Cambodi Musings

I figured I love Cambodi oils enough that they deserve their own thread.

As a brief background, I was a die hard hindi fan for the past 2 years or so, my collection attests to that. While I still love them, my focus has shifted and ive come down with a serious case of cambodi fever.

One of the first cambodi oils to grace my senses was Kambodi Kadeem (EO), since then I have only come to realise what a rare specimen of a cambodi that oil is and I am always surprised that discussion never blew up about it. It is still one of my main loves and after yesterdays post thoughts even came to mind of making reference to it as the ‘Oud Nuh of cambodia’.

So why is that oil so unique? Well...people always think red when it comes to cambodi oils, the fruityness too but thats a different discussion. What struck me about KK is that is not red at all but yellow in both colour scent profile.

Since then I have sampled and bought many other cambodi oils and their common link is always the redness...until recently when Ensar released Kasaya, another oil of the yellow profile and one which I actually did not hesitate to buy two bottles of…

Back to the present....

Moving on from there brings me to perhaps the two most unique cambodi oils I have tried to date. Chien Pu Cha (Ensars PK of cambodia) and Tahas recent distill..Khmer special K (KSK).

Since I mentioned CPC in my previous post, I will pick up my discussion there as I feel my description did not do justice and was perhaps slightly inaccurate as well. The colour is a glorious butterscotch yellow, the scent so deep and composed in its sweetness I struggle to put a concise description to it. The bitterness I mentioned before is almost completely subdued by its deep rounded sweet profile. It has a powdered softness to it which is might also use to describe some of what can be experienced in Tokusen Tai. I actually cannot wait to see how Ensar describes this oil. I find it to be detached from any fruity associations that cambodi oils usually align with

Now, Tahas Khmer special K. Another oil which has rocked my cambodi boat and reshaped my experience and understanding of what this region of agarwood oil has to offer. In my humble opinion, it is on of the greatest (if not THE greatest) of Tahas creations to date that I have had the privilege to try.

Now what is interesting is that these two oils (CPC and KSK) are so profoundly different from one another. When Taha told me about the oil I hesitated to buy it wondering whether the descriptions of Kinam would mean it would bear too much of a similarity to CPC and that I might prefer a more radically different oil to invest my money in.

Compared to CPC’s smoother and more rounded profile, KSK is a firey beast with bouncing top notes. To my nose, it boasts an approach on the red spectrum without ever being there (Purple???), I am not able to detect any ‘green’ notes (yet?)..that kinam green is more present in Ensars CPC. In discussing the wood itself, Taha said it came from a very rare batch of wood and I would venture a guess that it may have even been somewhere at the cambodi-vietnam boarder. Strangely enough, if I were to make a comparison, CPC has more in common with Tokusen that it does with KSK...go figure.

So my conclusions are I still love cambodis and wonder what other experiences have yet to be discovered..I have spent the last year collecting some pretty sweet batches of Cambodi wood and really cant get enough of the stuff.

note:
I posted this at the risk that someone else is going to go ahead and pick up the remaining drops of KSK available before I can collect enough funds for it...but this is not an oil to miss out on. From what I understand CPC is also an extremely limited batch so I am glad I snagged it for safe keeping.

Welcoming more contributions from Cambodi lovers and particularly thoughts on KSK...

Ha! Why am I never surprised any more when I hear Ensar's already beat me to any 'novel' idea I have?
@Ensar, I second Taherg's nudge - let's hear what you have to say about CPC! I am intrigued reading that its sweet... yet not fruity.

@Taherg, your Cambodian fever is no surprise.
Think about it...
If you start thinking of all the countries that produce oud, what's the country that has the most 'perfumey' oud? And I don't mean perfumey in the Macy's sense, rather I mean (an intrinsic and) a perfect top-heart-base structure.
The answer is.. Cambodia.

Khmer Special K, (like its predecessor, dubbed 'Khmer Rosso' by Ensar, that I hauled back from Cambodia earlier this year), is not gonna be for sale any more. You got to smell it. So you know why I need to keep the rest for myself.
Let's hope I find more similar materials, and hopefully a bit more affordable this time *gulp*.

PS: you prolly won't hear thoughts on KSK from too many people, as I only shared it with a handful of customers. But I hope I can make a batch #2 so more people can experience its rare aroma.

@Taherg - Fantastic write-up and very valuable contribution! I have not experienced the CPC ( but looks like I will have to). I do however have the KSK which I wrote about briefly. I agree with you 100%. The KSK truly challenges the notions of what Cambodi Oud is. The more typical fermented, tutti frutti Cambodi oils have zero in common with it. It is brooding dark at first and then transforms into a bittersweet kinam towards the end of the dry down. You are right on the money about the oil smelling like it is from the Vietnamese border as I was thinking the same thing.

I have read in the past comments stating that Ensar's and Tahas older oils were better than the 'new' stuff. I have to completely disagree. I think their new oils represent new levels and are getting better and better.

Have you tried Pursat 2005? It's not red either, more of a golden/orange. One of my favorites in my collection.

Fantastic write up. Thanks for sharing!

Ramadan Mubarak

I get a lot of suggestions from everybody but there are certain guys whose styles and preferences coincide more with my own. Guys like @bhanny and @kesiro rate highly among others. There's no way that anybody knows this but through many private me "picking his brain" conversations @Taherg has been the most instrumental, informative and influential in shaping my current collection, especially Hindi's, so I have no reservations when he suggests Cambodi's. Excellent write up @Taherg! I trust your schnoz Akhi.

Back then everybody sold Cambodis. You were weird if you didn’t. But we were doing Borneo and Burma instead. Hong Kong and Tarakan. Our Kalakassi was called Kyara LTD; our Thaqeel was Royal Kinam.

It took us eight years before we tackled the making of Chiem Po Chai, our first wild Cambodi. I never told anybody about it. There were no blog posts, nothing. Had we done it any sooner, the experiment would likely have flunked. We needed the time and the tech to pull this one off. Then when we finally did… not a word until five years later when @Taherg decided to spill the beans....

Folks wanted fruity… and this wasn’t fruity. Newbees wanted apricot jam… but this wasn’t jammy. People screamed for cheap & affordable… and this, well… could never be. Besides, with such a plethora of Cambodis out there, I was never gonna come out with just another grape on the vine. This had to be something far out. And it was.

It isn’t just the first. This is THE only Cambodi we ever distilled in Taiwan. Three Gurus had to join heads to design this distillation, so you already have an inkling what kind of oil we're talking about…

Some folks might be on the lookout for a scent breakdown, but in reality oud of this caliber doesn’t need note picking. That Cambodian oud can smell like this, can possess such a powdery bitterness and still have such sweet tenacity explains it all. Chiem Po Chai forms part of a family, a scent category Oriscent connoisseurs know all too well. Take a whiff of Royal Guallam then a swipe of this and you've scored front row tickets to artisanal oud's finest sonata.

Chiem Po Chai was distilled a year after Purple Kinam. Take those same parameters, and crank things up… that’s how you get – hands down – the most elaborate distillation we’ve done to date (my lips are sealed, so don’t bother asking).

But that came at a HUGE cost. Forget the fact that it’s so risky we had to try it a number of times… and failed. Even with boxes full of oil rich logs, you can only ever get a handful of bottles of Chiem Po Chai. This distillation tweak DEVOURS your yield. By far it outstrips even Marokes on the Oh-come-on!-The-yield-is-killing-me! scale. It’s the most cost-INefficient oud you can imagine making and the risk of losing the precious raw materials is bitterly real.

But this is the only way to have crafted a Pursat’s Kyara de Kalbar, Koh Kong’s Royal Guallam. I only have a few bottles – can only ever have made these few bottles – and will not be able… cannot afford… to juice up more again.

If Chugoku Senkoh is graduate studies in full-on resin-centered ouds, Chiem Po Chai is the professor. For most distillers (99.999% of them) it ends with straight hydro extraction. And that’s all you ever need, for sure. Except if you want to crack open a hidden aroma dormant in even the most popular of profiles. For that you need an eccentric Taiwanese kinam mystic to lend a hand……

You might have realized we’re not really talking about just a new 'Cambodi' anymore. So, forget Pursat and Koh Kong, and forget the jam and fruit juice. Take one whiff and you’ll smell what a Cambodi does infused with the DNA of Royal Guallam.

I have no willpower when it comes to oud.

A Taiwan-cooked Cambodian... the only Taiwan-cooked Cambodian...