Enthusiastic Novice

[RobertOne]

Hello Everyone,

Glad to be here in this extremely informative and social Oud forum, and looking forward to interacting with everyone.

I am also a member of Basenotes, which led me to being a member of Ouddict.com as there was an exile to that site due to a legendary Oud subforum being cruelly excised, which led me to here. I intend to be active on both forums simultaneously.

For brevity's sake I will crosspost a couple of items I posted there, one on this post being an introduction of myself and my first ever foray into the wonder of Oud. I see no rules forbidding doing so in the FAQ, but please feel free to correct me if I have erred.

Warm Regards To All,

Bob.

Cross-Post from Ouddict.com below: http://www.ouddict.com/threads/oud-reviews.2/page-13


These are my first forum posts ever containing an introduction of myself (feel free to skip to the reviews) and concerning scent or perfume of any kind, will cross-post this to other forums though, especially the basenotes Oud forum, that I am so sad that I missed by ony a few months it seems. Directly inspired to write this because of my immediate love of Oud and the dire circumstances under which I was impelled to try them.

To be candid, they enthuse me on a level that few other pleasures do. The actual reviewing took me almost a month and more to do, because whenever I tried a new scent I usually just blissed out about it before being dragged back into the magical world of poopy and desitin, that is, zinc oxide and cod liver oil nappy rash cream. It's as effective as it is unsavoury, though.


So, to begin...


I hated perfume.


One of the strongest memories of my childhood was the nausea and headache after being dragged into 70's / early 80's Edinburgh department stores and being overloaded with the noxious cloud coming from all the perfume counters that you would have to trek through, breath firmly held, in order to get to the women's clothes section where my mother would spend as it seemed, endless hours. It was the somme, housewife's verson for me.

In my teens and early 20's I finally settled on a scent that I found not to be completely disgusting, and which did not fade out on my skin after two or three hours as most did: Chanel's Antaeus, but quickly went off it when my friend 'stole' it for himself. After that I went to Napier's herbal pharmacy and tried some natural essential oils there that were a little feminine but tolerable. After moving to London in the late 90's for the first time I simply had no time or inclination for strong scents as I was cooking for a living 80+ hours a week and was normally surrounded by pungent herbs and spice, the aroma of stocks and gravies.

Fast forward past a massive change of career to working in software testing, experiencing Amouage Epic sometime around 2013. Totally smitten, an exotic, bold scent that was my sole narcotic, the only fragrance that I felt was well worth the money, (sorry Roja, you came very close, but oh, the price!) bought at least half a dozen bottles and wore it daily, applying several times a day before something went terribly wrong with it, took it back to the shop to swap for another bottle but was told that due to regulations (thanks a bunch, corrupt EU / IFRA!) that was it.

Depressed.

Fast forward to the present day... looking after initially two and now three small children full time in Oklahoma of all places. No, not the musical.

Barnyard notes? Really? Don't you dare wax lyrical about excessive barnyard notes unless you have changed stinky, stinky, disgusting diapers from three adorable little monsters all at once after they have eaten different foods that day, and drunk formula, two of which have lactose intolerence and were fed cheesecake. *shudders*

Despite the surprisingly clean air of Oklahoma I was getting rapidly depressed not just due to the sleep deprivation but it was mostly the decidedly *un*fecalicious lovecraftian horrors my little monsters were pooping out their respective cracks of doom that Sauron, the dark lord of middle-earth would be proud of. Enough was enough, I looked into trying to get a replacement for epic for the sake of sanity, researched what it was made of thanks to fragrantia and found that much of the scent was from something called oud.

Annoyingly, I live nowhere near a no holds barred custom perfumier and up until very recently could not travel, so that option was right out the window. Next step was to order the ingredients and try to cobble together a reasonable facsimilie myself.

I did my usual level of research and the general consensus that Ensar Oud was among the top artisan producers, but also on my shortlist was Feel Oud, Agar Aura, Imperial Oud, Sultan Oudh, Oudimentary and Al Shareef Oudh in no particular order. Don't care what name is on the bottle, the bottom line will always be: does it smell amazing? In addition, I plan to order samples from each of the companies mentioned and review at a later date.

I ordered a lot of samples from EO, and below are my reviews of each, however basenoters, please do be gentle with me and forgive my lack of vocabulary and knowledge, this is the first time in my life I have experienced straight Ouds, and what stunners at that, I think. I am doing semi-blind testing as obviously I read up on them before I ordered but have purposely not looked at the descriptions since delivery. Subconciously there might be some bias, but what can I do?

All reviews are chronological in nature, I will try to document how the scent changes on my skin at regular intervals, however the order of the Ouds reviewed are out of order somewhat. I will be evaluating some in a structured manner for the first time while writing this extremely long winded post, others I will transcribing from notepad. The first Ouds I tried were Aroha Kyaku, Tigerwood 1995 and Borneo 50k.

 

[RobertOne]

Tigerwood 1995:

On first application, burst of mentholated mint. Camphor, but not the medicinal variety, more so the freshly carved wood. So many notes, so many strange and interesting notes, uplifting and inspiring... balsamic? Really groping for the words here, but it's beauty in structure.

After an hour the scent is more that of a workshop of aromatic woods, camphor still dominating but to a lesser degree, aroma now had become both intensely perfumed and balanced, lush and refreshing. Inhaling this is strangely invigorating in the same manner as a caffinated soap lukewarm shower, followed by a can of jolt cola but without the jitters. This absolutely has nootropic qualities to it. Bizarre that an exotic smell would have such an effect. This is certainly a masculine scent if worn out and about.


Borneo 50k

That balsamic scent again, that must be the heart of Oudiness. Milder in intensity than the Tigerwood 1995, but also more immediately likeable. Quickly opens into a rich, more perfumed smell with a touch of greeness in there. Half an hour in, this is turning into a story of minty deliciousness, touch of musty, musky exotic pot-pourri being made.

After an hour everything in a beautiful green and purple woody minty musk, delicious. Two hours after application I caught myself compulsively sniffing my wrist every minute like what I imagine a 70's / 80's television film producer would have done with an *ahem* powdery substance at a hollywood hills party. This is a scent that I imagine an elegant toothpaste heiress applying, but also one that I would not be ashamed of wearing to a night at the theatre, for example.

It's cool, poised, but completely demands your attention and rewards you for doing so.


Assam 3000

Extremely gloopy, hard to get this out of the bottle at all most of it congealed at the top seal of the vial. After scooping a drop out on my wrist the immediate hit was of hay and black pepper and a trace of some other spice, obviously this has a very different character to the above two. Now it opens up and I am smelling honey now, honeymade from a field of lush tropical flowers, all laden with sweet, sweet pollen. It's like a syrup that I would happily poach quince in to serve to royalty, that happened in just under 10 minutes, strange because I was expecting some barnyard with the name.

Half an hour later I can now detect the Oudy core of it, but it's wrapped deeply in spicy fruits, some flowers and a note of delicious sharpness that I can't even begin to put my finger on. Hay and black pepper still lingers on around that, though. This is not at all what I expected on an Oud, it's rather like an entire blended perfume. An hour later The overall character is of heavily spiced fruit.

Three hours later and it's now mostly black pepper, some Oud and less so lingering sweet spice, end of evaluation for this one. At this point I 'cheated' and looked at the product page, it reacted differently on my skin than most users reported, I seem to have gotten more than my fair share of the spicy notes and less fruity ones which is not unexpected - my skin does react differently to most peoples in that most fragrances last only a few hours on me or express very different character than others.


Purple Kinam

And once again my idea of what Oud is completely changes. This had almost the same scent profile 12 hours later as when I first applied it - Kinam must have different chemical properties compared to 'normal' Oud or my skin really reacts well to it.

Well, no getting around this, it really is purple. If orange smells orange than this firmly belongs in the same end of the spectrum as slightly dehydrated but freshly pressed purple grape juce sprinked with damask rose petals and hibiscus-manuka honey swirled in a huge red wine bulb and downed.

Watching Rome on my laptop, I now imagine the Emperor smelling not only of stridgeled olive oil, poor sanitation from his sandals, leather, horse and sweat but this too. It's a truly royal aroma.

Purple Kinam majestically projects in all directions, like an EDT or EDP, and female appreciation of this is very, very high indeed, I had three compliments in the space of an hour from a very good hearted but rough around the edges teenage babysitter, mature student and a fortysomething mother of four. I found this rather surprising as there was absolutely no pheromonal type twang to this for me.

The quality of this certainly commands an appropriate price. I strongly advise anyone who is wealthy to put all of your ready cash and easily pawned items into fixed income instruments before you sample this or you might find yourself living off canned spaghetti, taking the bus and trying to steal your neighbours wifi because you will have spent every last penny on a kilo. Then again, it just might be worth it.


Green Papua

Applied to my wrist, this immediately radiated jungle sap, mosses, a vegetal muskiness, all still with that certain Oud 'lift' right at the end of inhaling. This is not a polite fragrance in the slightest, it's very raw indeed which is wonderful if you are in the mood for something pagan. I did have to apply a good drop or two to get the quantity of sillage right for me.

Half an hour later it's become noticibly less green, raw and now incense has developed amidst the very classy mosses and heart of green. This Oud really evokes a sense of place, close your eyes, breathe it in as you are transported to a shaded old, deep forest canopy in summer, one can almost hear the trickle of the burn flowing past, the warm slight breeze languidly drifting through. As I was writing the last sentence I looked through you tube and started to play a track called Mother Tongue by Dead Can Dance that I have not listened to or even thought of for years and years, and is that you, synesthesia? I suspect that's as close as someone without the ability can get to experiencing it.

To phrase with a degree of discretion, just inhaling this certainly inspires the sap to rise.

Two hours in and the greeness is now dominating again, but it's no longer raw, now it's almost how I imagine green incense to smell.


Kinam Rouge

Right... now I get what Kinam is having tried two now. It's the complete perfume richness. Other Oud oils have notes, usually in harmony, but Kinam, I think, is all about the dense, rich cloud of... kinamness?! Oh, and as with the last while writing these words, dear Basenoters, the lady of the house just came right up to me and let me know how nice it was on me. As with Purple Kinam the scent hardly changed through 12 hours.

Now, as for the scent itself, it's clearly Oud but the character is in a way cedarish. Probably not phrasing this very well, but the scent does have a colour, and to me it's not pure red but rather the reddish-orange of cedar, finished with tung oil.

The lift of oud is clearly there, and some heavily perfumed sweet mead, laced with newly fermented fruit wine, or rather fruits that have all reached their absolute peak of ripeness in a bowl together and are just turning to spoil, but in a nice way. Hints of flavoured snuff but without any harshness at all. Rare woods being worked in a confined space. I wonder what would happen if I were to layer red and purple together? That's something for another time.


Oud Yusuf

This Oud is quite feminine, it also strongly has the character of the sweet mead and the fruit wine in my review of Kinam Rouge but with the addition of gorse bushes beside heather flowering in full summer!

The dense cloud of kinamness? Kinamity? Not quite there though there is a hint of it.

Oud Yusuf when initially applied opens with fruity mead sweetness, then opens into well-structured oudicity balanced with the overripe tropical fruit bowl and gorse / heather honey to magnificent effect. The fruitiness is almost overpowering, I think this certainly a more feminine Oud. Fifteen minutes in and a note of very subtle incense is added into the mix and forms a spine for everything else to rest on. I wonder if Willy Wonka was real, would he have worn this for inspiration? In any event, like the best candy, it's addictive.

This is another Oud that I find has psychotropic effects, when I raised my wrist to my nose and deeply inhaled for a minute I actually blissed out. It gives such a feeling of calm and wellbeing, relaxation that goes far beyond even what very good sandalwood can do. The last time I felt this relaxed was when I made a homemade tea-tincture with 100g of chamomile blossoms and drunk it all in the space of five minutes. I think, and I am smiling as I type this, this sweetest of Ouds will help me have sweet dreams tonight.

This is very, very far from being a masculine scent but it's one that I will buy to swipe on my moustache or chin before I go to bed at night, or even better, on the pulse points of the lady of the house as well as myself.

One hour plus later, the scent remains almost the same with a touch of Borneo 50k, almost equally as potent as the initial application. This is what aromatherapy should be, it's a bliss inducing aroma as unlikely as it sounds, and furthermore, coming from a skeptic. Another plus point is that this is among the least expensive of EO Oud oils, I would say that it's a bargain, not a a scent to wear for traditional men, but as a relaxation or mood boosting aid.

 

[RobertOne]

Assam Organic


Upon opening the bottle of this very gloopy Oud I could smell finally what people described as barnyard, but unexpectedly I did not find it too off putting. Along with it was copious amounts of black pepper and even a slight cheesy smell. Directly upon application the fromage vanished and the hit was almost solely confined to a touch of barnyard, touch of leather and white pepper.

Five minutes after application the peppery aroma subsided a little and now had unground the pepper, giving the aroma of intact mixed peppercorns, leaving the barnyard to peer through. It's most intriguing in character, by rights I should find this disgusting but instead I feel drawn to it somehow. The 'lift' at the end of smelling other Ouds is almost entirely missing and seems to be replaced with a barn floating aloft, tethered to an enormous hot air balloon filled with pungent spice especially asafoetida in a semi-cooked state. I can set in the that Indian origin of this Oud is really shining through here, like a biodynamic wine that has perfectly captured the terroir of the soil that the vines are planted in.

Ten minutes in I was inhaling this deeply, and after one particularly deep breath a bubble somewhere in my thoughts just seemed to pop, and this instant hit of calm suffused me. Now either my sense of the barn or I have changed, because inhaling from my wrist now seems deeply luxurious and not an effort to appreciate it as was the case earlier. I thought Oud Yusuf was powerful in this regard, but Assam Organic leaves it in the shade.

Half an hour later I am so relaxed despite having things to do that I take a nap, and when I wake two hours later I feel refreshed.

The scent in those two hours now does express some Oud 'lift' towards the end of inhaling as well as a slight amount of camphor butteryness. The peppercorns are still there with barnyard but in a well behaved (?) fashion, every note just seems to be where it should in order for coherence and the overall effect is surprisingly luxurious to inhale. I must admit to being wrong about this Oud, the second I opend the sample vial I predicted that this would be the one I would not end up liking, how wrong I was.

Oud Mostafa no 5

This surely has to be the gloopiest of all Ouds, I had to fetch a needle to get some out of the vial seal again, it's almost resinous. When I did scoop some out, it hit me, this is what fecalicious smells like. Very, very hard to describe other that if the lovely little monster's nappies (diapers) smelled like this I would have no complaints changing them!

This Oud when first applied to the skin is not something I would wear in anyone's company, the notes of barnyard including the barnyard floor (that I see now were entirely absent from Assam Organic) are here a-plenty! I will let this one settle down on my skin before commenting further. How astonishing that it changed so completely from being on my skin less than a new york minute. How jarring!

One hour into the rather intense development, the different notes have only now begun to settle down into place. The Oud lift is clearly present now, as is a little cheese and incense. Not really sure how this will develop, but I hope in the same manner as Aroha Kyaku did.

Two to three hours in and unexpectedly I love it.

This is the Sir Thomas More of Ouds, an Oud for all seasons. It possesses the all of the compass points of Oud as far as I can tell now, The Oud 'lift', animalic barnyard, spiced honey and incense, it's all there. I can imagine that a perfume / mukallat made from this Oud would be ideal as it expresses so much in just one drop. This is a work of art.

I Just cheated and went to the product page - I can hardly believe this was just the product of one type of wood, I would have thought that would have to be a blend of different distillations from different woods to get such an effect.


Aroha Kyaku.

This was the first ever Oud I tried, and it certainly made a very strong impression on me.

I will in the interest of accuracy paraphrase the letter I sent off to the company (with some parts deleted and rephrased for discretion!) interlaced with my current, more clinical style of reviewing, apologies if anyone finds this confusing or disconcerting, but it was such a beautiful moment for me that I really want to share this. Letter content is normal roman, inserted review in italics.


However after trying your ink black oud from Thailand, aroha kyaku, I don't think I ever want to go without it again.

It not only totally justified the expense of itself purely for me scent-wise, it lifted my mood, got me a lot of compliments from people on the one day I wore it out, helps my baby girl sleep through the night more (though perhaps that is the mysore as well) but most of all and not least...

The Lady of the house found this to be an alluring scent on me eventually. Did not expect that at all as she has always been indifferent to nauseous to even the most expensive perfumes such as Roja Dove.

She hated, loathed the aroha on me the moment I applied it as did I, but I stuck it out hoping the bat poop, sulfur and rubber stench would change as I had read that it can hugely change over time due to individual skin chemistry.
<Initial application of this, my first Oud caused quite a crisis on my skin that no other Oud before or after, including the same one has ever provoked. As I wrote above, the tumult of my skin chemistry, almost an allergic reaction caused an extremely vile outcome. Subsequently a little of this surfaces but passes within five minutes>

It opens currently with pitch, a touch of sulfur, only a little guano and very deep, dark incense

Oh, dear gods it did.

One hour subsequently I could imagine that I was in a very small room with an incense burner on which a handful of very resinated aloeswood chips had been festooned on. Such an intense aroma! I did err however by applying three large drops to my wrist and neck so it was very much overkill at this stage.

Currently the scent profile blossoms into yet more dark and complex incense punctuated by Oud lift, the scent of other rare wood oils that I have never smelt before, and if this has a colour, the colours would be deep darkest red and pitch velvet black. Deep inhalation over a minute not only induces a sense of relaxation but also a tingling sensation in my nose and lungs, not unpleasent at all.

By the time she came back from work she was amazed at how good I smelled!

Two hours and more on the scent is now that of grand incense, a slight Oud lift, cherrywood tobacco and deep dark aromatic pitch. Totally masculine in nature, wonderfully compelling.

That's it until I buy more samples, hope you all found this informative and hopefully amusing.

 

[Ensar Oud]

Woow – Woow — Wooooow!

That's just about the most impressive intro post I've ever read! Congrats on your unique writing style and way of reviewing scents! I enjoyed reading the reviews a ton and will be looking forward to reading more from you, amigo! A hearty welcome to the crowd!

 

[kesiro]

Hello Robert! Thank you for the posts! I very much enjoyed reading them. I certainly share many views with you about these oils.

Best,
Phil

 

[bhanny]

Awesome and incredibly enjoyable reading. Welcome Robert. Hope you continue coming and sharing! Just past the diaper phase, but can certainly remember it, eerily fondly, not sure what is wrong with me.

 

[RobertOne]

Thanks (belatedly, we all caught the flu!) to everyone that commented, it's really lovely to have such distingushed Oudheads look at what I wrote.

And Bhanny, yes, there is obviously something deeply, deeply wrong with you. I suggest aversion therapy, so just pop round to my place and after changing my three to the tune of 1000 diapers I will judge you fit to rejoin human society.

 

[bhanny]

Thanks (belatedly, we all caught the flu!) to everyone that commented, it's really lovely to have such distingushed Oudheads look at what I wrote.

And Bhanny, yes, there is obviously something deeply, deeply wrong with you. I suggest aversion therapy, so just pop round to my place and after changing my three to the tune of 1000 diapers I will judge you fit to rejoin human society.

Ha! Suspect it would only take a diaper or two. Glad you're feeling better and have the sniffer back! I remember one or the biggest packages I received from Ensar came at at a time I had a serious sinus infection. Couldn't smell anything for days. Torture!