delicate cream cheese of gardenia, it feels delicate and crisp.

But She Belongs There is more complex than its opening bouquet might suggest. The white flower petals eventually droop with heat, losing their crisp edge and melting into a heady mass that points to a more mature sensuality. But the white floral notes retain a beguiling purity. A foamy vanilla note in the heart aerates the florals, giving them a whipped, frothy texture.

A startling mid-performance shift in tone occurs, when the florals begin to smell more like magnolia or champaca than frangipani or gardenia. The floral notes become bright, honeyed, and almost green, with a side of apple peel, as if the milky-rubbery frangipani had suddenly morphed into the magnolia crispness of Guerlain’s L’Instant. On close inspection, there is also a strong pear solvent note, like nail polish remover splashed onto a hot metal pan. This comes across as vaporous and intoxicating, rather than unpleasant. But it is something to note.

The solvent note burns off over time, leaving a very natural-smelling jasmine in its place. Although not as forceful or naturalistic as Jasmin T by Bruno Acampora, this type of jasmine accord will please those who prefer their jasmine classically sweet and full-figured rather than leathery or fecal. In the drydown, the jasmine develops a slightly sour edge, and a hint of rubbery smoke appears, possibly tuberose. The fact that She Belongs There cycles through so many different phases and does so with grace marks it out as special. A white floral with this many shades of nuance is difficult to achieve under normal circumstances, but to manage it in an oil is a remarkable feat.

Sikina (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

Sikina is a lush floral affair that opens on a sambac jasmine note so heartstoppingly real-smelling that it feels like someone has just placed a garland of just-plucked jasmine blossoms around your neck. Silky, creamy, and rich, the jasmine also has playful hints of dirt, spice and greenery, exerting a narcotic pull on the senses. It smells like white flowers fresh off the vine.

Although jasmine, and particularly sambac jasmine, plays a significant role in Arabic culture, it is rare to see it explored as fully as it is here. In contrast to the syrupy, grapey, or bubblegummy expressions of jasmine more commonly found in mukhallat perfumery, the jasmine note in Sikina is delicate, with a fresh roundness that is utterly disarming.

The jasmine note is quickly joined by what appears to be its true partner in crime, namely a sweet nag champa note. The nag champa is dusty and a little headshoppy, but the whiff of damp, rotting wood emanating from the oud ensures that it never feels cheap. The Himalayan deer musk is subtle, noticeable only in its persistent aura of sweet powder. Indeed, Sikina is animalic in a minor key only, the oud and musk folded quietly into the buttresses of the scent to propel the jasmine and nag champa forward.

The white petal freshness of the jasmine does not stay the distance, unfortunately. I suppose that this is simply what happens when you stack something fresh or delicate up against the all-encompassing powderiness of something like nag champa or musk. But the leathery spice of the flower survives, outpacing its crisp topnotes. The slightly dirty facets of sambac jasmine are accentuated by civet, and its lingering sourness mirrored by the yoghurty tartness of rosewood. Whether the jasmine is real or not, I don’t know. But Abdullah has sketched out an authentic jasmine sambac drydown for us by way of other notes. And that is clever.

A honeyed orange blossom steps in to fluff the pillows on the final approach, sweetening the pot with its bubbly, orange-marshmallow character. Oddly, the addition of this (unlisted) orange blossom note gives Sikina an innocent air. It must be that orange blossom simply reminds me of those French orange blossom waters used for children’s baths.

Silver Carnations (Possets)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Company description: Long lasting and just beautiful from the start, Silver Carnations stays true from the first moment until the last. The “silver” part that you love combined with the spice and flower carnation that you wanted. A winner.

A sharp, bright clove note – searing in its peppery hotness – leads the charge here. It is watery, acidic, and a little plasticky, therefore staying true to the scent of clove rather than to the floral freshness of a true carnation. Carnation smells a little like clove, but it is far less strident and boasts a clear floral softness (or more fancifully, a lace-doily frilliness) that is missing in the spice. If you have ever ruffled the heads of old-fashioned pinks, then you will know what I mean.

In leaning so hard on the clove component, Silver Carnation makes it fifty percent of the way to a good carnation, however, the plain jane vanilla that follows fails to flesh out the spice into that necessary floral freshness that defines the other fifty percent. Close, therefore, but no cigar.

Sohan d’Iris (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Sohan d’Iris is an unusual composition, featuring an ultra-gourmand but also borderline animalic approach to one of the most delicate materials in perfumery – iris. Unfortunately, given the natural heaviness of materials such as tonka, honey, and almonds, the iris note gets a bit lost in the fray. But the mukhallat is interesting enough that one might forgive it that piece of misdirection.

The iris note at the start is rooty, almost sinister. Almost immediately, a thick swirl of salted caramel and almond crème bubbles up from below, licking at the legs of the silvery iris, which retracts in ladylike horror. The grotesque sweetness of the caramel holds court for a while, before ceding to a honeyed chamomile tisane accord, which cuts through the sullen density like a brisk sea breeze through 90% humidity.

Yet this floral honey tisane melts away far too quickly, swallowed up by the dark, animalic basenotes. The finish reads as pure animal to me, pungent with the unholy funk of old honey, the dung-like pong of black ambergris, and what smells to me like real deer musk.

While the honeyed-floral heart is still bleeding into the animalic base, the mukhallat smells interestingly like cake dragged through the marine silt of a harbor at low tide. The musky filth here reminds me of Afrah attar by Amouage, which features an almost bilge-like ambergris paired with champaca and basil.

The slightly pissy tones of the honey, combined with the heavy musk and ambergris are also somewhat reminiscent of Miel de Bois (Serge Lutens), absent the fuzzy cedar notes. In fact, forget the gourmand iris angle with which this mukhallat is marketed – if anyone is looking for an animalic, musky honey mukhallat, then look in the direction of Sohan d’Iris. I find this perfume to be borderline unpleasant, but someone with a stronger stomach for animalics might disagree.

Sundus (Abdul Karim Al Faransi/Maison Anthony Marmin)

Type: mukhallat

Composed in the traditional ‘dried dates and rose petal’ style of Middle-Eastern mukhallat perfumery, Sundus features a rich Damascus rose swimming in a clear, honeyed amber. It is immediately redolent of the traditional rose sweets one might imbibe in India, Persia, and the Emirates. Think kulfi and Faloodeh. There are hints of jasmine, but the floral note is there only to add creaminess to the blend rather than manifest its own naughty, strong-willed character. Likewise, sandalwood and musk register only in their textural softness, creating the lasting impression of rose petals floating on a pool of crème caramel.

If you are a fan of the honeyed-rosy-dessert style of mukhallat perfumery borrowed by niche perfumes such as Oud Satin Mood (Maison Francis Kurkdijan) or Rose Flash (Andy Tauer), then Sundus will please you greatly. It is both simpler and more ‘basic’ than either of the scents just cited, but very much in the same genre. I find this mukhallat to exert an odd tug on my emotions, but then, I have a complex relationship with lokhoum.

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Amouage, Al Rehab, Maison Anthony Marmin, Abdes Salaam Attar, Possets, Mellifluence, Olivine Atelier, and Agarscents Bazaar. The samples from Sultan Pasha and Abdul Samad al Qurashi were sent to me free of charge either by the brand or a distributor. Samples Gulab Singh Johrimal were sent to me by Basenotes friends in sample passes.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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The Attar Guide: Floral Reviews (P-R)

13th December 2021

Prima T (Bruno Acampora)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Prima T is a musky floral chypre that leans on the authentic stink of natural floral absolutes for the bulk of its structure. The standout floral here is clearly the narcissus, an oily green floral note that mysteriously turns to pollen dust on the skin. Narcissus is an interesting flower because it smells fresh and green, but also funky, like the compacted layer of soiled hay in a horse stall.

The fertile honk of narcissus up front is backed by a compact webbing of roses, lily, muguet, and jasmine, which, though less distinct than the narcissus, lends a beautifully creamy, retro vibe to the fragrance. While there is no moss involved, the earthy greenness of galbanum resin lends an ashy bitterness that fills in the oakmoss blank on the chypre form. The effect is like cigarette smoke blown through a bouquet of mixed flowers.

Prima T smells old-fashioned in the best possible sense. It recalls a period of perfumery where the powdery richness of flowers such as daffodils and roses were celebrated rather than relegated to the background, or God forbid, derided as old-womanish or grandmotherly. As far as examples of narcissus-centered fragrances go, Prima T is more color-saturated than the current-day version of Chamade (Guerlain), as well as creamier and more animalic than the now sadly discontinued Le Temps d’Une Fête (Parfums de Nicolaï).

In other words, fans of this particular green floral style would do well to look in the direction of Prima T, especially if currently-available versions of old favorites have suffered badly through reformulation and cost-cutting exercises.

Princess Jawaher Blend (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

Princess Jawaher opens with a juicy bergamot on top of some warm, fuzzy oud, stretching its limbs out into a beautiful bouquet of sweet, creamy flowers – jasmine, neroli, and ylang. The floral accord is so limpid and sweet you might be tempted to neck it like a liqueur.

Backing the volley of floral and citrus notes is an oud note that has been cleaned up for public consumption. There is no bilious sourness or rank animal scat that might challenge the average Western nose. But the oud note is not linear, either. It begins its life as a warm, high-toned note akin to leather or hay, but picks up traces of smoke, resin, and woodiness as it approaches the final stretch. And honestly, were it not for the gravitas that this note adds, Princess Jawaher Blend might be just another light, unremarkable floral.

Following the creamy whoosh of white and yellows florals of the opening, a jammy rose rises like a Phoenix, the suddenness of its arrival a wonderful shock. This neon-colored rose gives definition to the creamier white florals, and when the flowers meet the oud, perfect synchronicity between smoke and sweetness, florals and woods, cream and spice, is achieved. Held together by the toothsome chew of caramelized amber, this is the kind of thing that makes me forgive Abdul Samad Al Qurashi for the bubblegummy floral dross they often try to palm off on us females.

The jump in quality or complexity between the lower price echelons of the big Emirati houses and the top tier is sudden rather than incremental. Take Princess Jawaher Blend, for example. This is listed as ~$365 per tola. A favorite of mine from the lower-end blends, Al Ghar, costs $135 per tola. I like them both. They pursue broadly similar themes. Realistically, what could possibly justify the price difference between these two oils of $230?

For many customers – absolutely nothing. Yet, there is an undeniable hike in quality and complexity from Al Ghar to Princess Jawaher Blend, most notably in the quality (and quantity) of oud used. Compared to Princess Jawaher Blend, Al Ghar now feels light, simple, and almost insubstantial. This is to not detract from Al Ghar, but to point out that, in oil-based perfumery, the correlation between price and quality is much tighter than in commercial or niche perfumery.

Rain (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Have no fear – despite the name, there is really nothing aquatic about Rain. Rather, this is a clean floral musk with a tender, fluffy-pillow of (at a guess) mint, rose, hawthorn, amber, pale woods, and heliotrope. It is cucumberish in parts, as well as lightly honeyed, leading me to think that this is largely a mimosa-centered composition.

In style, it is similar to Jo Malone’s Mimosa and Cardamom, as well as to Malle’s luminous L’Eau d’Hiver. The only fault I find with Rain is that it is reminiscent of several nineties mainstream scents as well as the clean, breezy (but ultimately flimsy) style of Jo Malone. And for this kind of money, one expects something a bit more, well, special.

Rayaheen (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

A varnish-like Taifi rose explodes upon first contact with skin, painting the air in a glistening slick of thorns, lemons, and solvent. The rose in Rayaheen runs very close to the acid-tinged ‘bloody rose’ accords in Amouage’s Opus X. Although not listed, I suspect the sharpening presence of geranium leaf, because there is a metallic glint to the rose that gives the scent a blue-green gleam, like petrol on a puddle. This aspect causes the rose to shimmer hard, in an almost preternatural way. The shiny, disco-bright rose is, in turn, supported by sweeter, smokier notes, which to my nose, consist of mostly frankincense mixed with dry tobacco leaf. Rayaheen is unfortunately very difficult to find now.

Red Rose (Al Rehab)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Red Rose is a dupe for Kenzo’s Flower, which means that it is a clean, powdery rose resting on a pillow of white musks. The opening is sharp and green, with a minty swagger that reminds me of violet leaf or geranium, but soon settling into a pale, rosy powder. It smells girlish, like rose-scented lipsticks, body dusting powder, and those Pierre Hermes Ispahan macarons. A silvery thread of carnation emphasizes the spicy vintage floral vibe.

Red Rose is perfectly pitched as a young girl’s first rose scent. But I would also recommend it to lovers of the retro-vibed cosmetic genre, which includes scents such as Teint de Neige (Lorenzo Villoresi), Ombre Rose (Brosseau), and even Lipstick Rose (Malle). Personally, I think it smells rather like a bar of pink soap, which is a nice thing to smell like once in a blue moon. (I imagine it working well in a water shortage).

Rêve Narcotique (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

A beautiful mukhallat that was originally composed as a tribute to vintage Opium, Rêve Narcotique turns out to be a much softer, retro-styled floral amber than the all-out spice and resin bomb I had been expecting. Vintage Opium’s floral note comes from a carnation-rose axis, shored up by a hot, powdery clove note that blows even more heat into the smoky, balsamic base. Rêve Narcotique, in contrast, builds its floral component along a warmer, creamier axis of ylang, gardenia, jasmine, and tuberose, producing a slightly grassy floral bouquet that counterpoints the smoky, balsamic basenotes more dramatically.

The predominant floral here – to my nose at least – is a dark, phenolic jasmine surrounded by smoldering resins, making it difficult not to draw a dotted line between Rêve Narcotique and Anubis (Papillon). But unlike Anubis, which ends in a fiery bath of smoldering resins and chewed-out leather, Rêve Narcotique slides into an extended gardenia-tuberose riff.

The gardenia in Rêve Narcotique begins quietly but quickly gathers pace to become a surprisingly significant player in the composition. It has an almost savory thickness that is very satisfying, like wild mushroom soup with lashings of double cream. The green milkiness of the note also reminds one of the slightly grassy taste of fresh Irish butter, recalling the meadows in which the cows have grazed. It is rare to find a gardenia note as good as this, so gardenia lovers should make sampling this mukhallat a priority.

On balance, the florals in Rêve Narcotique are dark, serious, and ultimately, delicate. People who are afraid of the loudness and shrill sweetness of the Big White Floral category of fragrances need not worry about the florals in Rêve Narcotique. Natural floral enfleurages and absolutes, minus any synthetics to sharpen them into a sonic boom that can be felt several rooms over, tend to be subtly fragrant rather than loud. Furthermore, the grassiness of the gardenia and the burnt-tire smokiness of the jasmine take the florals here as far away from that big bouquet of wedding flowers as you can get.

Rose Bouquet (April Aromatics)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Rose Bouquet is the oil version of Rosenlust, the eau de parfum. Both are rose-centered compositions that blend Turkish rose otto with Bulgarian rose, rosewood, pink grapefruit, tonka bean, orris, and ambrette. The quality of the rose absolutes and ottos used here is great, with the meaty lushness of the Turkish varietal and the sour sharpness of Bulgarian roses duking it out in a glorious battle that benefits everyone.

Unusually, the usual ratios of complexity versus simplicity found in comparing the eau de parfum and oil formats are reversed here, with the eau de parfum emerging as a fresh, powdery rose soliflore, while the civety lavender-vanilla dimension of the oil version turns it a rose-heavy version of Jicky (Guerlain). It is a surprise, but a welcome one. In this case, the oil takes home the prize.

Rose Galata (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Rose Galata shares a certain citronella-like brightness with Rose Snow, below, but is fuller in body – velvet compared to cotton. Laced with a red hot, Eugenol-rich carnation note, it rasps along in a rather loud, cigarette-hoarse voice that I find rather attractive. A spiced amber in the base fills out the air pockets, lending it an extra heft around the hips that perhaps it does not need. Heady, spicy, but with spectacularly poor volume control, Rose Galata is for rose purists who enjoy the stadium-filling radiance of scents such as Opium (Yves Saint Laurent) and Cinnabar (Estée Lauder).

Rose L’Orange (April Aromatics)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Rose L’Orange is a fizzy orange crème petit fours enlivened with a bitter, green-tipped rose. It possesses an unusual texture that moves from syrupy to powdery without ever straying into sweetness. It feels instantly feels happy, sunny, and maybe even a little sexy, in a good-natured way. It is not dark or cluttered. The orange blossom note in Rose L’Orange also gives the perfume a mealy ‘corn masa’ facet similar to that of L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Seville à L’Aube.

While the eau de parfum stays firmly in the happy place between creamy orange and green rose, the oil version plays up the intense bitterness of the rose otto, with an edge as herbal as a sheaf of freshly-crushed lavender. Volume-wise, the oil is thinner and flatter than the eau de parfum, as if all the notes have been compressed into one line.

The oil version is considerably less sweet than the original eau de parfum, even though the original itself is not terribly sweet. The oil lacks both the snappy effervescence of the original format, as well as a certain creaminess, which could be seen as a plus for men. Think of the oil format here as almost a pure Taifi-style rose otto compared to the fully-fleshed-out rose composition that is the eau de parfum.

Rose Myosotis (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Rose? No, not rose, but rather heliotrope, violets, and orange blossom. Despite the name, Rose Myosotis is a powdery, deep-bosomed floral amber in the L’Heure Bleue (Guerlain) mold, all violet-eyed seduction and steely sexual intent – think Maggie in that white dress in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

A doughy, spiced ylang heart tightens the memory link to the pre-war Guerlain. But there is also a suggestion of Bal à Versailles (Jean Desprez) and the newer Cuir Cannage (Dior). Rose Myosotis is an old-fashioned, spicy poudrée – a Hermes leather toiletries case smeared with lipstick, powder, bubblegum, gasoline, and a winning dollop of ladylike skank. It is gorgeous but also tremendously sweet. Check your blood sugar levels and then gorge yourself.

Rose Oud (Mr. Perfume)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

The Mr. Perfume dupe lands in the same general area as the original By Kilian Rose Oud (rose, saffron, oud with a fruity Turkish delight edge), and indeed, someone not overly familiar with the original might find it to be an adequate replacement. But worn side by side with the original, the differences are clear.

The original opens with a tart, lemony rose that feels like Turkish rose petals dipped into acid green bergamot, before softening into dry, saffron-led leather. The dupe, on the other hand, is immediately softer, jammier, and sweeter, its rose note candied in salep and thickened with amber. Texture-wise, the rose in the dupe is wet and jellied, the background notes sweetly ambery in the classic Arabian style. The original is brighter, drier, and more elegant, tilting slightly more towards tart-sour than candied.

The original is more complex and refined, unfolding its different phases slowly over time, whereas the dupe delivers all the action upfront. Projection and longevity are roughly on a par, although the oil starts with a loud bang and then fades into a whisper, while the original maintains a steady volume throughout.

Overall, this is not a bad job. Many people may even prefer the easygoing sweetness and raspberry jam notes of the dupe over the more austere original. In terms of accuracy, however, the jamminess of the rose note pushes the dupe away from By Kilian Rose Oud and into territory more comfortably occupied by Tauer Perfumes Rose Flash.

Rose Oudh (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Rose Oudh draws upon the power of geranium to fuel the full-bodied rosiness of the composition. Geranium also lops in a minty-herbaceous tingle, the bitterness of citrus peel, and a shiny boot polish note. Violet leaf sharpens the opening to a knife point. It smells rather like blood, varnish, and rose petals ripped from a thorny rose bush, lending the perfume an angry, even hostile edge.

Saffron dominates in the far reaches, whittling the rosy geranium until it becomes a rose-oud in the style of By Kilian’s Rose Oud, minus the soft lokhoum note to ease you in. Bitter honey adds an animalic flavor but no sweetness or thickness. This is the sort of accord that fits with my idea of ‘haute couture’ Arabian perfumery – angular and uncompromising, a jutting chin chiseled in granite.

Roses (Al Rehab)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

A surprisingly true-to-life rendition of the traditional Bulgarian rose. The extent to which you will enjoy Roses very much depends on the type of exposure you have had to this type of rose, which is sharp and leafy-sour rather than lush or jammy. While some may experience unpleasant flashbacks to the rose toiletries used by their grandmothers, others will experience only the thrilling pungency of a dewy rose freshly-ripped from an English garden. It is all about context, baby.

The closest commercial counterpart to Roses is perhaps Tea Rose by The Perfumer’s Workshop (more natural-smelling) or Rose Absolue by Annick Goutal (lusher, fuller). If you know those fragrances, then use them as a personal yardstick to judge your likely reaction to Roses by Al Rehab. Personally, you couldn’t pay me to wear this, but I recognize it could as easily be manna from heaven to someone else.

Rose Sahara (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

The perfumers at Henry Jacques are evidently very proud of their virulently citrusy rose, because it turns up in at least three compositions – Rose Sahara, Rose Galata, and Rose Snow. To describe the minute differences between them all is to split hairs. Honestly, smell one and you have smelled them all.

Rose Snow is the purest exposition of the note, in that it is really just a vehicle for the rose and little else. Rose Galata adds spice and amber to raise the volume to stadium-filling levels. Rose Sahara switches out the amber for ambergris, resulting in a much more strident, saltier composition. Out of the three, Rose Sahara is the driest and sternest, and therefore perhaps the version that will most appeal to the male sex. (A hint of ‘hard leather’ in the drydown makes it official.)

Rose Snow (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Rose Snow is a bright, citrusy rose with all the acidity of a Taifi rose but none of its resinous lemon peel and pepper notes. It smells like the color lime green. When the aroma settles, the scent of a freshly-cut cabbage rose emerges, simultaneously blowsy and sharp. The citronal and geraniol components of rose oil have been drawn out and exaggerated here by their closest living relatives in the natural world, namely verbena and a minty-rosy geranium. With its unfortunate resemblance to the scent of a citronella candle, the outcome is unfortunately more suited to fighting off mosquitoes than members of the opposite sex.

Rose Snow will satisfy those for whom roses should only ever smell bright, clean, and flood-lit from all angles. Lovers of dark, jammy roses can steer clear.

Rose Taifi Supreme (Arabian Oud)

Type: mukhallat

From the cap, Rose Taifi Supreme smells narcotic and deep, teeming with lush red berries, wine, and a raspberry sherbet rose. On the skin, the lush fruits are sidelined by the tangy green spiciness of the Taifi rose, pitched searingly high, like black pepper sizzling on a dry pan over direct heat.

Rose Taifi Supreme smells simultaneously like the most intense rose you have ever smelled but also like a freshly-cut lemon and not at all like a rose. It smells rosy at a distance, and fiercely spicy up close. Together the disparate impressions mingle to form a 3D image of a Taifi rose, complete with its strong citronal facet.

The drydown is weirdly addictive, a beguiling mixture of dry spice, freshly-cut grass, lemonade, cassis (both the berry and the leaf), and hot pink rose petals. It is similar to Al Ta’if Rose Nakhb Al Arous from ASAQ, but while the ASAQ is so pure that it is absorbed into the bloodstream within the hour, Rose Taifi Supreme lasts far longer on the skin and boast phenomenal sillage. Although there are no other notes listed other than Taifi rose, my guess is that a fixative of some sort – white musk perhaps – has been added to enhance performance. Crucially, though, it does not smell diluted or synthetic.

Rose Taifi Supreme is beautiful and uncompromising. Make sure that you love Taifi rose before investing, but if you do, this oil is a safe bet. Taifi rose lovers will want to wear this straight, but for others, it will really come into its own as a layering agent to lend heavier, darker perfumes, attars, and oud oils a turbo-boost of dazzlingly pure rose.

Rose TRO (Amouage)

Type: rose otto

Rose TRO is a lush, creamy rose guaranteed to satisfy the itch of rose lovers if Homage does not. The TRO in Rose TRO stands for Turkish Rose Otto, which is Rosa Damascena that has been steam-distilled as opposed to chemically extracted (processes that yield rose absolute and CO2 extract rather than an otto).

The attar itself is clear in hue, but despite its translucence, the aroma that bursts onto the skin could only be described as deep red and gold streaks in a purple sky. I was taken aback at how carnal the opening minutes of the fragrance felt on my skin. Thick, heady, and drowning in beeswax, it recalled, for a moment, certain aspects of Lutens’ animalic rose chypre, Rose de Nuit. Past the bluntly sexual opening, however, the attar drops its seductive growl and becomes a purring kitten of a thing.

Either the rose oil used in this is so multifaceted that it can throw out a startling range of rosy ‘tones’ or this attar relies on more than just Turkish Rose Otto for its effect. Whatever the answer – and I doubt we will ever know the truth – the net effect is of something far more complex than one imagines a simple rose oil to be.

At the start, there is a whisper of something citric, but as the rose unfolds, notes of cream soda, milk chocolate, sugared cream, butter cookies, and lokhoum crowd in. It is soft and truffly, but at the same time, dense and rich. Those whose taste runs towards the vanilla-rose-saffron combination found in scents such as Safran Troublant (L’Artisan Parfumeur) and White Oud (Montale) will likely love Rose TRO, because its rose is rendered in the same style, i.e., dessert-like rather than ripped from a bush.

Longevity is higher than average for a pure distilled rose otto, which normally disappears within the hour due to its volatile nature, leading me to suspect there’s at least a little fixative thrown into the mix to help extend the general deliciousness. At $199 per tola, this was originally one of the true bargains of the Amouage attar line. Alas, if you can find it now, it is likely to be more expensive, as is the way with most things that have been taken out of production.

Royal Patchouli (Ajmal)

Type: mukhallat

Priced at the lower end of the Ajmal range, Royal Patchouli is nonetheless a thoroughly enjoyable mukhallat. Belying the name, it is, at least initially, far more of a floral vanilla than a patchouli-forward affair. Enriched with the heady bubblegum-banana aroma of ylang, the vanilla thickens up over the course of the wear into a semi-tropical custard – a cross between M. Micallef’s Ylang in Gold and Hiram Green’s Arbolé Arbolé.

This is not Le Labo, however, in that despite its rather secondary role here, there is a bit of the titular ingredient in the formula. The patchouli is subtle, and surprisingly for this material, does not attempt to chew up the scenery. It spends most of its time humming away in the background as a green, minty breath of fresh air. A few hours in, a creamy amber takes over, and this is when the patchouli finally decides to kick it up a notch, doubling down on red-brown richness until the floral vanilla gains a waxy, white chocolate mien, for an almost Coromandel-esque vibe.

Ultimately, Royal Patchouli is a more than serviceable floral vanilla with minty-boozy patchouli undertones and an appealing eggnog-like texture. For those who think they dislike any and all patchouli perfumes, from the middle-earth examples to the fruity ones like Thierry Mugler’s Angel, this mukhallat could prove to be acceptable middle ground.

Ruh al Mogra (Nemat)

Type: mukhallat

There is a certain poetry to the names and titles used in attar perfumery. Ruh al Mogra, for example, translates to ‘soul of Sambac jasmine’, a fitting name for what is essentially an essential oil distilled from Sambac jasmine flowers, with no carrier oil diluting the distillate. However, given the expense involved in producing even small quantities of a true ruh, it is unlikely that Nemat’s version, which costs $22 for four ounces (125 grams), is a pure essential oil. Indeed, the Nemat site is charmingly upfront about this, calling Ruh al Mogra a blend rather than a pure essential oil.

For all its lack of purity, Nemat’s Ruh al Mogra manages to pull off an impressively convincing accurate portrait of a Sambac jasmine essential oil. At first, it is pungently green and screeches with the nail-varnishy wail of benzyl acetate, the grapey isolate in jasmine that gives both ylang and jasmine their petrol-like fruitiness. This rather high-pitched opening might be a little nerve-wracking for anyone used to the creamy, fruity deliciousness of synthetic jasmine. But it is also authentic to the way pure jasmine essential oil smells, so do not write it off just yet. It gets better.

The aroma then flattens out into a cool, damp, earthy smell that has more in common with old wooden furniture and animal fur than flowers. As the nose adjusts, one begins to perceive the very real, living aroma of a jasmine blooming on the vine. This is Arabian jasmine, so there is plenty of leathery spice and an indolic character, but it differs from other Arabian jasmine attars by being less coarsely fruity. There is an attractive dankness to this ruh suggestive of mud and closed-up rooms.

Once it settles, the jasmine aroma stays firmly in this earthy, musky track. Interestingly, many Indian sellers wrongly translate mogra as ambrette seed, and the scent of this ruh makes me wonder if this common misunderstanding stems from the vegetal, ambrette-seed kind of muskiness inherent to natural jasmine oil. Towards the far drydown, it becomes incredibly sour and musky – animalic to the point of offensiveness. Still, it retains a modicum of dignity sillage-wise, and never projects too vulgarly.

This little oil is an education for the nose of a true jasmine lover. Despite its lack of purity or refinement, it gives a very good, naturally rugged picture of Arabian jasmine. Highly recommended for wearing alone or layered under other attars to give a blast of musky fecundity to whatever you’re wearing.

Ruh Gulab (Nemat)

Type: mukhallat

As with most Nemat attars, Ruh Gulab is very good once you get past the off-putting topnotes, as well as any preconceived notion of what rose should smell like. The shocker with Ruh Gulab – a name that translates to ‘soul of the Damask rose’ – is the cloud of bitter, sharp, soapy, and stale notes that bloom malevolently, like a nuclear mushroom cloud, on the skin upon application. In fact, imagine all the undesirable facets of rose you have ever smelled, and you have just visualized the awfulness of the first half hour.

However, get past the rocky first bit and you land in rose heaven, specifically, a warm bath of pure, sweet Turkish rose that is almost syrupy in its richness. There is a hint of rose jam too, although it never strays into gourmand territory. The freshness, sparkle, sweetness, fullness – it is all there, and perfectly balanced so that no one single facet dominates.

Doubtless, this is not a pure ruh of rosa damascena given its relatively low cost, but for that brief stretch in the heart when it explodes into your consciousness as a pure ruh gulab, it is fabulous. The base, which arrives a little sooner than one might wish, is a soapy musk of no distinction. Still, this is worth the price of admission for its Damascus rose heart alone, and for the myriad of layering possibilities.

Russian Centifolia (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: essential oil

There are some materials that, when you smell them in high levels of purity in a composition, have the power to move you to the very core, and rose is one of these. Most people feel an emotional connection to the smell of a rose, with memories of garden walks, a childhood toiletry, or a beloved relative’s rose garden coming to mind straight away. This reaction is evoked by a certain type of ‘English garden’ rose, which invariably smells dewy, as if freshly torn from its stem by a storm, its tightly furled center yielding its secret, familiar scent.

Russian Centifolia is an essential oil drawn from the cabbage rose, a blowsy, old-fashioned rose that whose scent many associate with the rose of their memories. It is not spicy, but green, full-bodied, and lusciously rosy in a lacy kind of way. Splutters of sourness stain the pink velvet but far from interfering with this oil’s serene beauty, they add to its sense of authenticity. The oil slowly becomes spicier, darker, and takes on a musky tinge that runs close to animalic. This is not an attar or a mukhallat. However, its aroma is so rich and multifaceted that I include it in the hope that people buy it and wear it for its simple, evocative beauty.

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Amouage, Al Rehab, Nemat, Ajmal, Arabian Oud, Mr. Perfume, and Bruno Acampora. The samples from Sultan Pasha, April Aromatics, Rising Phoenix Perfumery, and Abdul Samad al Qurashi were sent to me free of charge either by the brand or a distributor. Samples from Henry Jacques were sent to me by Basenotes friends in sample passes.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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The Attar Guide: Floral Reviews (M-O)

10th December 2021

Magnus Fiore (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

Magnus Fiore, which means Great Flower in mangled Latin-cum-Italian, does indeed smell big and flowery. Specifically, it smells like a bunch of sugary rose petals, white florals, osmanthus, incense, and amber all thrown into a pot, shaken up, and tossed out onto a plate of greenish, musky woods. It is incredibly pretty, if a little gormless.

Makkah Blend (Abdul Samad al Qurashi)

Type: mukhallat

Makkah Blend is a tired floral bouquet sitting atop a fat cushion of musk. It leans slightly feminine, because of the floral aspects, but its expanse of brisk, clean musk means that there is no reason why a man couldn’t also pull it off.

The opening is probably the best bit. The lime-green bergamot used here has not been pushed over the edge into extreme bitterness, as in the case of Amouage Salamah, or too close to the scent of household cleaners, as is the case in Majid Iterij’s otherwise lovely and haunting Al Safa. Rather, the citrus note here is bright but smooth, its sharpness tempered by the soapy musk that lies beneath.

The famous ASAQ wildflower essence – a fantasy accord that sweeps an entire shelf’s worth of peony, lilac, and poppy synths off the perfumer’s organ and into a bucket of white musk – is what dominates past the citrusy opening. The blurred-floral effect is pleasant but also a bit like chomping down on a chintzy duvet. It might suit people who prefer floral perfumes to smell only vaguely, abstractly floral rather than like actual flowers.

Though I have seen notes indicating that there is deer musk in this, the musk element is so inoffensive that one can only assume that the deer was neutered, shaved, and laundered on the hot cycle before having his sac scraped. All in all, Makkah Blend is a pleasant but rather dull option for those who wear quiet, floral-musky fragrances.

Since this kind of generic, flowery nonsense is already spamming shelves from the big city Sephora to the small town department stores, I cannot say that Makkah Blend’s oil format is innovation enough to merit the extra outlay. A surprisingly big portion of the catalogs of these big Emirati and Indian oil companies are taken up with this type of dross, so there is obviously a market for it. But for those interested in authentically exotic mukhallat or attar perfumery, save your money for something better.

Maleficent Rose (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Maleficent Rose is a riff on the classic ‘rose with thorns’ theme in perfumery (see also: Eau de Protection by État Libre d’Orange and Fille de Berlin by Serge Lutens). Its high-stepping, varnishy pitch and wet green leaf nuances evoke the naturalistic aroma of a rose picked from an English garden after a downpour. It is pleasingly bitter and stemmy, the verdant smell of tomato stem hissing like a balloon.

Despite the traditional English feel to the scent, however, this is more likely to be a Taifi rose than an old-fashioned cabbage rose, due to those shiny lemon polish notes. The skill here lies in subverting the exoticism we expect from a Taif rose, taming it into the sort of domesticity that even our mothers would recognize.

The maleficent part of the title is therefore a bit misleading. The only evil aspect of this mukhallat is the thorniness of the rose, which threatens to cut you if you get too close – but even this is due to the plain, kitchen garden goodness of either geranium or tomato leaf rather than, say, something like belladonna. Maleficent Rose is a simple but beautiful Taifi soliflore with the citrus notes turned down and the green, wet leaf nuances turned up. More an English garden after a summer rainfall than the dusty plains of Saudi Arabia, but none the worse for that.

Malice (BPAL)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Company description: A profound, complex scent that encapsulates the joy one finds in another’s pain. Ylang ylang, clove, Indonesian red patchouli, and dark myrrh.

In its drydown, Malice smells very much like a cousin of Bloodlust, a similarly earthy blend also focused on patchouli. But where Bloodlust hones the metallic sharpness of the clay and earth accords with vetiver, further underscoring its silty darkness, Malice moves in a more spicy-floral direction. With a rubbery ylang ylang and red hot clove, Malice is unashamedly headshoppy (encapsulating everything BPAL is suspected of). If you prefer something more grassy-earthy, lean towards Bloodlust. But if you happen to like the combined smells of a New Age stall at a HexFest, then Malice may be your happy place.

Mellifera (Sixteen92)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Company description: Wildflower honey accord (not vegan), violet, sambac jasmine, vanilla infused sugar, sandalwood

Mellifera is the polar opposite of Tituba, the other popular honey scent in the Sixteen92 line-up. Whereas Tituba is a waxy, thick honey-amber, Mellifera is a light floral honey as clear as spring water. Mellifera is for fans of a true, linear honey note – simple, uncluttered, and admirably direct. It doesn’t pretend to be anything other than pretty.

The scent’s floral touches are abstract watercolor versions of flowers rather than thick, oily explosions of color and density – they lend a faintly green, powdery texture, ensuring that it remains sparkling and buoyant. For something this delicate, however, Mellifera is remarkably durable, outlasting even a shower. I would recommend Mellifera to someone looking for a lightly floral honey note that is not weighed down by the usual accoutrements of beeswax, tobacco, spice, or amber.

Memoir Woman (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

Amouage’s Memoir Woman is a complex, stuffed-to-the-gills fragrance staggering under the weight of incense, leather, bitter wormwood, woods, white flowers, and purple stewed fruit, like Poison with even more attitude. It smells messy to me, like drunken encounters and bad behavior. But it is distinctive – a scent with tons of character and a flair for drama.

It is a difficult scent to dupe due to the crazy number of materials and notes that have been shoehorned into it. Right out of the gate, the dupe shoots for the bitter wormwood effect that makes Memoir so witchy, but misses entirely, belly-flopping into a screechy Windex accord. It smells cheap and tatty, an effect not improved by its sordid miasma of bubblegum and cigarette ash. (Well, ok, that last bit is similar to the original).

Once both the original and the dupe have hit the leathery incense phase of their development, we are in safer waters, and the two scents begin to converge. Resinous, woody basenotes are easier, generally speaking, to dupe than complex white florals or distinctive (non-replaceable) green herbal notes. Side by side, the original still displays far more complexity than the dupe, with the tricky balance between plums, jasmine, tuberose, and dark leather still being worked out in the ashes long after the dupe has breathed its last breath.

Still, if you don’t mind having a cheaper, dumbed-down version of Memoir Woman or don’t feel that the original is worth the splurge, then this dupe might do the trick. Especially if your need to smell like a drunken, fag-ash-stained harlot is as strictly occasional as mine.

Mercy Lewis (Sixteen92)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Company description: Heliotrope, honeyed tea, rosehips, sugared almond, creamy sandalwood, milky vanilla

Mercy Lewis is a wodge of the softest almond sponge cake you can imagine – the kind that is six layers deep and sandwiched with vanilla buttercream so sugary it makes your teeth hurt just to look at it. But for something this foodie, it is also remarkably light and gauzy in feel, as if it has been double-sifted to introduce air into the composition. Heliotrope, which has a naturally fresh fluffiness that aerates its doughier, marzipan-like core, has clearly been roped in here to do its thang. The scent does eventually develop a salty cherry playdough facet, but for the most part, any potentially leaden bits are whisked into the ether by a flurry of powdered white tea.

Mercy Lewis makes me wonder about its namesake inspiration. Was the real Mercy Lewis innocent and sweet in an unworldly way? Because this scent is a childish pleasure writ large – a nursery pudding rendered in scent form.

The Internet tells me that the real Mercy Lewis was one of the girls who accused women of being witches during the Salem trials, possibly in revenge for her husband having allegedly sold goods to the Native American tribes who had slaughtered her parents. Interesting backstory, although it doesn’t explain why a scent named for her would smell like almond cake. Perhaps the scent represents a desire to return to a simpler, more innocent time, before her accusations shot out of her mouth, as impossible to take back as bullets from a gun.

Merveilleuse (Henry Jacques)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Merveilleuse reminds me of the depraved thrill of walking in a sunny garden and suddenly catching a whiff of dead animal in the undergrowth. At its heart lies the bloated, fly-ridden corpse of a Turkish rose, obscured by a retro house coat of coriander. Merveilleuse possess the same animal snarl of the mossy honey-and-civet-laden rose chypres of the disco era – Montana, L’Arte di Gucci (Gucci), Diva (Ungaro), and Knowing (Estée Lauder). The animal taint is filthy in parts, occupying as it does the same beeswax-adiposal fat register as Rose de Nuit (Serge Lutens). However, the lush floral velvet saves it from staleness. Merveilleuse was my introduction to Henry Jacques, and one I am unlikely to forget. Most aptly named!

Misia (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

A luscious violet and iris fragrance, Chanel Misia tips its hat at the nostalgic lipstick accords popular in contemporary perfumery but does so with a gravitas that elevates it above its peers. The secret lies in the use of the Chanel iris, a material whose steely grandeur is evident even in a composition as ostensibly playful as this.

The dupe does not have the advantage of the Chanel iris, so packs the scent with sweet, gummy violets and an iris material that is more candied citrus than orris butter. It smells very pleasant – creamy, floral, and pastel sweet.

However, the violet note, being candied and powdery, gives the dupe oil an overtly girlish air entirely absent in the original. The overall impression one gets from the dupe is of a small girl eating candied violets in a room full of icing sugar and French fancies. Very nice, if that is your thing, but it lacks entirely the rooty iris dimension that gives the OG Misia its class. On the other hand, the more youthful air of the dupe might suit those who are under thirty.

More Than the Stars (Olivine Atelier)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

More Than the Stars opens with an almost pungent topnote that runs perilously close to the slap in the face that is almond extract or nail polish remover. Thankfully, this topnote immediately softens, creaming up with the heliotropic waft of almond cookies pulled fresh from the oven, their centers molten and fudgily bitter.

An undercurrent of powdery white flowers mitigates all the potential damage of the almond topnotes, an indolic lily edging out gardenia for prominence. The lily also adds an element of beachy saltiness that is very welcome against the tide of intense, sticky almond. Think heated female skin kissed by the sun and the sea, and aromatized by an egg-rich, artisanal tonka bean gelato.

The perfume moves from edible to floral, from sweet to salty-meaty, and from dense to airy, in a series of minute movements that shows real thought. The closest equivalents in niche perfumery are probably Heliotrope (Etro) and Kiss Me Intense (Parfums de Nicolai). But More Than Stars pulls slightly ahead of the pack by nudging its almond gourmandise in a salty-floral direction for a result that is elegantly abstract rather than literally foody.

Mughal Gardens (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Mughal Gardens is essentially a heavy deer musk attar trying hard to be an ambery-balsamic-spicy floral. It has slight floral flourishes up top – most noticeably orange blossom and rose – but the addition of some cheerfully filthy hay-like narcissus doesn’t really help with the gentrification effort.

The musk is at first greenish and almost antiseptically clean, with a harsh edge that reminds me of cleaning solvents. But as time goes on, it becomes softer, drier, and almost powdery. When joined by the agarwood note in the base, the musk evolves into a sooty woodsmoke note that adds a pleasing toughness to the body of the scent. It doesn’t smell like real oud but rather a smoky stand-in, like cypriol oil. The honk of the musk is quite shouty, which makes me suspect that a synthetic helper has been blended in to lift the volume of whatever, if any, natural musk has been used.

Mughal Gardens is complex and rich, but most emphatically not sweet, thus making it an excellent candidate for men who want to branch out into florals but, like, in a totally masculine way, dude. In other words, it is not too flowery and there is zero vanilla in the base. The glancing touch of amber that does appear in the drydown is dry and spicy in the austere Indian style, an impression helped along by a generous dollop of mean-ass saffron. The overall tone here is tough, unsentimental, and straight forward. A cowboy’s idea of a musky, manly floral, Mughal Gardens is quite likeable, and not badly priced either.

Mukhallat (Gulab Singh Johrimal)

Type: mukhallat

Ironically, although plainly advertizing itself as a mukhallat, Mukhallat actually smells quite strongly of a traditional Indian attar. This makes perfect sense to me, since Gulab Singh Johrimal is an Indian attar house. At first, Mukhallat smells rather sharp and gassy, like the hiss of a newly-opened can of furniture polish varnish. But once the alarming miasma of cleaning solvents dissipates, there appears a classically Indian attar bone structure of rose, saffron, and jasmine over amorphously creamy woods.

Because it is an Indian take on an Arabian style of perfumery, there are a few interesting things going here that make sampling Mukhallat worthwhile. For example, while Mukhallat inevitably smells a little cheap and loud, like those blocky barkhour oils and syrupy rose mukhallats that plague the lower echelons of most big attar houses, its Indian heritage means that the blend emphasizes the sour, herbal tones of the florals rather than the heavier, sweeter, more resinous ones of the Arabian style.

In the base, a big-breasted amber takes over, meshing awkwardly with the strong florals to produce a soapy floriental that is pleasant but not at all subtle. If you are in the market for an ambery rosy mukhallat whose only requirement is to smell exotic at twenty paces, then Mukhallat is not a bad option. But there is no escaping the fact that it smells a little rough around the edges.

Mukhallat Maliki (Ajmal)

Type: mukhallat

Discontinued and now very hard to find, Mukhallat Maliki is still worth buying if you find it because it is a good example of those ‘everything-but-the-kitchen-sink’ rose-oud mukhallats that are great fun to wear. While there is nothing particularly distinguished about the materials in and of themselves, they come together as a rich, brilliant whole that transcends the individual.

A syrupy pink rose, layers of smoky woods, a touch of spicy saffron, labdanum, something vaguely oud-ish – nothing very much out of the ordinary, and yet the result is gorgeous. If most mukhallats are costume jewelry masquerading as fine jewelry, then Mukhallat Maliki is the Bvlgari showstopper you would gladly take over a subtle but tiny diamond.

Mukhallat Seufi (Al Haramain)

Type: mukhallat

Mukhallat Seufi is a distinctly middle-of-the-road mukhallat with a top-of-the-line price tag. There is a fantastic rose for the first hour, tinged somewhat with that lemony floor cleaner note that all good rose oils seem to possess. During that first hour, it smells beautiful, if a little traditional, with that tried and tested rose-and-saffron pairing that features so heavily in Middle-Eastern perfumery.

But quickly, the attar deflates like a popped balloon at a kid’s party, whittling down to a sad little base of fruity amber familiar to me from other Al Haramain attars such as Attar al Kaaba. But what is acceptable in an inexpensive mukhallat like Attar al Kaaba is plain annoying in something for which you’re paying over $200. I know this base, I like it reasonably well. I am just not ok with paying Gucci prices for Zara quality.

As per usual, the astringency of saffron is there to misdirect your nose to oud, but it is not all that convincing. Mukhallat Seufi has neither the interesting, sour-rotting smell of real oud, nor the high-strung, band-aid slap of the Firmenich stuff.

The base, which also arrives woefully quickly, is a standard laundry musk, meaning that, within a matter of two hours, you are plunged from the heights of that initial rose drama to a screechy, rose-tinted musk. The gorgeous rose is a cruel tease, because underneath its brief cameo, the rest of the perfume is already getting ready to fall apart. Forget the complex notes list – this is a simple affair. It barely raises its head above ‘nice’.

Given that Mukhallat Seufi smells like two-thirds of the Al Haramain bestseller Attar al Kaaba but costs twenty times more, it is a good example of why, in the world of oil-based perfumery, the customer must be careful about where they invest their hard-earned money.

For the price commanded by Mukhallat Seufi, I would be tempted to take Attar al Kaaba, fix the less-than-transcendental rose at the top with an expensive pure rose otto, and still have enough money in my pocket to buy a bottle of Narciso Rodriguez Musc for Her, which features the same sort of rosy, ambery white musk you get here in the end.

Musk Rose Attar (Rising Phoenix Perfumery)

Type: mukhallat

Musk Rose Attar, a finalist in the 2016 Art & Olfaction Awards, does not contain any animal musk but instead focuses on recreating the aroma of the musk rose (rosa moschatus), a species of rose that is very rarely distilled. Unusually, the perfumer chose a Russian rose de mai otto to be the main building block to recreate the aroma of the musk rose. The essential oil from this rose varietal possesses a tart, green aroma with a frothy texture that makes one think of lace doilies and Victorian cuffs.

There are three distinct phases to this mukhallat, with the first two playing out over the course of three to four hours, and the last phase lasting for a good three hours past that. The opening is bright, sharp, and tannic. Paired with a touch of oud in the topnotes, the rose rings out in a high-pitched volley of rosy lime peel notes over wood varnish and black tea leaves. The duet is fantastic – fresh but pungent.

The second phase focuses on champaca. After the first half hour, the champaca flower starts to make its presence known. Often, champaca can smell like a muskier, headier version of magnolia, but in Musk Rose Attar, it takes on a boozy, fruity edge reminiscent of fermented apple peel or apricot schnapps.

Slowly, the champaca seems to swell, becoming both sweeter and creamier, filing down the sharp elbows left by the angular rose-oud pairing. There are moments when, true to champaca being the origin of the word ‘shampoo’, the note smells more like a luxurious apple-and-rose scented shampoo than a flower. Still, the boozy, jammy, fermented nuances in the champaca gives the mukhallat an adult edge that stops it from smelling like a cheap drugstore product. The floral element is clean, but also sensual and full-bodied. In fact, this is the best use of champaca I have smelled in mukhallat form.

The third and final phase seems to go on forever, carrying the torch long after the bright rose-lime notes and the creamy-fruity champaca notes have died away. The rump of the scent smells, well, incredibly rump-ish. Like the old school style of neo-retro Italian perfumery espoused by Bogue and O’Driu, it features an authentically musky drydown that seems to reference ambergris, deer musk, civet, and castoreum, a remarkable feat when one considers that none of these materials have actually been used here.

How, then, has this extraordinary muskiness been achieved? In fact, it all comes from plant-based sources, specifically by way of a Hina musk attar, the traditional Indian shamama distilled from hundreds of different aromatic materials, including charila (Indian oakmoss), henna flower, ambrette seed, herbs, vetiver root, saffron, davana, and kewra (screwpine flower). Attar makers rarely have the time or economic motivation to make shamama in the old manner anymore, and they definitely do not have the sandalwood oil. A genuine, traditionally-made hina musk attar costs in the region of several thousand dollars per kilo, even within India itself, where prices for attars tend to be at their least inflated.

The last element – kewra – is otherwise known as pandan, that sweet, green leaf that gives such a sweet, piercing floral flavor to all sorts of South East Asian dishes and syrups. To my nose, apart from the vegetal, musky thickness contributed by the shamama, the most prominent note in the drydown of Musk Rose Attar is the pandan, which, when combined with the rose, gives a very traditional Indian flavor to the finish.

Nargis (Yam International)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

A pure Nargis attar involves the distillation of a specific species of daffodil, namely, poet’s narcissus, directly into sandalwood oil. Given the cost of pure narcissus oil, not to mention the cost of pure sandalwood oil, it is unlikely that any naturals were harmed here. However, Yam International’s Nargis manages a competent impression of the essential character of narcissus, i.e., an uneasy truce between the oily, pollen-dusted greenery of hyacinth and the indolic hay of Sambac jasmine.

But Nargis also exposes a little-known facet of the narcissus, namely, a tendency to smell like horse urine soaking into warm hay. It is this aspect of narcissus that, like jasmine, adds an attractively equine undertone to otherwise pristine floral blends. Nargis effectively allows us to experience this facet in isolation.

This oil would make a good baseline for anyone interested in exploring narcissus as a note. Its aroma is strong, heady, and presents you with a stark choice – to either run with the bulls or wash it off immediately. In Victorian times, narcissus oil was accused of causing sexual hysteria amongst women (though, in all fairness, this says far more about the poor understanding among Victorian men of the female response to physical pain, societal oppression, or other trauma than it does about an oil blamelessly squeezed out of a daffodil).

Nargis could be useful as a sneaky way to dirty up jasmine perfumes that lack bite or have been denuded of civet through reformulation, like Ubar by Amouage. I imagine that a swipe of Nargis layered under a modern jasmine perfume, such as Serge Lutens’ Sarrasins, might also be heaven. (Or hell, of course, depending on your tolerance for the rude, vivid smells of the horse yard).

Naseem al Janoob (Amouage)

Type: mukhallat

Naseem al Janoob is a soapy fruity floral filled out with powdery musks and coated in a bleachy overlay that is vaguely unpleasant, yet still not unpleasant enough to save it from blandness. A bubblegum-like sweetness hints at the presence of some jasmine and orange blossom, but the Toilet Duck muguet note overrides even this. Fans of Byredo’s Blanche might like it.

Nefertiti (BPAL)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Company description: The Beautiful One Is Come? Egyptian iris and olibanum with red and white sandalwood, soft myrrh and a breath of North African herbs

A perfumer friend once explained to me that iris in perfumery can smell like any number of things depending on what iris material was used – violets, lipstick, raw potatoes, silver, and so on. The iris note in Nefertiti is wet, green, and possessed of a luridly sweet ‘purple’ facet that makes me think immediately of violets.

It is quite a beautiful note – simple but emotionally pure. After a few minutes a minty anise shows up to underscore its sweet herbaciousness. There is a rugged hay-like earthiness to the scent that reminds me of the rural landscapes conjured by James Heeley in both Iris de Nuit and Cuir Pleine Fleur, the first of which revolves around a very violety iris, and the second an earthy but refined mixture of hay, tobacco, and violet leaf.

Not one iota of the listed sandalwood or frankincense registers, although perhaps they are there somewhere, shoring up that green, dewy centerpiece. Myrrh is faintly noticeable, but it is the saline ‘stoniness’ of the essential oil rather than the sweet, honeyed guise it can sometimes take. The most important thing the myrrh does is to strengthen the minty-anisic feel of the herbs flanking the iris. Nefertiti is both beautiful and accomplished. Well worth trying if you like iris and want an offbeat take on it.

Noir de Noir (Mr. Perfume)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

Smelled on its own, the dupe is an excellent facsimile of the original Tom Ford Noir de Noir. Worn side by side, the differences emerge quite clearly. However, people who do not own a decant or sample of the original, or those who don’t want to compare too closely, will be more than happy with this, as it does a great job of aping the basic structure of Noir de Noir.

It is interesting to wear the dupe side by side with the original, because they develop at different paces, sometimes hitting the same notes together, other times reaching different stages long after the other. For example, although the dupe and Noir de Noir (original) do not smell at all similar at the start, the dupe settles into a very good impression of the original by the third hour and stays there for the duration.

As stated, the openings are nothing alike. While the original is full of overripe fruit, velvety roses, earthy chocolate, and a rich vein of metallic saffron that sluices everything in a rousing vegetal spice, the dupe is much less rich, charting a relatively simple course through rose and patchouli.

The mouthwatering textures of the original (chocolate, iron, truffles, velvet, blood, lokhoum) are missing from the dupe, and to be honest, this was one of the side-by-side tests where my initial conclusion was that there is nothing in the world that comes close to Noir de Noir in its moody, heartbreaking grandeur.

But let’s not shortchange the dupe. It is only hours later, when Noir de Noir has slumped into a powdery, cocoa-ish vanilla, that the dupe hits its stride. First, a streak of saffron emerges – less golden and vegetal than the original, but authentically rubbery and spicy, nonetheless. Then the entire central accord of Turkish rose, patchouli, truffles, saffron, and earth, coalescing into something that smells very, very similar to the main act of Noir de Noir.

Another difference is that the dupe doesn’t feature any of the vanilla found in the original. Rather, the dupe settles into its earthy saffron track and stays there, never evolving past that point. This may make it more attractive to men who detest vanilla in any form, although I personally never find the original to be too sweet or creamy. (Heavy, yes. But never too sugary sweet).

Overall, how to evaluate this dupe? I was ready to score it harshly due to its sheer inability to come close to the dramatic, pitch perfect opening of the original. However, in the end, since it settles into a very good approximation of Noir de Noir, minus the luxurious vanilla in the tailbone, I have to give credit where credit is due. Longevity and projection are both good, although not on par with the original.

Nymphea (Mellifluence)

Type: mukhallat

Nymphea is supposedly based on the very rare (and expensive) blue lotus, an essential oil revered in India for its bright, sweet tropical aroma. However, in this mukhallat the delicate nuances of the blue lotus are swamped almost immediately by a woody Thai oud boasting a not insignificant amount of barnyardy funk.

There are stale, dusty nuances to the oud note, a sign of hasty distillation, but oddly this works in the scent’s favor, leavening the unrelenting thickness of that wall of oudy funk. Eventually, small floral touches peek shyly out from behind the oud, with hints of mango and other juicy tropical fruits also making an appearance.

In general, though, this is a mukhallat dominated by that creaking radiator of an oud. In the far drydown, once a few hours have passed, there is a reprise of sorts in the form of a beautifully warm, salty ambergris note that will delight anyone keen on the seashell delicacy of this raw material. The grade of ambergris used here appears to be white ambergris. It smells like fresh air, old paper, and clean animal warmth.

Nobara-Cha (Aroma M)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

Nobara-Cha is a twist on the traditional Arabian attar formula of dusty sandalwood + roses + amber + saffron. It starts off woody-dusty in the manner of Swiss Arabian’s Mukhallat Malaki, i.e., redolent of Turkish roses withering and dying in the drawers of old wooden cabinets.

Midway through, however, geranium and carnation pop out from beneath the skirts of the rosy saffron-amber attar structure like clowns tumbling out of a tiny car. The geranium has a minty piquancy that draws saliva to the mouth and expands the airways, a touch of clove threading the cool leafiness with a hot vein of spice. Framed against a backdrop of aromatic sandalwood, the spice-geranium tandem is oily and bitter, rather than metallic as clove is wont to.

What I really like about Nobara-Cha is that this spicy clove-geranium accord flits in and out of view over the course of a wear, in a sort of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ dance that holds the attention of the wearer. This prismatic sheen is a difficult feat for any oil-based perfume. The perfume introduces itself as a take on the traditional rose-sandalwood attar model and then, once we have all settled in for the ride, it suddenly whips back the curtain to reveal a retro carnation floral heart à la Bellodgia. Quite possibly my favorite from the Aroma M stable.

Ocean of Flowers (Sultan Pasha Attars)

Type: mukhallat

Ocean of Flowers is a light-hearted blend of rose, tuberose, and jasmine, given a Hedione lift in the heart for additional radiance. There is nothing heavy or animalic here, just a sparkling diamond of a scent with all the flowers scrubbed clean and stripped of indole. There is a salty blast of fresh marine air from the ambergris, but the overall effect is not aquatic – just quietly uplifting, slightly green.

Later, the emphasis shifts from sky to earth, with patchouli and a slightly vegetal tuberose coming to the fore. This one is for fans of fresh, salty floral scents such as Amyris Pour Femme (Maison Francis Kurkdijan), Chypre 21 (James Heeley), and Eau de Joy (Patou).

Olivine (Olivine Atelier)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

The namesake fragrance of the Olivine range features the note for which the brand is most famous – gardenia. Let me warn you, however, that Olivine’s opening showcases all the aspects of white florals that the white floral-averse usually find challenging, namely the rubbery, fuel-like twang of tuberose and the decaying tinned-fruit-and-moldy-cheese honk of gardenia.

It is a mark of naturalness that all the confrontational bits of these flowers have been left in their raw state and not ‘prettied up’. For those who love the fertile smell of tropical white florals in bloom, the opening will simply smell authentic. For others, it may be a bit of a trial.

But bear with it and your patience will be rewarded by one of the truest gardenia notes in modern perfumery – milky, slightly nutty, and with the soft bleu cheese notes that distinguish gardenia from other tropical flowers. The drydown is thick with a salted butter note that is also a line on this flower’s calling card. The saline creaminess quickly tamps down the metallic, fruity screech of the topnotes, so that one may proceed now without fear. It is pure comfort from here on out.

Heady and natural, this is a gardenia to gladden the heart of anyone frustrated with the lack of real-smelling gardenia accords in modern perfumery. Wait for the pungency of the tuberose-gardenia tandem at the start to subside before judging. The gardenia in the drydown is so good that it may convert even those who profess to hate gardenia.

Ood Rose (Gulab Singh Johrimal)

Type: mukhallat

If Shabab is a dark rose, then Ood Rose is its inverse – a solar-powered rose as effervescent as Julie Andrews bouncing over that hill in The Sound of Music. There’s the same clean, iodine-like bitterness of saffron as seen in Shabab, creating the same agarwood effect, but in Ood Rose, the spice is softened by a cocktail rim of sugar and brightened by a rose that reads as neon pink rather than winey. A certain furniture polish shininess makes wearing Ood Rose feel like walking into a white room, flood-lit from all sides.

Overall, Ood Rose is well done, and worth pursuing if you like cleaner, brighter treatments of rose. Oud haters need not worry, as there is really no oud here, only a vegetal saffron whose antiseptic woodiness does a semi-decent job of mimicking it.

Orange Blossom & Bois d’Agar (Agarscents Bazaar)

Type: mukhallat

Despite the mention of oud in the name (bois d’Agar translates to agarwood), this mukhallat focuses almost entirely on the orange blossom, with a side serving of woodsy, smoky vanilla. In other words, an orange creamsicle. Not exactly what I signed up for, but you won’t hear me complaining.

The treatment of orange blossom in mukhallat perfumery can go one of several different ways. It can present as syrupy and pungent, its honeyed properties allowed to run rampant, or as soft and sugary, the equivalent of a pastel-colored afternoon fancy. On occasion, it can be fiercely indolic, with an almost fecal facet. For Orange Blossom & Bois d’Agar, the perfumer has decided to take things in the sugared Jordan almond direction.

Orange Blossom & Bois d’Agar opens, therefore, with a surge of candied orange blossom petals, delicately glazed in powdered sugar and enrobed in a thick, fluffy blanket of whipped nougat crème. Picture the purest white marshmallow fluff sprinkled with orange blossom water and whipped to a delightfully foamy texture. The opening is innocent and sweet to the point of being babyish.

This accord dries out somewhat over the course of the wear, evolving into a smoky, woody vanilla with a boozy sparkle. This phase will please fans of By Kilian’s Love (Don’t be Shy) and Guerlain’s Spiritueuse Double Vanille. It is important to note that, despite the presence of the marshmallowy orange blossom, the vanilla note is quite dry and papery, not drowning in excess sugar.

The drydown contains no oud that I can detect, but rather a woody musk note that adds a gravelly tone to the base. This fails to give the perfume much gravitas, but then again, gravitas in an orange creamsicle scent is entirely beside the point.

Jo Malone Orris & Sandalwood (Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics)

Type: dupe, concentrated perfume oil

Dupes of Jo Malone perfumes are generally successful because they are aping perfume compositions that are themselves quite simplistic and based on the use of (usually) two key materials. If that sounds dismissive of Jo Malone perfumes, then my apologies, that is not my intent – I genuinely enjoy some of these simpler compositions, because they are as clear as a bell, legible even to beginner noses.

Orris & Sandalwood is one of the better Jo Malone releases in recent years. It grafts a rooty, suede-like iris over a sweet synthetic sandalwood base that has a sultry, ambery character. The dupe is almost identical, missing only the cold, vodka-like purity of the orris note up top. This is possibly due to the blurring properties of the oil medium, which become evident only when applied to more ephemeral floral notes such as orris. The oil format emphasizes the sweet breadiness of the iris, whereas the alcohol in the original allows its clear grappa sparkle to shine through. This is splitting hairs, however, because the orris note is carefully and oh so prettily rendered in both.

The drydown of the original Orris & Sandalwood is a syrupy sandalwood accord vibrating with the synthetic boom of modern woody ambers and some sandalwood replacers. Some might even call it a bit, well, scratchy. In comparison, the drydown of the dupe lacks this synthetic wood basenote and heads instead for a vaguely milky, vanillic underpinning. The base of the dupe lacks distinction but represents a clear improvement over the original in terms of naturalness (or lack of brutish synthetics).

Neither the original nor the dupe are terribly strong fragrances. They whisper rather than shout. The original is slightly less ephemeral than the dupe. Based on aroma and price, the dupe is a winner.

Oud Jaune Huile de Parfum (Fragrance du Bois)

Type: concentrated perfume oil

I genuinely do not understand the existence of this perfume. With its combination of tiaré, ylang, and pineapple, it smells so close to Yves Rocher Monoï Oil or, heaven forefend, Amarige, that you begin to wonder if it is just impossible for any perfumer, no matter how skilled, to throw these particular materials together and have them not land in the same place.

If you are into those King Kong-sized fruit punch florals, and have the money to indulge yourself, then Oud Jaune Huile de Parfum might turn out to be your personal idea of heaven. For the rest of us, a similar effect is almost guaranteed via the ten-times-cheaper Yves Rocher, or failing that, any European tanning oil. If you insist on niche, believing it to be intrinsically superior to mainstream stuff, then something like Armani Privée Rouge Malachite or one of the Tom Ford Soleil de something or other should scratch the same itch.

Source of samples: I purchased samples from Amouage, Universal Perfumes & Cosmetics, Mr. Perfume, Agarscents Bazaar, Olivine Atelier, Aroma M, BPAL, Yam International, Al Haramain, Ajmal, Sixteen92, and Mellifluence. The samples from Sultan Pasha, the Rising Phoenix Perfumery, and Abdul Samad al Qurashi were sent to me free of charge either by the brand or a distributor. My sample of Oud Jaune Intense came from Luckyscent as part of a paid copywriting job. Samples from Henry Jacques and Gulab Singh Johrimal were sent to me by Basenotes friends in sample passes.

Cover Image: Custom-designed by Jim Morgan.

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