Attar/Mukhallat of the Day

[An Najwa]

Great story. I have my own thoughts about cosmology and the Nature of Things but I like the idea of a religion that values fragrance. Can i join as a “social member” lol?

Not religious but i taught at Catholic schools for years, because of the flexibility and decent resources compared to local public schools. I was essentially a social member of the religion I guess

I always tried to get the priests to use frankincense or myrrh (which i offered to donate), or aloeswood that I had collected, but they never had any interest.

Yes. absolutely Mr. P
😉

 

[Ahmaoud]

Yesterday was a brilliantly scented Friday, so many wonderful scents, I might have gone overboard with what I was wearing,

Started the morning off with AlHindOud's Lao Gold (still trying to get the last bits outta that sample, even though I have a bottle 😅) and paired with Oud Zheng. Lao Gold offers a bright and fizzy top, which lets the the more slow developing Oud Zheng get into the rhythm, and I think it worked out quite well!

Followed this by swiping some Al Iksyr from Al Hashimi, this was lovely and I need to do a solo wearing before I can talk about it more, but I could feel the Malay and Assam profiles intertwined like a double helix, and felt like they were in unison, while maintaining their distinctness.

Then I applied some HM Mysore from Sulaym, a delightful vintage mysore sandalwood, enjoyed a brief naphthalene immediately upon application, less milky and citrus-y than some, quite balanced, really happy I have a bottle.

Last but certainly not least I got to try some Fareed from mesOud, a single swipe took me into an olfactory journey. I imagined orchards, and sitting by a stream on spring afternoon. I was greeted with a an airy rose and a hint of basil, the lift this fragrance had throughout was just breath taking. As the rose faded away, you start to get the woods and spices, dancing around. Here too I was impressed by the moderate dosage of spices, woody-spicy might seem like it's overdone or boring in normal fragrances, but there's always something harsh to them, not here. Then the spices start to tone down a bit, and woods start to come forward, still dusted with the rose, culminating into a gorgeous dry down which lasts for ages upon ages!

How Fareed balances these heavy spices, woods and rose, with some potent animalics, is nothing short of mastery! Balance aside, it never feels like a dense fragrance, but that doesn't mean it's short lived either! Mehmet is the conductor of this symphony, and he's brought in all ingredients to the perfect proportion. This is elegance, sophistication and the soul of the sort of perfumery I like, each sniff relieves a new side to scent, and I'm in awe of this composition, and love it immensely!

 

[mesOUD]

Last but certainly not least I got to try some Fareed from mesOud, a single swipe took me into an olfactory journey. I imagined orchards, and sitting by a stream on spring afternoon. I was greeted with a an airy rose and a hint of basil, the lift this fragrance had throughout was just breath taking. As the rose faded away, you start to get the woods and spices, dancing around. Here too I was impressed by the moderate dosage of spices, woody-spicy might seem like it's overdone or boring in normal fragrances, but there's always something harsh to them, not here. Then the spices start to tone down a bit, and woods start to come forward, still dusted with the rose, culminating into a gorgeous dry down which lasts for ages upon ages!

How Fareed balances these heavy spices, woods and rose, with some potent animalics, is nothing short of mastery! Balance aside, it never feels like a dense fragrance, but that doesn't mean it's short lived either! Mehmet is the conductor of this symphony, and he's brought in all ingredients to the perfect proportion. This is elegance, sophistication and the soul of the sort of perfumery I like, each sniff relieves a new side to scent, and I'm in awe of this composition, and love it immensely!

Thank you very much,how a nice description is this,i designed it but i couldnt describe like you

 

[Scentlover98]

How Fareed balances these heavy spices, woods and rose, with some potent animalics, is nothing short of mastery! Balance aside, it never feels like a dense fragrance, but that doesn't mean it's short lived either! Mehmet is the conductor of this symphony, and he's brought in all ingredients to the perfect proportion.

Your totally right brother !!
I had the chane of smelling that one yesterday and I couldn’t describe it like you Mash'Allah ! You really should be a reviewer brother

Perfectly balanced the spices with the woody notes. I could smell Kardamom, nutmeg and also the Black pepper but in combination with the woody notes and the beautiful rose (that lasted on my skin alsmost till the end) they never were never too loud.
And let me tell you it is very hard to use so many spices in a blend because they normaly can easily overtake the whole composition.

I also get a slightly sweet animalic note wich is never too prominent. I think the ratios in this one are just perfect.
This one smells natural and when I say natural I mean it transports you into the wild. For me where my roots are, somewhere in the Mountains of turkey
This is perfumery on a high level. I am really impressed.

I can highly recommend this one if you like oriental Attars but without the density. And also if you like the combination of woody slightly green notes with spices and a touch of sweet animalic woodyness in the drydown.

Keep in mind that this is all in my scent memory since i smelled it yesterday.

I will be able to smell his other works next week inshallah.


Keep up the good work @mesOUD Abi

 

[Mr.P]

Sounds like a good one!

A short while ago I applied a dab of another one of WardLab’s intriguing and really choice oils. This particular one special and reminds me that however much I experience, there is still more good stuff to come. This is Ruh Bela 2021 from Kannauj, India and I am really surprised that I have this in my hands at all… I was beginning to think oils like this were either not made or all diverted to wealthy clientele.

I’ll share my impressions based on my experiences but I’ve never lived in parts of the world where the stuff is readily available so everything needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Always eager for corrections from those who have more experience!

This really smells like a “ruh”. If you have experienced authentic attars from Kannauj distilled in degs you might have noticed a certain shared aspect to their scent. I have smelled this in ruh Gulab, mitti attar, Motia attar as well. It is very pleasant and not distracting, but I feel like it’s a kind of terroir and maybe reflects the accumulated seasoning of the stills. It’s a slightly earthy scent and could even be just traces of geosmin from mitti production… something like that (we are so sensitive to geosmin that truly removing it from a still and condenser may not be possible? Sheer speculation I admit. It is a very pleasant note, and I see it as a marker of authenticity. I have smelled many ruh motias that are unsettlingly free of any evidence of having been “cooked” out of anything - candy like and lacking the naturality that is evident in essential oils. This smells biological - like a complex mix of many related molecules ands clearly not a simple aromachem mix. This is a deep complex natural sambac scent, wonderfully floral, yet this is a sophisticated oil and not a “sambac bitch” (a description by a basenotes member who was examining a sambac distillate I had made)! I love the “bitchy” type of distillate as well, but this sophisticated oil is beautiful and keystone part of my jasmine collection. Congratulations to Ward Lab for having the persistence to find this and the discretion to select and offer it for sale.

Assuming I understand what I am smelling, I have been looking for this oil (in a sense) for the last 25 years…

Now if someone can somehow smuggle a bottle of grasse enfleurage jasmine grand out of the Chanel labels or whichever corp it is that pre-purchases the whole lot, my life will be complete. I could be wrong but I believe at times Robertet moves some (which again is all called for and never sits in inventory). Actually I would also need to just smell a musk absolute or resinoid before my life is complete. Oh… and a true ruh chameli (this may or may not always refer to grandiflorum from what I have read but I mean grandiflorum). WARD LAB: CAN YOU GET GRANDIFLORUM DISTILLATES LIKE THIS!!!???? Apologies for the screaming.

TL/DR: once in a lifetime (so far) rare authentic sambac flower distillate!

 

[Mr.P]

Wearing some khus Aligarh from an najwa. Khus is the only vetiver from wild “population vetiver” (the plants reproduce sexually which means a lot of genetic recombination and variation among the offspring. All other types of vetiver are grown as cuttings or clones, and they no longer are capable of setting seed - they have gone asexual..

This is a really nice oil. I went back to my former stock of Ruh Khus from white lotus - still that prominent iron note. I bought some from someone else, but it had that same note for all I know they were reselling white lotus oils. Any case I thought that was par for the course for the years, but this oil has none of that. Pleasant, rich, appealing vetiver no burnt or bitter notes. It is an earthy scent, a little rooty and grassy, not sugary like haiti vetiver. I don’t know how to describe this and haven’t smelled enough to judge its merits compared to other Khus out there but I have a limited tolerance for vetiver, and this one is very nice and accessible.
The color is a deep emerald this oil has no cloudiness or milkiness and seems to have been filtered.

 

[Mr.P]

I am very much enjoying a sample of labdanum I ordered from Mesoud - this one has a nice clean scent. Smells like the plant and doesn’t have some of the “unwashed bottom” aroma that I get from some other labdanum oils. I also ordered a bottle of his personally distilled cedar, and the cedar CO2. Those are so freaking nice! I’m also enjoying a tonka extract, which is a brown crystalline concrete. Very pleasant aroma, true to tonka bean, I love coumarin!. I had to get a little bit of that castoreum to tuck away - crazy stuff… at the moment that cedar he just killed is just killing me. Didn’t expect to like this type of cedar anywhere near this much.

It is somewhat psychoactive in the sense of being distractive and occupying the brain in the way that a handful of special raw materials can. A deep sweet woody scent that captivates my attention when i sniff it. I have smelled various atlas Cedars, and related Cedars, but these are both really wonderful.

 

[mesOUD]

I am very much enjoying a sample of labdanum I ordered from Mesoud - this one has a nice clean scent. Smells like the plant and doesn’t have some of the “unwashed bottom” aroma that I get from some other labdanum oils. I also ordered a bottle of his personally distilled cedar, and the cedar CO2. Those are so freaking nice! I’m also enjoying a tonka extract, which is a brown crystalline concrete. Very pleasant aroma, true to tonka bean, I love coumarin!. I had to get a little bit of that castoreum to tuck away - crazy stuff… at the moment that cedar he just killed is just killing me. Didn’t expect to like this type of cedar anywhere near this much.

It is somewhat psychoactive in the sense of being distractive and occupying the brain in the way that a handful of special raw materials can. A deep sweet woody scent that captivates my attention when i sniff it. I have smelled various atlas Cedars, and related Cedars, but these are both really wonderful.

From this cedar,not from same wood,if u traslate it,it says this tree is 2500 years old
And this variety is common in our country,the wood i distilled was more than 250 years old

 

[Mr.P]

Some people grow this in Oregon as well. I once had a whole cord of this type of firewood delivered. The wood smelled very much like those oils and it was definitely a true cedar. I had an outdoor fire pit, and every time I made a fire it was like lighting incense. I would love to get some more of that wood!

 

[Mr.P]

I’ve been working on an amber fragrance… at this point I have a sort of general amber base worked out but it is a little bit too wild due to heavy handed use if some plant musks (ambrette, etc.) in the top notes, so I need something to tame the slight overdose of plant musks without changing the base too much which I think is pretty much exactly where I want it to be.

So I just tried deleting the base, and combining it with a few different oils:

Orange blossom abs. “Fine”
Bergamot
Lavender, wild
Rosa damascena abs. turkey
Olibanum resinoid
Grapefruit
Bulgarian rose otto

I made about a quarter of a gram of each and I’ll start by evaluating them separately and then try layering them and hopefully get a sense of what direction I want to go for the finishing touches of the top notes.

The fun, but challenging thing about this process is the stepwise testing. The more time you spend evaluating things during the day, the more overloaded your sense of smell becomes… no matter how hard you want to work at it you have to take significant breaks

So if I make seven different blends, the amount of time required to compare and evaluate them all in a meaningful way is pretty significant.

each has to have its own time, and each time the conditions have to be at least approximately similar for it to be productive. So it influences what I can and cannot do with other blends while I’m taking the week or so it takes to evaluate these. I’m sure they would smell different at the end of the day working with some kind of floral accord, then at the end of the day, working with a chypre.

Having fun with the label printer too…

 

[Mr.P]

Also this is a personal fragrance for my daughter who likes this particular type and also for myself. All of these recipes i also have her evaluate. I am on iteration number 31 or 32 I think.

It has some unusual ingredients. I tried not to really copy any recipe although I did use various recipes as guides for the materials to select from. It is a blend of various labdanum extractions, natural vanillin, peru balsam, three types of very different patchoulis including a 30 year old THICK almost unpourable patchouli, my own ck extract, ambrette absolute, yamada matsu benzoin and myrrh tinctures, 30 year old angelica root oil and a couple of other goodies.

It has a pretty green opening, but a very balsamic old-patchouly/vanilla dry down that is to me at least addictive in the same way that oud is.

 

[Kabir Attars]

Just swiped Khalouq from Al-Shareef Oud and all I can say is Regal.

 

[Sproaty]

Last night I wore Musk Osmanli from Yusa and was delighted by its drydown. At first it smells very Ghalyia-esque but was it wore on it took on a more chypre-type of smell, I was sure that I was picking up a dark, soapy oakmoss in its drydown, giving the scent an illusion of being wrapped in a dark forest blanket of peaty moss.

 

[Himanshu Sharma]

Two swipes of SPA Tabac Grande for this beautiful New York morning.

It smells heavy with saturated sweet aspects. Smells like dates, molasses with a slight spicy twang with leather tucked somewhere beneath all of that. Do I like that? Idk.
One hour in, can't get past this 'sweet' phase. Looking forward when it opens up a bit. So far so good.

Edit 1 (2 Hours in): Sweet facets have subsided down a bit. I get boozy ambery facets now.

 

[Zazu]

Jinkoh Store - Sunset in Kyoto, right
Jinkoh Store - Sunset in Havana (sample) left.

Sunset in Havana: I get the boozy deep (horrible description) rum, the hint of smoke.

Sunset in Kyoto was piercing when I first applied it. The lotus is right there! Then shifting to an almost minty brightness? Then slowly shifting towards sweet coolness. Addictive. The scent of opening one of my (more expensive) Baieido incense boxes, the lotus again with the sweetness.. Kyoto keeps changing on my arm.
A little bit farther up the arm where I applied Kyoto, where it is more ‘dry’ it smells like my incense minus smoke. The oud comes peeking through and it’s beautiful!
I think this is by far my most changing/shifting attar. It’s a masterfully created incense stick without smoke.

 

[Rai Munir]

Attars by Shabby:
1. Frangipani Attar
2. Floral Blend

Frangipani is distilled by respected Shabby. Once respected Tyson offered frangipani Attar, which was a grand success. And now this frangipani is there to relive frangipani. This is even better as it smells fresh blooms of frangipani. Floral Blend is nectar, literally nectar.

 

[Castingshadows]

Two swipes of SPA Tabac Grande for this beautiful New York morning.

It smells heavy with saturated sweet aspects. Smells like dates, molasses with a slight spicy twang with leather tucked somewhere beneath all of that. Do I like that? Idk.
One hour in, can't get past this 'sweet' phase. Looking forward when it opens up a bit. So far so good.

Edit 1 (2 Hours in): Sweet facets have subsided down a bit. I get boozy ambery facets now.

It’s taken me about two years to finally smell the raw pipe tobacco and ambergris. Now it’s all I smell that initial sweet phase was all that I could smell for almost 2 years but something clicked recently and I can smell past it. I know exactly what you mean though.

 

[Ahmaoud]

OleFaktory - Sandalmints Attar - Curiosity got the best of me this morning, and cracked open the bottle. I knew I was going to enjoy this one, but I wasn't prepared for just how much! The initially phase is mint tea, in all its glory, reminds me of the old sleepytime tea, a blend I have fond memories associated with. Either it's the double distillation or some other parameter, the mint note comes off bright and green, as if you're sniffing freshly ripped mints leaves in the back garden. As the mint steps back, the added presence of sandalwood reminds me of atlas cedar (or perhaps other cedars, but without their fruity sweetness especially in the Himalayan variant), a welcome surprise. One would imagine the mint would vanish after the top, but that's not the case, a thread of it winds through to the dry down, elevating the heavier facets of the sandalwood. A refreshing attar, therapeutic if you enjoy these sorts of scents. Another addition to my list of barbershop ouds and attars!

 

[Kabir Attars]

Yasameen by ASO a pure artisanal distillation of white flowers opens with a sweet slightly green crust that fades to a beautiful Yasmeen very persistent silage.

 

[Arabiad07]

Al Shareef Ghaliyah is incredible. I hesitate to write a review so that it doesn’t run out. It’s that good.