Burning some very old mystery oud - I purchased this from an interesting source in the late 90s, a large highly resinated chunk with some jet black heartwood surrounded by slightly less resin filled wood like you see here. At the time I decided the right thing to do was to try to separate the little core of jet black heartwood... knowing what I know now, I might choose to leave it intact as an object to enjoy...
this is one of the more funky woods in my collection and presents some animalic notes when you smell the raw wood. The animalic aspect reminds me of the honey and salivary notes in some Hainan woods and oils, a bit like labdanum, a little musky... so it occurs to me that this might be an old sinensis.
The honey / animalic note is present in the raw wood and can be quite strong in the heated wood as well. I also get some notes that bring crassna to mind - the aroma emitted late in the burn is extremely beautiful tangy sweet white bleached wood in a way that I have gotten from good crassnas. I feel like a slightly higher temperature burn produces a more satisfying scent. At very low temperature you're mostly vaporizing the honey and salivary smelling oils, but once that resin bubbles to the surface and starts cooling on the mica… you begin to get a sense of the significance of the age behind this and it's pretty freaking interesting. quite robust and resinous, bittersweet phenolic. Not my favorite wood because of the overblown musky facets, but it's an excellent specimen nonetheless and once in a while i enjoy a good fumigation with this and it's pretty amazing... strong deeply bittersweet saturating resin aroma that is quintessentially oud.
This is the kind of stuff that completely gets covered with black bubbling resin when it's heated up as you can see below.
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