PersonelHigh
True Ouddict
The body lets us know when it's had enough. Clear out. Mornings are best for sniffing.
Sandalwood oil of the day
- Thread starter oud.time
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Oudamberlove
Member
When I was a newbie to Sandalwood oil, I thought there was just one type, and that it smelled just one way. After years of trying different Sandalwood oils, I realize that no two are identical, each one has it’s own identity. So it’s difficult to say which is my favorite, but I do love the two that I currently swiped. Yusa Oud Seijuku, and a private distillation by Al Hind Oud.
Mmmmmmmmmm good.
Mmmmmmmmmm good.
dnelson786
Oud Beginner
Mysore Sandalwood Oil--Al Shareef Oudh
Today i used three generous swipes in my hand to mix with some unscented beard butter, and a swipe behind each ear. Been surrounded with a chorus of sandalwood all morning. This oil has a high pitch to it, similar to the note of pine sap--but sandalwood--and very much in tune. Music to the nose. Not bad for government issue.
Today i used three generous swipes in my hand to mix with some unscented beard butter, and a swipe behind each ear. Been surrounded with a chorus of sandalwood all morning. This oil has a high pitch to it, similar to the note of pine sap--but sandalwood--and very much in tune. Music to the nose. Not bad for government issue.
dnelson786
Oud Beginner
Fritzsche Brothers Oil Of Santal 1950s--EOApothecare
This is a beautiful oil, very bright in the opening, much brighter than I was expecting considering its age. The opening dancing brightness lasted a good 20 minutes before settling down into premium sandalwood scents. I stepped outside into the frosty predawn air to receive big whiffs of noble fir, like a freshly cut Christmas tree on its first night in the home. I own a scant 1ml, I would love to own more if I could ever find a good deal on it.
This is a beautiful oil, very bright in the opening, much brighter than I was expecting considering its age. The opening dancing brightness lasted a good 20 minutes before settling down into premium sandalwood scents. I stepped outside into the frosty predawn air to receive big whiffs of noble fir, like a freshly cut Christmas tree on its first night in the home. I own a scant 1ml, I would love to own more if I could ever find a good deal on it.
Loulikesoud
True Ouddict
I have some of this I bought from a member here, it is a very pretty oil.
dnelson786
Oud Beginner
Possibly. I do have a 1965 government example that i would not put into the premium sandalwood experience category at all. it has a note in it that is much too strong to my nose, it's distracting. it's like i can tell there's other aromas going on, but the smell of this one note just overpowers all that and it lasts from the open through the whole dry down. i have other oils much newer than that that also have the same distracting, overpowering note. without knowing all the details of all the distillations it's tough to find the cause. to me this note is polluting and ruins whichever oil has it. but maybe it's like cilantro, where some people (myself included) smell a wonderful fragrant herb, and others just smell soap. maybe others perceive what to me is polluting as something enhancing.
Mr.P
oud<3er
I have experienced the oils coming out of the government bottles as a "mixed bag" for sure
dnelson786
Oud Beginner
they must have some way to grade it i would think. ASO's Mysore is from the soap factory, and it's incredible. If you've tried the "Millennium" soap from the soap factory i can smell ASO's Mysore in that (not 1:1 match though of course).
Mr.P
oud<3er
Not everything coming out of those bottles matches what is on the label - some are authentic, some aren't. I believe the government factories redistilled and "rectified" basically all of their oils to reach pharmacopoeia standards. Still, the material available to distill has changed greatly over the decades... no doubt some batches were fundamentally better than others as some sources declined (wild mysore) and were replaced by wild
tamil nadu and then when that ran dry, plantation wood.
dnelson786
Oud Beginner
aint that the truth. i have 5 different examples from supposedly 5 unique distillations, and i would be hard pressed to point out any differences. not having certainty on all the details confounds any generalizations i'd otherwise like to make. i'd like to know how inclusion of sapwood into the distillation affects final smell of a sandalwood oil, for instance.
Mr.P
oud<3er
Based on my samples, sapwood adds complex rich top notes at the expense of longevity and that classic rich deep fuzz and long dry woody tail. I actually have a couple of oils that were extracted 100% from the low oil shavings surrounding the heartwood. quite nice in their own way, but could not substitute for heartwood oil in a blend without many changes
dnelson786
Oud Beginner
This is a useful reference point. One of my working hypotheses is that inclusion of sapwood in the distillation introduces the foul note I wrote about above. But based on your experience it doesn't sound like sapwood introduces any foul odors at all. If anything maybe there's a golden ratio where some percentage of sapwood should be included with mainly heartwood in the distillation where it would add its benefits without incurring too great a cost to the depth and tail of the oil.
The other hypotheses I'm thinking about (which are surely obvious to you) to determine the origin of this distracting note i keep bringing up, are hydro vs steam distillation, and copper vs steel pots.
The best data I have to go on are from the selection of pure sandalwood oils I have from Aroma Sublime, of which I have at least sample sizes of the oils listed:
Golden Bough, Golden Lotus, White Palace--these were all slow-distilled in-house using copper and glass from the same source material. All great oils without any deleterious aromas.
Zen One--also slow distilled using copper and glass, in-house, great oil with no distractions other than the unique cedar note and I don't consider that a distraction.
Zen Heart--slow distilled using steel and glass, distilled by Pierre but in Japan rather than Vietnam. Same source material as Zen One but the roots were included. Also a great oil with a wonderful cedar aura. Description says distilled in "steel" not "stainless steel" maybe that's simply a word omission.
Samvadita Mysore 2023--Aroma sublime did not distill this oil. The description says trusted private artisan, distilled in stainless steel and glass. This oil to me does have the deleterious note, but its not as intense as other examples I have and has enough of the pleasant top notes to balance it somewhat.
Government 1965--Factory oil, so I assume steam distillation? Definitely has the deleterious note. It's overpowering.
My apologies for charting all this out in long-text form. The reason I am going on about 'this one deleterious note' is because my hunch is that it is either foreign to the material itself or it is from material much too young to produce a quality oil and that there's large quantities of sandalwood oil out there where the source material has been essentially wasted to produce stinky oil. So i imagine there's kilos and kilos of oil being continuously produced around the world using a limited and precious resource being done by people who don't know what they are doing, or who are using subpar or incorrect methods and equipment, or immature trees, or some other unknown to me factor.
Another possibility that i need to consider is that the aroma i have labelled as "deleterious" or "a distraction" is actually enjoyed by other people and my own perception of it is at fault. But then again all the best oils don't have it. And if it is the case that trees not yet mature enough are being harvested and is the reason for the funky smell to a lot of these oils, then it seems there's a lot of deception in the industry.
Another thought i have, is there such a thing as a second distillation using spent material? Sort of like second-pressings of olive oil. Does the government factory do second distillations? Maybe labelled and sold as a different grade than the premium, then decanted (maybe blended with better oil) then resold as a "premium artisan slow distillation mysore". I have no idea what a second distillation with spent material would do to the aroma of the resulting oil.
Mr.P
oud<3er
My experience with sapwood is based on just a couple of oils from Indonesia, and for all I know you might well interpret them as having an off note (because they are a fair bit different from an oil made just from the heartwood).
You mention one oil with a strong cedar note, that sounds a little odd, but it's really hard to know what people mean when they make these associations.
You're doing really the only thing you can do if you don't have a neighbor with a huge collection to show you, which is to collect a wide variety of samples and look for the groups or patterns, and see what appeals to your nose!
Olfactory Nomad
Smells so Oud
This is the oil that there was a conversation about not long ago that is a bit of an anomaly, being that the single tree is very old and grown within a Hinoki forest in Japan.
Mr.P
oud<3er
this morning I tried heating up two different sandalwood extracts on the subitism.
One drop of resinoid extracted from heartwood from Sumatra first, and one drop of the Indian heartwood extract second.
just beautiful... these resin extracts are super easy to make (evaporated tincture) and they really capture the charming aromatic features of the wood and leave the coarse aspects behind (from the perspective of heating on a mica plate).
These two extracts have a very different presence on skin, and the Sumatra one was kind of a big surprise because it's relatively dull / subdued on skin but very dry and projecting and beautiful when heated. They both revealed a slight animalic quality at the very initial moments of heating, the Sumatra oil went more dry woody (quite elegant) the Indian had a longer lasting scent, a bit less dry with some sweeter and musky facets as well.
The Indian I prefer on skin, I'm not sure which I prefer on the burner... each is really spectacular in its own way, and I wouldn't want to trade one for the other.
One drop of resinoid extracted from heartwood from Sumatra first, and one drop of the Indian heartwood extract second.
just beautiful... these resin extracts are super easy to make (evaporated tincture) and they really capture the charming aromatic features of the wood and leave the coarse aspects behind (from the perspective of heating on a mica plate).
These two extracts have a very different presence on skin, and the Sumatra one was kind of a big surprise because it's relatively dull / subdued on skin but very dry and projecting and beautiful when heated. They both revealed a slight animalic quality at the very initial moments of heating, the Sumatra oil went more dry woody (quite elegant) the Indian had a longer lasting scent, a bit less dry with some sweeter and musky facets as well.
The Indian I prefer on skin, I'm not sure which I prefer on the burner... each is really spectacular in its own way, and I wouldn't want to trade one for the other.
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Mr.P
oud<3er
sandalea from @AlHind Oud is my sandalwood of the moment. What prompted me to post this was the quality of the dry down which is exceptionally dry woody and a beautiful classic sandalwood scent. There is something beautiful in wood from Aceh it seeems!
Jeh
Oud Fan
Sandalwood EO Indian Legend Trilogy Part 1 - Hermitage Oils
Full on antique old-woody, animalic, with fresh-soft-woody shavings, bright-powdery touches that tip-toe into floral terrain, along with some resinous through to aged cedar absolute qualities, and finishing with plumes of full on pleasure air-saturating sweet-creamy-buttery experiences.
Distilled from 80 years old tree.
Full on antique old-woody, animalic, with fresh-soft-woody shavings, bright-powdery touches that tip-toe into floral terrain, along with some resinous through to aged cedar absolute qualities, and finishing with plumes of full on pleasure air-saturating sweet-creamy-buttery experiences.
Distilled from 80 years old tree.
Shiningrobes
True Ouddict
Jeh
Oud Fan
I have a lot of them and try to always get some of each release, even though some sell out within 24 hours. Adam at Hermitage Oil is a true sandalwood fanatic, and he’s really able to source some amazing things, both old gems and newer oils that are perfect for blending.
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