'Barnyard'
One point of interest which I'd like to share with you is the fact of agarwood's fermentability. Meaning that agarwood, just like certain other things (vegetables, for example) can be fermented. In Malaysia, they ferment even fruits.
Whether you like your cabbage raw or prefer sauerkraut is a question that goes back to personal taste. But all fermented vegetables share a certain note – a certain taste note – which is that tart, squinch-your-face-up like-you-just-bit-into-a-lemon sort of taste; which is identical whether you eat fermented cabbage or spinach, or cucumbers.
There's a new trend in agarwood use in the West, and it's to skip or minimize the fermentation stage. The fermented note is the one that's termed 'barnyard' or 'fecal' or, to get scientific, 'indoly' (as in the indol that's found in other aromatics such as jasmine).
This note has led some to compare the likes of Oud Mostafa to Assam Organic. But that's like comparing sauerkraut to pickles, the two being completely different vegetables. The only note they share is the fermentation note. It is misleading, to say the least, to compare Oud Mostafa to Assam Organic. Oud Mostafa is decades-old incense-grade Burmese-Assamese border raw materials. Assam Organic is Upper Assam, 30 year-old, organically cultivated trees. Aside from both being oud oil, there's little correlation between them – different locale, different trees, different age, different grades, different extraction methods even. The only thing they share is... the fermentation preceeding the cooking.
Agarwood distillation is a craft that dates back centuries. To us, the traditional facets of this art are sacrosanct. We are not keen on modernizing agarwood distillation. To tamper with it would be like tampering with traditional attar distillation. For which reason, whenever possible we avoid steam distillation entirely.
Even though it would save us a lot of time and toil, to tone down oud by skipping the fermentation – to take the oomph out of oud – is to... not produce oud. Oud is characterized and identified by that selfsame note – that pungent, strong, powerful, sometimes overwhelming, and to new comers... even repulsive fermented woods note. It's precisely this note which is given off by fermented oud, specifically of Indian origin, which is what oud has meant to the Muslims for ages. To Muslims, oud was never Bornean, or Papuan, cool or leafy, or 'fruity'. Instead, they sought out precisely that mighty fermented wood note.
Interestingly enough, when perfumers in the West want to create an oud fragrance, they don't imitate the scent of floral Papuan oils, or the scent of fruity Malinaus, or the scent of airy, sweet Kalbars. What they imitate is the fermentation note which is found in traditionally distilled Indian and South East Asian ouds – such as Laotian, Cambodian, Burmese, Chinese and Thai. In short, the likes of Oud Mostafa.
This is why, if you take the very finest raw materials from this region and process them the classic way of full-on fermentation, and then cook them the way they've been cooked for millennia, you get an oud that's voted almost unanimously by oud lovers as their all-time favorite. How come nobody voted for Borneo Kinam or Green Papua, both very unusual ouds? Because oud is fermented. And it is the fermentation note which often misleads amateurs into comparing the likes of Oud Mostafa to Assam Organic. This tells you how oud is identified and perceived in the mind, and which note is the one that predominates in its classification, be it Chinese or Cambodian or Burmese. It's perceived as something fermented.