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Areej Le Doré Exclusive Attar Collection: Thoughts and Reviews

10th January 2023

 

 

Thoughts

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

Reviews

 

Photo by Roksolana Zasiadko on Unsplash

 

Musk de Taif

 

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

 

 

 

Civet Bomb

 

Photo by Timo Volz on Unsplash

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

Royal Musk

 

Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

Royal Amber

 

Photo by Kendall Scott on Unsplash

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

Zam Zam

 

Photo by Vera De on Unsplash

 

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

 

 

 

  

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

 

 

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

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash 

All Natural Animalic Aromatic Chypre Cult of Raw Materials Green Hay Herbal Independent Perfumery Jasmine Leather Masculine Musk Oud Review Sandalwood Spice Woods

Chypre Sultan by Ensar Oud

11th August 2022

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

Cover Image:  Photo by Philipp Pilz on Unsplash 

Amber Ambergris Animalic Carnation Musk Resins Review

Fiore d’Ambra by Profumum Roma

22nd June 2022

 

 

What I find disturbing about Fiore d’Ambra by Profumum Roma is that it is sweet and filthy in equal measure, like Youth Dew sprayed on a dirty crotch.  Unlike Ambra Aurea, which is immediately pleasant, Fiore d’Ambra mouths off at you in three different languages at once and gives you little time to catch up.  Best I can make out, the smell boils down to a particularly clovey stick of clove rock, sugar cubes soaked in antibiotics, and underneath, a stirring of some very unclean musks.  The combination is suggestive of both the pleasures of the headshop (musk cubes, unlit incense, dust) and of the faintly sour-sweet breath of unwashed ladybits that must have risen like yeast every time Henry VIII lifted a lady’s gown.

 

I love it.  I thumb my nose at anyone suggesting it is an amber, though.  Names are powerful things, but smell this without thinking of the ‘amber’ in the title or the fact that it sits right next to a similarly-named fragrance (Ambra Aurea) in the Profumum Roma catalogue, and you begin to see that its feral poop-fur quality aligns it far more closely with scents like Muscs Khoublai Khan (Serge Lutens), L’Air de Rien (Miller Harris), and L’Ombre Fauve (Parfumerie Generale) than with stuff like Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens) or even Ambra Aurea.  

 

As an accord in perfumery, amber is both a comfort and a straitjacket.  On the one hand, the smoky-spicy sweetness of warm resins and vanilla never fails to hit, plugging into our dopamine receptors with the same ease as the smell of coffee first thing in the morning or something good in the oven when you’re hungry.   Amber cocoons you, satiating your basic appetite for warmth and richness.  It is the flannel pajamas of the scent world.

 

But there is not to distinguish between ambers – or if there is, it is a matter of minute variations to the left or the right of the same basic ambery accord.  Think of just how much really separates Ambra Aurea from an Amber Absolute (Tom Ford), say, or from an Ambre Sultan (Serge Lutens), or a Mitzah (Dior Privée).   Past a certain point, you’re just playing with varying degrees of sweetness (vanilla), powderiness (benzoin), leather or caramel (labdanum), smoke (incense) and the accoutrements of spice or herbs.  The result always smells good.  But does it smell interesting or original?  Hardly ever.

 

Now, Fiore d’Ambra innovates.  It doesn’t even really smell like amber to me, unless you count any sweet element at all – here a soda stream-Coca Cola syrupiness – as ‘amber’.  The ‘opium’ element, which has traditionally been interpreted in perfumery by way of eugenol – a substance that is almost as verboten as opium itself these days – has probably been built with clove oil instead.  But the perfumers didn’t even bother to lather it up into a soft froth with geranium or rose, so the clove note juts out of the topnotes like a sudden erection.  The musks are sensual, but raw and unclean (a bit salty even), strangely reminiscent of the dry honey-toner-ink accord from M/Mink (Byredo).

 

The minute I smelled Fiore d’Ambra, I was reminded of the vials of Fleur Poudrée de Musc (Les Nereides) that the Conor McTeague (aka Jtd), my friend and the best fragrance writer in the world, sent to a group of perfume friends around the world in early 2015.  I think he got enormous fun out of the collective recoil.  It smelled like the most innocent of baby powders combined with the foulest of human shits, a merry middle finger to the frou-frou Botticelli angels and Ye Olde Italian Script of the brand itself.  Conor wrote this of Fleur Poudrée de Musc:  “Have you ever undressed somebody after a long day of winter sport, all those layers amplifying the scent of skin that’s sweated then dried multiple times? Remember that scent, then imagine some powder on top”.  I don’t know if Conor ever smelled Fiore d’Ambra, but I like to think he might have described it in much the same way.  

 

 

 

Source of sample: I purchased my 18ml travel bottle of Fiore d’Ambra from the Profumum Roma store in Rome, March 2022.  It cost €55.

 

Cover Image: Photo by Inge Poelman on Unsplash 

Attars & CPOs Mukhallats Musk Single note exploration The Attar Guide The Business of Perfume

Musk: Technicalities, Legalities, and Ethicalities

24th November 2021

 

From here on out, we are going to go material by material, grouped according to the most important scent families for attars, mukhallats, and concentrated perfume oils.  Each section will start with a primer on the material or scent family, and end with reviews of oil-based perfumes in that category.  That’s right – reviews are upcoming!  I bet you thought we would all need a walking cane by the time I got there.

 

Musk is, I suppose, as good a place to start as any, because its use varies so dramatically with the type of oil perfume and the market in which it is positioned.  For example, mukhallats that contain real deer musk are enormously popular in the Middle East and among die-hard fans of artisanal perfume oils, but verboten in the American indie oil community.  Both the niche perfume oil and mukhallat perfume segments adore fluffy white or Egyptian-style musks that are 100% synthetic.  The American indie sector makes full use of a veritable United Colors of Musks, i.e., black, red, green, and pink musks (all synthetic, all with a different aesthetic effect).  And Indians love ‘black musk’ attars, which tend to derive their musky effect from a complex range of plant-based materials, such as ambrette seed, herbs, and synthetics, rather than deer musk (although this is possibly more of a scarcity issue than an ethical or legal one).

 

In this chapter, I am going to talk exclusively about natural (deer) musk.  The other types of musks (musk synthetics, musky plant materials, ethical animal musks) can wait until Part 2. 

 

  

What is musk?

 

 

If we speak exclusively about natural musk, then musk is a grainy, aromatic reddish paste formed within the glandular musk sac of the male musk deer.  It contains a genetic rundown of his most important attributes from age, health, strength, to overall virility.  Basically, natural musk is the Tinder profile of the animal world.

 

During mating season, the deer urinates onto the musk pod, releasing small amounts of his musk, which then falls or is sprayed onto rocks, trees, and bushes.  While in rut, the deer’s urine is dense with male deer hormones, so this mixture of urine and musk is incredibly potent.  Fresh musk pods have an ammoniac smell, because of the urine sprayed onto them.

 

What happens then?  The female takes a sniff, examines the profile, and decides whether the description appeals.  If all goes to plan, she swipes right and follows the scent to the source. If not, well.  It is brutal out there.

 

Because musk has so much to do with sex and reproduction, there is a common misconception that musk is stored inside the testes, like sperm.  Not true!   In fact, the musk sac is attached to the abdomen behind the penis, and is separate to the testes.  But while the musk sac is not actually a testicle, there is no getting around the fact that it does look awfully like one.  Since the word ‘musk’ itself comes from the Persian word moschos and the Sanskrit word muska, both of which mean testicle, it seems that our ancestors were just as confused on this issue.

 

Musk comes mainly from the musk deer family of deer (Moschidae), of which there are several sub-species, including, for example, Moschus moschiferus, the Siberian musk deer native to China, Siberia, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan, and Moschus leucogaster, the Himalayan musk deer native to Bhutan, India, and Nepal[i].  Some of the musk deer species are more endangered than others.  There are seven main geographical regions where musk deer live, and are therefore hunted, namely: Nepal (the Himalayas), Siberia, China, India, Pakistan, Korea, and Mongolia.

 

Animal sources of musk other than deer do exist, although technically speaking, the word ‘musk’ exclusively refers to musk from a deer.  However, given that most of the world’s population uses the word ‘musk’ to describe anything even vaguely musky in nature, we will not be too pedantic about it here either.  Alternative animal musks include that of the muskrat, the musk duck, the musk shrew, the musk lynx, and even some species of crocodiles.  In perfumery and medicine, however, only musk from the musk deer is commercially significant because the deer produces the largest volume of aromatic substance and possesses the strongest odor.  (Also, have you ever tried holding a crocodile down to get to his musk sac?)

 

There are few other materials in the world that possess an aroma as complex as musk.  But if it is complex from a biological perspective, then you can only begin to imagine how difficult it is to get people to agree on what exactly it smells like.  Depending on who you talk to, it can be described as earthy, warm, sweet, powdery, chocolate-like, fecal, urinous, stale, woody, fatty, and so on.  This is further complicated by the fact that few people will have smelled the genuine article itself, but rather some aspect of it as recreated through synthetic molecules or botanical musks.

 

To further complicate things, many people simply use the word ‘musky’ to describe a textural facet of a scent, even if the scent itself does not contain any musk.  For example, perfumes that are clean or powdery are often described as musky, even though their laundry-clean scent is a million miles away from the animalic odor of deer musk.  Conversely, anything that strikes the nose as dirty or fecal is described as musky almost by default, even if other materials have been used to create that effect, such as indolic jasmine, civet, or castoreum.

 

 

In my experience, real deer musk features the following characteristics:

 

Soft and lingering odor

Subtle, skin-like aroma

Mimics the smells of bodily intimacy, ranging from dried saliva and perineal odors to morning breath

Possesses some petting zoo aspects

Not fecal per se, but a composite picture of soft droppings, urine, hair, fur, etc.

Not generally a loud, booming aroma, unless you are smelling synthetics

Powdery or dusty in texture

Can be sweet to the point of being saccharine

Can be also be ammoniac (think animal urine on hay) with sharp undertones

Incredibly tenacious odor – clings to the hairs inside the nostrils

Individual nuances include cocoa, leather, chocolate, newspaper, paper, dust, plasticky aroma (like old lunch boxes), mold, rising damp, sugar, human skin, intimate smells

 

 

Aging plays an important part in how a musk tincture will smell.  If old, dry musk pods from vintage stock are being used to make a tincture, the resulting tincture may give off an unpleasantly stale scent.  A tincture from young-ish, still moist grains will smell more varied and complex than one made from old grains.  However, fresh musk pods take longer to tincture because the grains are still moist and do not give themselves up to extraction as easily as dry grains.  Aging the musk pods for about three months before using them is ideal for perfumery purposes.

 

The liquid in which the grains are tinctured is the second vital component of its final aroma.  If the carrier liquid is even slightly perishable, then it is a waste of musk grains, as the mixture will not age well.  Tincturing liquids that are fine to use include ethanol and other types of perfumer’s alcohol.  The grains can also be macerated, meaning steeped in oil such as moringa oil, and even fractionated coconut oil, but the very best of all is, of course, pure sandalwood oil.

 

If the musk deer themselves are small, then you might imagine how tiny the musk pod is – about thirty grams.  Each sac contains about half as much again in musk paste, so around fifteen grams per animal.  Scraping the secretions out with a spoon to spare the animal’s life nets a much smaller amount of musk paste, but the deer at least lives to make another batch.

 

 

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Deer musk grains. Photo my own.

 

The musk pods can be dried and used whole (in Chinese medicine) or opened to remove and age or dry the musk paste into musk grains for perfumery and also again for Chinese medicine.  On the market, it is possible to buy both the whole pods and the dried grains.  When fresh, the musk paste is moist and red-brown in color; when dried, the paste separates into tiny grains the size of nigella seeds, most often dark brown, oxblood, or black in color.  If being used in traditional Chinese medicine, a doctor may use the grains whole on patients, or powder them down for use in complex liquid formulae to treat specific ailments.

 

Most sellers of musk scoop out the moist paste while the pods are fresh and pack all the aromatic material into large jars, measuring out quantities for buyers one at a time.  This way of storing the musk grains ensures that they don’t dry out as quickly, which is important because the sellers get a certain price per gram, and the drier the musk grains are, the lighter they also are.  Mukhallat makers can either buy the musk pods whole and age them themselves at home or buy the moist musk grains from a seller.

 

 

 

The grim reality of obtaining deer musk

 

 

Deer musk is a wondrous material.  But let us not beat around the bush here – in most cases, the deer musk is hunted and killed to obtain its musk sac.  Poachers first trap the deer in steel deer traps, and then either leave them to die or shoot them.  Licensed hunters shoot to kill.  It has been described as ‘killing the hen to get the egg’[ii] and with good reason: one pod per deer and that is it.  Nothing renewable about this particular resource.

 

Alternatives have sprung up to this in the form of deer musk farms in China, the first one being established in 1958.  On these farms, the deer do not die but are immobilized (held down or sedated) once or twice a year and have their musk glands scraped out with a special spoon[iii].  Chinese records suggest that a male deer can be ‘milked for his musk in this manner up to fourteen times[iv] over the course of its natural life.

 

It is not death, but on the flip side, it sounds excruciatingly painful and cruel.  How strictly is the welfare of the animals monitored?  It is a difficult matter to investigate with any degree of thoroughness because outside access to the farms is restricted, and most of the musk grains produced on these farms are consumed within China itself and not made available outside her borders.  Given China’s track record on animal welfare, if I were a deer, I think I would prefer to take my chances out in the wild.

 

JK DeLapp, perfumer of The Rising Phoenix Perfumery, is also a licensed and practicing doctor of TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) in the United States.  Because of his contacts in China and in the field (he has worked in many hospitals in China itself), he is able to import deer musk grains directly from these farms, but he is in a tiny minority.  When I asked if he could detect any difference in aroma or quality between farmed and wild musk grains, JK replied that ‘there is a difference, but only those with experience would be able to detect it’.

 

The model for this sort of ‘sustainable deer musk farming’ has not proved reliable, however.  Every single one of the Chinese-financed farms in India have failed, for example, demonstrating that musk farming is not a straightforward business.  But even if deer musk farms were successful, supply to the perfume industry would likely be a tiny, almost negligible part of the business model.  This is because the perfume industry is not the main market for deer musk.

 

 

The market for musk

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Photo by Bundo Kim on Unsplash

 

If not the perfume industry, then what is the main market for deer musk?

 

Strangely enough, it’s medicine.

 

By far the biggest consumer of deer musk in the world is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), followed by Ayurvedic medicine (Indian traditional medicine), and then Unani medicine (Greco-Arab medicine practiced in India).  The perfume sector lags well behind in terms of both demand and usage.  Until 1996, the perfume sector absorbed about fifteen percent of the world’s musk supply, but by 2012, due to CITES and the drying up of legal sources, this had shrunk to ten percent[v].  Although there are no exact figures for current usage, one must assume that it is smaller still, perhaps closer to five percent.

 

Quantifying the exact size of the Chinese market is tricky, but if you consider that Traditional Chinese Medicine accounts for about forty percent of all prescriptions in China as well as twenty-two percent of its clinics[vi], then we are talking about a sizeable chunk of the population of China, which is itself famously, well, sizeable.  China and India together absorb at least ninety percent of the world’s available musk.

 

In the perfume sector, both the demand for, and potential usage of deer musk is extremely limited compared to TCM.  If even five percent of China’s 1.371 billion-strong population has an ailment that needs to be treated with musk grains, that is a known market of 68.5 million people.  Compare that to the potential pool of people who might want to wear perfume with real deer musk in it, and it is always going to be small potatoes in comparison.

 

China’s demand for musk is estimated at up to a thousand kilograms per annum[vii], which translates to the musk sacs of at least a hundred thousand musk deer.  But globally there are only about seven hundred thousand musk deer left in the wild.   Clearly, domestic musk farming does not and cannot fill that gap.  Indeed, the bulk of the world’s deer musk – both legal and illegal – ends up in Hong Kong.  Given the supply and demand problem, the sums of money changing hands are huge.  In India, musk is valued at four times its weight in gold[viii].  Raw musk grains can fetch up to US$50,000 per kilogram in Hong Kong, the hub of the international musk market.  All musk in these Far Eastern markets is destined for the TCM and Ayurvedic sectors to make remedies and cures for hospitals and clinics.

 

In the past five years or so, there has been a small but significance resurgence in the demand for real deer musk in artisanal, small-batch perfumery, mostly thanks to the growing fan base around naturals, distillation, and attar making.  Bortnikoff, Areej Le Doré and Ensar Oud are artisanal small-batchers who have all released both mukhallats and spray perfumes featuring genuine deer musk since 2016.  

 

However, the commercial perfume sector will never use real deer musk, given both the difficulty of obtaining a cost-effective and legal source for the large quantities of the material necessary to fill perfume formulas on a mass production scale, and the general revulsion among consumers for products that involve animal cruelty.

 

 

Is deer musk illegal?

 

 

Some is legal; some is not.

 

Two things determine the legal status of a specific deer musk.  First, the level to which its source animal, i.e., sub-species of musk deer, is endangered, and second, the legislation put in place by individual countries regarding the hunting and trade of musk on their territory.

 

First, let us look at the endangerment angle.  There are eight species of musk deer in the Moschidae family, and they are not all equally endangered.  CITES has three classes of endangerment, Appendix I, II, and III, and the different sub-species of musk deer are classified into one of those appendices based on the health of their numbers in the wild.  

 

Moschus leucogaster (the Himalayan musk deer) and Moschus cupreus (the Kashmir musk deer), for example, are Appendix I, which means their numbers are nearing extinction levels, and should not under any circumstance be hunted and killed.  But Moschus berezovskii (Chinese forest musk deer) and Moschus moschiferus (Siberian musk deer) are Appendix II, which means their numbers are healthier, and, under certain conditions such as the proper licensing programs and permits, can be hunted and their musk traded.

 

Thus, something like Kashmiri musk is illegal primarily because its source animal is an Appendix I species approaching extinction.  Siberian musk is legal partly because its source animal is not nearing extinction.

 

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) named musk deer an endangered species in the 1980s[ix], restricting the trade of deer musk by its 170 signatory countries.  In Resolution Conf. 11.5[x], CITES lists all the relevant musk-producing animals, including the musk deer, and urges all parties ‘to develop alternatives for raw musk in order to reduce demand for natural musk, while encouraging the development of safe and effective techniques for collecting musk from live musk deer.’

 

In response to the convention, most countries with populations of Appendix I musk deer (species nearing extinction) introduced legislation to ban musk deer hunting outright.  India, Mongolia, Korea, and Nepal all responded to the CITES convention with musk deer hunting bans.  Signatory countries with populations of less endangered species chose different routes based on individual levels of need and state policy.  For example, China, which has an enormous market demand for musk in its traditional medicine sector, banned musk deer hunting in the wild but established government-sponsored musk farms to produce musk legally and without killing the animal.

 

Russia freely allows the hunting of musk deer within the boundaries of their territory, specifically in Siberia where the Siberian musk deer lives.  The Siberian musk deer is not in danger of extinction.  Musk grains from Siberia are therefore technically a legal product because they come from legal hunting and from a species listed on Appendix II of the convention, i.e., not threatened with extinction, trade and hunting allowed under the correct licensing systems, etc.  Deer hunting in Siberia is reported to be controlled, with hunters applying for licenses in a seasonal lottery that determines what number of deer they can kill.  Sometimes they can kill only five deer a season, sometimes twenty. This helps the government keep an eye on overall numbers of the deer population.

 

In other words, in the murky matter of musk legality, the ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’ argument applies.  The legal status of the musk depends on the legal status of the source.  If your musk comes from a species of deer that is not in danger of extinction and a country that has legalized the hunting and killing of the musk deer, or that has musk farms, then the musk is perfectly legal. 

 

The converse is also true, of course.  If the musk comes from illegal hunting in a country that has banned musk deer hunting, then the musk is a product of a criminal activity and is the proverbial fruit of the poisoned tree. 

 

However, as always when it comes to any lucrative resource, illegality abounds.  One of the most common Western misconceptions about deer musk is that the CITES designation of the musk deer as an endangered species put an end to deer hunting, and that the shy little deer are bouncing around happily and uninterrupted in the foothills of the Himalayas.  This is simply not true.  Musk deer hunting continues apace in most of the regions to which it is native, whether the act is legal or not according to the country’s own laws.

 

In fact, the musk trade is a good example of what happens when overwhelming demand for a product meets the legal banning of said product – i.e., business as normal, albeit conducted under the dark cover of illegality, smuggling, and general tomfoolery.  In most cases, the amount of the banned material for sale on the market even increases.  The correlation between banning and black marketeering applies to other materials too.  In an interview[xi] with me for Basenotes, JK DeLapp of The Rising Phoenix Perfumery, noted the same phenomenon in the case of the African civet cat:

 

‘20 years ago, the public pushed cosmetic companies to stop using civet due to the cruelty involved for the civet cat in the extraction process.  Did this improve the conditions of civet harvesting?   Quite the opposite.  Instead, the ban pushed civet paste prices into freefall and brought the civet farmers to the brink of starvation.  Because the prices fell so drastically, the farmers tried to make up for lost income by simply producing more and more civet paste, which in turn meant that the civet cats were put under increased pressure and stress to give up their paste.  A lose-lose situation for everyone, and by everyone, I also mean the animal.’

 

This pattern is largely borne out by the evidence of what happens in countries that have banned musk deer hunting outright.  For example, India and Pakistan both have laws banning the killing of the musk deer on their territories, but don’t have the resources to control or stop the hunting of the deer.  Likewise, the Mongolian government banned musk deer hunting in 1953, two decades even before the CITES ruling, but illegal hunting has whittled the deer population down to a shocking twenty percent of their 1970 levels[xii].

 

In some regions of India, when deer hunters are caught by local government officials or rangers, the musk pods are confiscated and then later sold by the local government.  Confiscated musk therefore becomes legal musk that can be bought and sold for profit on the open market – fruit from the poisoned tree washed clean and sent right back out to market!  China has a legal source of musk, through their musk farms.  And yet the output is nowhere near the level demanded by the market, and so most of the world’s illegal musk still washes up in China.

 

 

The ethics of musk

 

 

Most people in the West consider deer musk to be ethically problematic, if not downright wrong.  Part of this is due to the issues over legality, with most people assuming that all deer musk is illegal and harvested from an animal close to extinction.  But the larger issue is that most Western consumers do not tolerate animal cruelty, to the extent of actively avoiding companies that, for example, sell in China where animal testing for cosmetics and perfumes is still mandatory.

 

To be clear, deer hunting is cruel and unethical when the animals are killed illegally.  Poachers are unconcerned about animal suffering and will often leave the deer to die a horrible death in their crude steel traps.  They care only about the musk sac and will discard the rest of the body.  A musk sac obtained in this manner carries the same stigma of illegality, waste, and animal cruelty associated with ivory.   

 

By corollary, musk farming and legal hunting through license programs yield musk that is more sustainable from an ethical standpoint.  In Siberia, the species of deer being hunted is not a species threatened with extinction, and the hunting lottery system means that only a finite number of musk deer are killed in the region each year.  During a licensed hunt, the kill is as humane as possible (shooting instead of trapping).

 

However, for most people, this is beside the point.  Whether the musk is legal or not doesn’t really address the issue of the deer being killed or maimed for the sake of his musk pod.  A big concern over hunting animals in the wild boils down to the issue of motive – are we hunting for sport or because the animal is useful to us?  Statistically speaking, a far greater number of domestic animals such as cows, chickens, and pigs are slaughtered to give us meat and leather.  However, this mass killing of animals has been organized so that it takes place far away from the public eye, behind the walls of abattoirs and factories far away from residential areas.  It is a different thing altogether when it comes to the thought of Bambi.  Most of us just do not have the stomach for it.

 

 

 

Note: This article is a reprint of The Murky Matter of Musk, which was originally published by Basenotes in 2017. I am reproducing it here, with kind permission by Grant Osborne of Basenotes.

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

[i] http://checklist.cites.org/#/en

[ii] http://www.fao.org/docrep/q1093e/q1093e02.htm

[iii] https://www.drugs.com/npp/musk.html

[iv] http://www.fao.org/docrep/q1093e/q1093e03.htm

[v] http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2012/03/the-musk-deer-of-india/

[vi] http://universitasforum.org/index.php/ojs/article/view/63/242

[vii] http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2007/10/traditional-chinese-medicine-and-endangered-animals/

[viii] http://www.fao.org/docrep/q1093e/q1093e03.htm

[ix] http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk/motm/muscone/musconeh.htm

[x] https://cites.org/eng/res/11/11-07.php

[xi] http://www.basenotes.net/features/3505-conversations-with-the-artisan-amp-colon-jk-delapp-of-the-rising-phoenix-perfumery

[xii] http://advocacy.britannica.com/blog/advocacy/2012/03/the-musk-deer-of-india/