Sultan Qaboos Oils / Ensar
- Thread starter Azaad
- Start date
Saudalhajri
True Ouddict
thats when Ensar began selling that stuff lol then it was popularized, i think it was 2022 to be exact.
To answer the original post : the answer is that you're not finding the "duds" because nobody is selling them.
If i was faced with an offer of two flasks : one smells like Oud Royale, and one smells like an aged, high grade cambodian. both for the same price, i'd get the former one simply because people will buy the decants at a higher rate.
Its selection bias to put it simply. There are hundreds of genuine SQ bottles of various oils circulating in oman, UAE, saudi arabia that you have no idea about because "it doesnt smell like the EO one."
As to why they're similar, its because the sultan wasnt like you or I, he didnt reserve a tola or two from a distillation, he distilled entire forests worth of oud. Liters and liters of this stuff. so i wouldnt be surprised if there were 30 or more flasks of Oud Royale.
And not all bottles are unlabelled, they're actually serialized, and some say عود ك "Oud K" which is either Cambodian or Kalimentan, some say عود ب which is Burmese, and so on. Rose oils are clearer and are labelled better than oud.
Saudalhajri
True Ouddict
that question assumes nobody did. But they've been being sold in the gulf for as long as ive been alive, although very rarely. After the sultan may he rest in peace passed way, many were released from the Palaces, and they moved hands for years before reaching the market you're basing your assumptions on.
Shiningrobes
True Ouddict
As to why no one had these oils 5-10 years ago, the Sultan died in 2020. I didn’t sample my first SQ oil until 2021 from none other than Ensar (actually it was from Adam) and I was so overdosed with swipes I couldn’t think straight or judge fairly and the ones I over were so far out of my price range, even with a discount that I had to settle for scent strips and memories.
Mr.P
oud<3er
The clarity is appreciated.
Yes, part of the reason Al Hashimi rejected the oils is the overlap with another vendor. We simply will not sell oils that are not exclusive to us, even if vintage oils. Many SQ oils are substandard and the vendors of course filter them. One has to understand that the late Sultan, may Allah have Mercy on him, received many gifts in his lifetime and not all the scents he received were of the highest quality.
Hamza H
Resident Artisan
Even in 2020 these were around, but they weren’t inviting any randoms to the auctions.
I’ve seen the videos of the Iriani hauls myself, I’ve heard great stories from those at the auctions, the deposits alone would cover many vendors entire stock.
Yes people don't realise that some of the vendors have put an enormous amount of cash into these stocks (and oud stock in general) which they have to sit on for years. I know one vendor put over 7-figures of investment into the oils (not me!).
Al Shareef Oudh
Master Perfumer
It's interesting how these conversations start with a big assumption, and then the following posts treat it as fact.
How do you @Azaad or anyone for that matter know that a so called SQ oil, Ensar's included was actually from Sultan Qaboos may his soul rest in peace?
People need to think more critically and ask the right questions.
How do you @Azaad or anyone for that matter know that a so called SQ oil, Ensar's included was actually from Sultan Qaboos may his soul rest in peace?
People need to think more critically and ask the right questions.
Mr.P
oud<3er
Well said. to be fair, not everybody was treating it like fact - they were just trying to be respectful I think.
The reality is we are all buying little bottles of brown liquids with no way to know what's in them. We either believe whatever it is people tell us is in them, or suspend our disbelief for the sake of enjoying the story and the experience, like reading fiction... or (like I did for most of my years collecting oud) just think of it like a perfume: ingredients unknown, being purchased based on pleasing aromatic qualities only, and with no real expectation of a guarantee of 100% purity or naturality or even accuracy in terms of the origins of the material.
(Most folks i spoke with when I first started told me that 100% pure natural agarwood was never sold retail - only available through private channels to the most wealthy, etc. and I kind of accepted that as truth. In a way it was kind of a helpful bit of information even though not entirely true of course).
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@Al Shareef Oudh
Let’s try and be fair. @Ouddict is claiming bottles matched another vendor, so were rejected. I take it you don’t agree with that stance? Because if you did you would have to conclude Ensar sold SQ bottles or at the minimum SQ bottles exist.
Ensar is predominantly a reseller so what’s the surprise?
well we can agree to disagree, I’ve seen two bottles and the owner who’s father was a distiller for the sultan says no bottle says age or type. He even says anyone who says otherwise is lying.
7 figures in one go translates to
£1,000,000 ÷ £300 = ~3,333 bottles
£1,000,000 ÷ £400 = ~2,500 bottles
£1,000,000 ÷ £500 = ~2,000 bottles
£1,000,000 ÷ £600 = ~1,666 bottles
£1,000,000 ÷ £700 = ~1,428 bottles
£1,000,000 ÷ £800 = ~1,250 bottles
£1,000,000 ÷ £900 = ~1,111 bottles
£1,000,000 ÷ £1,000 = ~1,000 bottles
Yeah ok
Mr.P
oud<3er
so your acquaintance's father was saying that none of the bottles in all of the sultan's stash had any labels on them, so nobody could know what their contents were? That is hard to believe.
theaphilosophia
True Ouddict
This is the way. Some people certainly like the story of it coming from the Sultan's collection, and I have no way to either prove or disprove that. So it's a cool story, and doesn't escape the bounds of possibility.
And I've bought from all three of the vendors I've seen selling it here recently (SQ stuff from two of them) and none of the 3 ripped me off. Even if the SQ stuff isn't SQ, it's good aged oud at a fair market value for good aged oud and I believe they themselves believe and probably have good reason to believe it's authentic.
What's harder to believe is the Sultan distilled unimaginable amounts of oud throughout his lifetime, never labeled any of it, and after his death willed for the remaining collection to never see the light of day.
Either the Sultan didn't distill the amounts of oud people say he did and that's where the myth starts and ends, or he did and knew what was in his collection (because what collector and connoisseur wouldn't know what they have?), and people are getting ahold of it somehow that none us have figured out yet.
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Mr.P
oud<3er
I can't think of a sequence of events or posts that would definitively settle this one way or another. It's interesting as long as the conversation is congenial but when it gets oppositional the lack of any possible resolution makes it feel like a waste of time.
dignitychicken
Oud Fan
Yes, from an archival / inventory perspective it would seem a little nonsensical that a royal treasury encompassing random gifts + intentionally curated wood and commissioned custom distillations would just have no administrative system to sort and categorise the contents. Can you imagine being the head archivist / warehouse administrator and being told that it wasn't necessary to have any kind of system to identify the contents of any bottles?
I understand that individual bottles weren't stamped with an itemised barcode, but there would be multiple ways to arrange the collection to at least generally distinguish between low value gifts / duds and the high end custom distilled oils that are sought after and sold amongst ouddict vendors and beyond.
To the point of understanding how it is that we're only seeing a non-representative sample of high end oils being resold - well, again, Ouddict vendors obviously have an interest in being quite particular in what they're sourcing. To the greatest extent possible they're not buying or reselling lucky dip Sultani flacons (terrible business strategy, not to mention cheapening the 'brand recognition' of SQ oils that is ideally meant to represent a particular quality). As other folks have pointed out - there is also a different market where there are more random / lucky dip oils and bottles being sold (like in the Gulf), which also involves counterfeits, extra dilutions etc, but I'm aware that Ouddict has a number of requirements in place for vendors to ensure as trustworthy an experience for forum members here as possible.
There are still some examples of more unknown oils with a particular quality making it through to market (e.g. Sulaym's Sultani Blue - we don't really know anything specific about this oil but we know that it has a certain quality that was assessed as worth putting to market). How can they do that? I mean I don't know, I'm not a vendor, but I imagine it's just a matter of time, cultivating trusted relationships and networks, money and eating some sunk costs.
I just don't really see that it's some great mystery, even if all of the moving parts are obscured from the general consumer base and it's hard to understand when what we see are pictures of so many unlabelled bottles.
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Mr.P
oud<3er
this is the first time I've heard the term "lucky dip" used in this context - what does this mean?
dignitychicken
Oud Fan
Taking a blind chance and buying a flacon stamped with the royal seal where you have absolutely no idea of the contents in order to wait and see what you get. Presumably also buying this from someone who you don't know and who doesn't know you.
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