Sandalwood oil of the day

[Mr.P]

2 bar high pressure distillation of wild Aceh sandalwood, this oil was distilled from the wood that surrounds the heartwood as opposed to the heartwood itself. The oil distilled from the heart wood of these trees has a pretty typical soft sandalwood presence.

While this is clearly santalum album, at the same time it's nearly as different in its own way as say Australian sandalwood is. This has some pronounced floral, waxy and resinous notes that are not part of the bouquet of the pure heartwood distillations.

I actually love this stuff, as a novel material - for a top to mid note sandalwood presence it is pretty nice; I tried mixing it with some rose oil and there were some really interesting interactions between the resinous and floral facets and the rose - intriguing top note accords you would never get with a regular sandalwood.

It has a reduced dry down intensity and duration because the santalol level is pretty low on this type of oil.

The color as you can see is quite dark, orangish, not the pale yellow-white like you see with hydrodistilled heartwood oils like those i have been enjoying from @AlHind Oud or the older ones in my collection.

it's a big world and I don't know how universal my experience is but in my samples, this type of color has been an indicator that the oil is something other than your typical classic heartwood oil. Either solvent / co2 extraction, high-pressure distillation, distillation of cleaning shavings, etc.. I'm so glad people are making this kind of stuff though because it has its place 100%.

I was told by the distiller that this oil is not typically attempted because it's not economical unless the shavings are basically free of charge - because the yield is extremely low. Additionally, because of the extended time required to distill the shavings they will tend to burn in a typical still - this was made in a special apparatus that allows for the long-term application of heat and pressure without burning, apparently. I recall that olefaktory used to sell this type of oil for a pretty good price.

 

[Olfactory Nomad]

I swiped the "one tree" oil again from @AlHind Oud just to check on whether my previous evaluations held up. Once again I am very pleased with the aroma - I get a certain warm sweet bouquet with a beautiful muskiness and velvety quality and a trace of maple or fenugreek. It's a combination that I especially enjoy and it's nice to see a contemporary oil with this profile. Love it.

Received my bottle of One Tree a couple of days ago and have been wearing it pretty solidly. Thankyou brother @AlHind Oud. With a few of your sandalwoods in my collection now, I "get" your signature within it as @Mr.P has mentioned. I realise this is what I was smelling in your Santalea oil. I thought it was a facet of that oil itself but it's not because it's in this one as well. Great projection and it lasts for ages. Nothing soft about this oil and yet it's also like a caress. I've been out kayaking this morning through a mangrove wetland while wearing One Tree. Fantastic to be in this closed in wet and muddy world while breathing in this beauty.

 

[Jeh]

Received my bottle of One Tree a couple of days ago and have been wearing it pretty solidly. Thankyou brother @AlHind Oud. With a few of your sandalwoods in my collection now, I "get" your signature within it as @Mr.P has mentioned. I realise this is what I was smelling in your Santalea oil. I thought it was a facet of that oil itself but it's not because it's in this one as well. Great projection and it lasts for ages. Nothing soft about this oil and yet it's also like a caress. I've been out kayaking this morning through a mangrove wetland while wearing One Tree. Fantastic to be in this closed in wet and muddy world while breathing in this beauty.

You got me interested !!

 

[Jeh]

Zen One - Aroma Sublime : Slightly Camphorous to my nose - Cedar top note without pencil shaving ( Hinoki ) - Fresh Luban ( Yuzu ) - Piercing Scent - Transports me to the old hardwood temple it grew in - Indeed a Japanese Sandalwood - Unique Clean and Sharp Profile.

What really impresses me is, as Pierre mentions in his description, how deeply the terroir can shape an oil. The notes I picked up made perfect sense once I read that the tree grew beside hinoki and yuzu trees. Beyond the santalum notes, the notes we smell are the terroir itself: the earth and what's surrounding the trees, something far too often forgotten.

It really makes you wonder… what if we started growing sandalwood next to different kinds of eo-producing trees? Where could that take us? When we smell a Mysore sandalwood, we're smelling India; when we smell an Indonesian sandalwood, we're smelling Indonesia… When we smell a 100-year-old South Japanese sandalwood, we smell the old Japanese temple it comes from!

It also makes me reflect that sometimes it's hard to decipher notes in sandalwood because all we smell is sandalwood / santanol notes, but when you bring terroir diversity, man… oh man, then you get it, then it kicks in...!

 

[Olfactory Nomad]

Zen One - Aroma Sublime : Slightly Camphorous to my nose - Cedar top note without pencil shaving ( Hinoki ) - Fresh Luban ( Yuzu ) - Piercing Scent - Transports me to the old hardwood temple it grew in - Indeed a Japanese Sandalwood - Unique Clean and Sharp Profile.

What really impresses me is, as Pierre mentions in his description, how deeply the terroir can shape an oil. The notes I picked up made perfect sense once I read that the tree grew beside hinoki and yuzu trees. Beyond the santalum notes, the notes we smell are the terroir itself: the earth and what's surrounding the trees, something far too often forgotten.

It really makes you wonder… what if we started growing sandalwood next to different kinds of eo-producing trees? Where could that take us? When we smell a Mysore sandalwood, we're smelling India; when we smell an Indonesian sandalwood, we're smelling Indonesia… When we smell a 100-year-old South Japanese sandalwood, we smell the old Japanese temple it comes from!

It also makes me reflect that sometimes it's hard to decipher notes in sandalwood because all we smell is sandalwood / santanol notes, but when you bring terroir diversity, man… oh man, then you get it, then it kicks in...!

Beautifully said brother. Looking forward to my bottle arriving.

 

[Mr.P]

Just swiped the One Tree from @AlHind Oud again. This is really nice oil - reminds me a bit of my old Tamil Nadu oil from WLA - full velvety rich (maple) (fenugreek) engaging topnote bouquet. just classic. It's not either of those but it pulls a little towards maple with a hint of the kind of broad sweetness that something like fenugreek contributes. I don't see this particular profile very often. Based on the sandalwood that has come my way over the last 35 years, this is highly collectible oil. stash some of this stuff away and watch it mature…

 

[AlHind Oud]

Just swiped the One Tree from @AlHind Oud again. This is really nice oil - reminds me a bit of my old Tamil Nadu oil from WLA - full velvety rich (maple) (fenugreek) engaging topnote bouquet. just classic. It's not either of those but it pulls a little towards maple with a hint of the kind of broad sweetness that something like fenugreek contributes. I don't see this particular profile very often. Based on the sandalwood that has come my way over the last 35 years, this is highly collectible oil. stash some of this stuff away and watch it mature…

Thank you! Who knows Sandalwood better than your nose!

 

[Mr.P]

Thank you! Who knows Sandalwood better than your nose!

I don't know when it was, 15 or 20 years ago I remember posting on the forums wondering where the heck all of the artisanal sandalwoods were? There was nothing. Niente. boopkus.

I think there was a while there were people kind of took sandalwood for granted, didn't look beyond the industrial / factory stuff which was good not by virtue of the finest extraction methods but because of the availability of good old wood.

 

[Mr.P]

Thank you! Who knows Sandalwood better than your nose!

I don't know when it was, 15 or 20 years ago I remember posting on the forums wondering where the heck all of the artisanal sandalwoods were? There was nothing. Niente. boopkus. A couple of special projects from White Lotus, a couple of CO2 oils from Will La Paz. that was all that I saw

I think there was a while there were people kind of took sandalwood for granted, didn't look beyond the industrial / factory stuff which was good not by virtue of the finest extraction methods but because of the availability of good old wood. I feel like i've really been learning that subtleties of the material right along with everyone else here thanks to the surge of small batch productions like you are making

 

[Mr.P]

I got a chance to smell the shivamogga distilled sadalwood oil from KZ / kangiiten. Interesting specimen!

Has a very familiar classic contemporary karnataka profile on the one hand and some signature notes from the distillation itself that set it apart on the other. The familiar aspect is a distinct rich full top note bouquet with a nutty and slightly rubbery profile in the top / mid notes - it's reassuring to encounter these in a small batch of artisanal oil because in the past I've mainly encountered this in oil that I enjoyed but wasof less certain provenance. it's also a profile that I rarely encountered prior to 2010 or so, who knows why. The nutty rubbery facet is strong enough in this type of sandalwood that it kind of encompasses the top/mid experience of the oil for me - a bitter presence, something akin to the nuttiness of walnuts, a bit of a bitter rubber scent, a nice santalol woodiness backing it all.

There's a certain lightness and freshness to the Kz oil, I picked up some sweet notes that remind me of some other oils I've smelled; it would not be too hard to pick it out of a lineup from the other similar profile oils in my collection because of some of those lighter sweet fresh top notes.

I don't know if I'm recalling correctly that KZ was distilling to capture more topnote fractions but I feel like that's what I'm picking up to some degree compared to some of the other similar oils which are a little bit heavier/denser maybe more uniform and with a little less character.

This is the first time I've had some specific identifying feature associated with this particular profile and the first time encountering the term "shivamogga" so I wonder if this nutty/rubbery aroma is how shivamogga can be recognized in a broad sense? I have smelled this profile in oils from Abubakr al Misky, RKSons, also recently in oil from Hasayan perfumers.

I know I'm repeating myself but as I've said it's kind of an interesting era when it comes to Sandalwood thanks to the existence of these types of conscientiously produced extractions with quality information about their origins and so on. As I interpret things, this distillation has raised my confidence in a type of sandalwood oil whose profile I had no real explanation for.

 

[Olfactory Nomad]

I got a chance to smell the shivamogga distilled sadalwood oil from KZ / kangiiten. Interesting specimen!

Has a very familiar classic contemporary karnataka profile on the one hand and some signature notes from the distillation itself that set it apart on the other. The familiar aspect is a distinct rich full top note bouquet with a nutty and slightly rubbery profile in the top / mid notes - it's reassuring to encounter these in a small batch of artisanal oil because in the past I've mainly encountered this in oil that I enjoyed but wasof less certain provenance. it's also a profile that I rarely encountered prior to 2010 or so, who knows why. The nutty rubbery facet is strong enough in this type of sandalwood that it kind of encompasses the top/mid experience of the oil for me - a bitter presence, something akin to the nuttiness of walnuts, a bit of a bitter rubber scent, a nice santalol woodiness backing it all.

There's a certain lightness and freshness to the Kz oil, I picked up some sweet notes that remind me of some other oils I've smelled; it would not be too hard to pick it out of a lineup from the other similar profile oils in my collection because of some of those lighter sweet fresh top notes.

I don't know if I'm recalling correctly that KZ was distilling to capture more topnote fractions but I feel like that's what I'm picking up to some degree compared to some of the other similar oils which are a little bit heavier/denser maybe more uniform and with a little less character.

This is the first time I've had some specific identifying feature associated with this particular profile and the first time encountering the term "shivamogga" so I wonder if this nutty/rubbery aroma is how shivamogga can be recognized in a broad sense? I have smelled this profile in oils from Abubakr al Misky, RKSons, also recently in oil from Hasayan perfumers.

I know I'm repeating myself but as I've said it's kind of an interesting era when it comes to Sandalwood thanks to the existence of these types of conscientiously produced extractions with quality information about their origins and so on. As I interpret things, this distillation has raised my confidence in a type of sandalwood oil whose profile I had no real explanation for.

That's all very interesting. Yes, I believe you're correct with the top note fraction profile. It was a hard decision for me to decide if I wanted the oil or the absolute. In the end I went with the absolute as I only have one other sandalwood absolute in my collection from ASO. The deep, almost sugariness of the Tamil Nadu can be overpowering in the right circumstances. The projection isn't huge and it's easy to assume it's no longer there until you go into a warm environment or your body temp rises for some reason, then it's all encompassing. I have 100g of the Shivamogga bead scrap here which I often stick my nose into the jar for a big whiff. It's some of the best wood I have ever smelled so I have no doubt the oils will be the same. Glad you got to try it!

 

[Mr.P]

Just for a little contrast I swiped some of the two bar high-pressure sumatra shavings oil. This is the same type of shavings oil that Olefaktory had for sale - I know a handful of people here have sampled that. pungent heady sweet sugary waxy and bitter-dry-woody. That bitter woodiness resembles a jar of literal sandalwood bunkwood that I checked out in a TCM shop in Portland, OR. It was very pale wood, outer layers of the trunk, very strong sandalwood aroma but in this particular peculiar sense I've only smelled in Indonesian sandalwood so far. I like this oil because I enjoy that particular Indonesian sandalwood terroir and this oil has it in concentrated form, very useful for blending as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Alamande]

Kuda Sandel - from @SamiterkiW
I can’t claim to be an experienced nose when it comes to sandalwood, so take this for what it’s worth, but this Indonesian oil is the craziest example I have personally tried to date. It’s complete and wearable as a perfume in its own right. I don’t know if colour has any significance as an indicator for this type of material, but this is by far the darkest of the sandalwoods I own. The profile makes me imagine pumpkin-spiced butter melted on American-style butterscotch pancakes with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream on the side; every swipe smells like a thousand-calorie dessert. The drydown is woody, but in a different way to the other sandalwoods I have, showing notes of wooden furniture, mahogany/teak, french polish - a darker and more mature woodiness compared to the fresh lumber notes I have come to associate with sandalwood. I don’t think I would use it for maceration. This is one to swipe and enjoy for what it is.

Correction: it’s supposed to be buttermilk pancakes, not butterscotch, although I think you can get butterscotch notes in this oil, too!

 

[Olfactory Nomad]

After discussion on a different thread I was encouraged to find my bottle of premium Australian Sandalwood oil from New Mountain over here in Western Australia. I don't think I have ever worn this neat. It's really quite special and I recommend to anyone who is even remotely curious as to what it smells like but has never tried it to find yourself a bottle. It has a sweet pastry gourmet scent. Sweet and woody, also creamy but not like S. Album at all. Maybe a little bit spicy? @AlHind Oud, have you distilled Santalum Spictum before? Might be something you could explore?

 

[Joe]

Received my bottle of One Tree a couple of days ago and have been wearing it pretty solidly. Thankyou brother @AlHind Oud. With a few of your sandalwoods in my collection now, I "get" your signature within it as @Mr.P has mentioned. I realise this is what I was smelling in your Santalea oil. I thought it was a facet of that oil itself but it's not because it's in this one as well. Great projection and it lasts for ages. Nothing soft about this oil and yet it's also like a caress. I've been out kayaking this morning through a mangrove wetland while wearing One Tree. Fantastic to be in this closed in wet and muddy world while breathing in this beauty.

I love One Tree from @AlHind Oud , but I’ve been using his mysore sandalwood for my blends. I should just get a large bottle of it, I know I’ll use it, but I already have so many different sandalwoods. It’s hard to justify. And I have some from him when I made my last blend will, just a few grams, but they’re awesome. So creamy, woody, fresh, yet antiquish.

 

[AlHind Oud]

After discussion on a different thread I was encouraged to find my bottle of premium Australian Sandalwood oil from New Mountain over here in Western Australia. I don't think I have ever worn this neat. It's really quite special and I recommend to anyone who is even remotely curious as to what it smells like but has never tried it to find yourself a bottle. It has a sweet pastry gourmet scent. Sweet and woody, also creamy but not like S. Album at all. Maybe a little bit spicy? @AlHind Oud, have you distilled Santalum Spictum before? Might be something you could explore?

Never really paid attention to Australian one since my focus was to only get old and wild stuff. But it never hurts to explore this option in the future.

 

[AlHind Oud]

I love One Tree from @AlHind Oud , but I’ve been using his mysore sandalwood for my blends. I should just get a large bottle of it, I know I’ll use it, but I already have so many different sandalwoods. It’s hard to justify. And I have some from him when I made my last blend will, just a few grams, but they’re awesome. So creamy, woody, fresh, yet antiquish.

I didn't really release this on my website yet. Maybe sometime next year will do.

 

[Joe]

Never really paid attention to Australian one since my focus was to only get old and wild stuff. But it never hurts to explore this option in the future.

I rather like the Australian profile, it’s sparky and obviously. Right now though I’m favoring mysore; there’s more of a focus on the holy, smooths the blend. They both have their place in perfumery. I like mixing them. But Mysore is richer and sweeter. Luxurious, while Australian is more is more woody and dry, which i also like, but tend to use cedar-wood as it’s less dominate. Australian is more structured, and doesn’t round out the notes like album does….whether it’s mysore or not. Australian sandalwood has an impressive effect on sharp-noted ouds, like crassna.

 

[Joe]

You got me interested !!

@Jeh , it’s good stuff. I think I’ve smelled all he offers at the ScentExpo in NYC, and they’re all satisfying.

 

[Olfactory Nomad]

Never really paid attention to Australian one since my focus was to only get old and wild stuff. But it never hurts to explore this option in the future.

I reckon those search perimeters can be applied to Australian as well. It might be difficult though. I have a friend who has lived in the area where wild sandalwood grows all his life. he told me as a kid, him and his father used to go camping in those bush areas and would often use deadwood sandalwood as fire wood. This is back in the 80's. You can't do that now. I believe to collect wild deadwood these days you need to belong to the First Nation mob who live in that area and have a special licence to do so as it has a lot of cultural significance for them. What they do with it themselves I have no idea? New Mountain do have access to wild trees though so I would either start with them or even Al Shareef could point you in the right direction to source wild wood.
New Mountain Wild wood available here. https://newmountain.com.au/products/west-australian-sandalwood-chips?variant=41339878178977