I must admit that I personally do not like highly aged oils. However, it does not prevent me from seeing their quality, oudiness and wisdom. Its just that I prefer to have a young "acrobat doing flips and flops" in front of me rather then spending hours in tranquil quietness with a old men slowly expressing himself. I see the quality of wood used for Sultani for instance… It is amazing quality oud oil… However, the time made it old… so it behaves in a certain way… I personally would pick some oils like Sultan Ahmet or Global KL oud instead and spend time with them… but… its just me… Then there is a distiller view… I certainly enjoy seeing my own signature on oils…
You sure have it easy, bro.... Distill any oil yourself, and you'll have an acrobat on your hands the minute it's collected. The 'flip flops' are a hallmark of freshly distilled oud, and even normal cultivated oils display those characteristics
I'd have to disagree with the simile of the old man and young acrobat, as it simply does not cover the subject matter accurately. It is a poetic expression of a viewpoint, no doubt, and a good one at that, but it does not stand up to scrutiny. How can you write off any aged oil on the mere premise that it is old ('time made it old') and applaud any new distillation if the oil evolves and changes constantly on the skin? I respect the fact that this may be your personal aesthetic, but....
We're not at liberty to say we only like new or old oils because of the role that we assume the minute we present ourselves as 'experts'. By definition, our
job entails throwing aside subjectivity and offering as objective and erudite an appraisal of oud as possible. If we don't do this, who else can? If we don't judge oud 'scholastically', who else will?
It is not correct that sinking wood harvested today is of the same quality as sinking wood harvested 20 years ago. The trees harvested back then were much older mother trees, whereas the trees we are harvesting today are the offspring of those trees. The age of the wood is different, the quality of the resin is different. This is why pitch black arms' length logs harvested today may sink, yet when you put them on the burner they smell like smoke and nothing else. Take even a moderately resinated chip from a much older harvest, and you've got the unearthly scent agarwood is known for. And the wood doesn't even have to sink, or look particularly black....
One thing that the advent of the current 'artisanal' market has done is to turn oud into a mere mathematic equation for people: high 'grade' wood + modern 'techniques' = high quality oud. I expressed my dismay to Ali about this when he visited, and I guess the time has come to let you in on it as well. Artisanal oud is not a rote set of motions one goes through, a combination of wood and technique. The ancient appeal of oud was something far beyond the robotics of lighting a pot, grinding some wood, pouring water, closing lids, waiting a while, then collecting what comes out....
You have an incense tradition in Japan that dates hundreds of years that is rooted in agarwood, yet it doesn't involve anything nearly as perfunctory as that. Rather, it defies scientific classification. In the Kodo tradition, so long as the wood smells a certain way, it gets identified as 'Manaban', 'Sasora', 'Manaka'.... They don't even care where the wood originates, so long as it displays the necessary scent characteristics. So it is a very fine and exacting scholarly tradition, yet it defies the crude arithmetic that seems to characterize oud oil production in our day.
One thing that we have not talked about enough in the past – and which is in part the reason that I blame myself, first and foremost, for this 'industrialization' that has happened to artisanal oud – is the fine art of
wood identification.
Given the trendy talk of techniques and state of the art equipment, most users tend to identify high quality oud with a lot of technical jargon and steps taken to treat the agarwood any given distiller is presenting – while completely missing the bigger picture of the quality and aromatic profile of that wood. Without an intimate understanding of the wood, whatever technique is employed on that wood is of minimal significance. Most users trust that if the wood is shown to bubble on a coal, it is very high quality wood, and hence the oil resulting from it must be superior quality oil. Nothing could be more misleading.
I've distilled oils that have sold for several hundred dollars from black sizzling wood, and oils that would sell for $5,000 from normal, 'oil grade' looking wood.... Sizzling resin does
not necessarily equal quality oud. Let me repeat: incense grade chips that bubble and sizzle on charcoal do not equal the best oud. The correct profile of the wood, as well as that wood's genealogy does. This – and nothing but this – is what artisanal oud is: An intimate understanding of agarwood. Full stop. It has nothing to do with ceramic pots, steel and copper boilers, glass condensers, resin conversion techniques, temperatures.... etc. All of these are just embellishments. Bells and whistles. The real artistry is in the selection of the wood. A deep understanding of the oil it will yield. Nothing more, nothing less.
And that is why....
Even the oils that are nowadays distilled to possess the oudiest of 'muscles' are sorely lacking in them. By 'old school' and 'oudy' I am not referring to an oil that has been soaked beyond recognition – I mean an oil that is cooked straight up, unsoaked, and turns out oudier than the cheesiest of ferments. Because of the type of resin that it possesses, not because of the way it's treated pre- and during distillation.
Let's face it. The trees we harvest today don't hold a candle to the geriatric granny goodness you could harvest 10-20 years ago. So what? So all we've got left is 'technique' and measures taken to camouflage whatever resin we do find into bolder, older-smelling stuff. But soaking can't really accomplish this. Condensers, pot metals, you name it: No oils we distill today turn out the way we really want, beautiful and amazing though they may smell.
I don't know about you but I haven't smelled an Oud Sultani or an Oud Royale from anyone distilling oud today. And I mean, forget the age: I haven't smelled anything that would turn into a Sultani 15 years down the line, or an Oud Royale 34 years down the line, or a Kambodi 1976 40 years down the line, no matter how acrobatic, clean and presentable the oils getting distilled today may seem. The fact that you like the oils we're distilling today more than those oils just means you're.... extraordinarily lucky!
