Have been heating Doc Incense latest sinking West Malaysian wood, and I am loving it. I used same small sliver over low heat for a few days wondering out loud to myself—what does this remind me of— and all of a sudden it hit me. I dig deep back in Oud stash and swiped some AA Royal Sumatra and BAM… surprisingly similar scent. For a couple years I’ve been trying to find wood which smells like this oil and finally I have some now. Very grateful.
**As a (albeit long) side note I asked Doc more details about the “Hoi An” classification he posted about this wood and he responded with an interesting response.. posting here for others to learn something which I wasn’t aware of… fascinating stuff, just shows how many differing opinions there are on Agarwood regionals differences.
(I told him I was enjoying the wood and thought it had a lot in common with a Sumatran oil I had, and I wanted to know more about the Hoi An info which was given)
“So glad to hear that, there are different system and standard for agarwoods, what we usually talk about is the one in Taiwan. They roughly divide into two major system, one is Hoi-an Zone (Vietnam, Cambodia, West Malaysia et al.), another is Sin-chew Zone (Singapore, Indonesia, East Malaysia et al). In each Zone, there are some notes in common, but the major reason is these production area is close to each other. The Sumatra is near west Malaysia and similar latitude, should be some notes in common”