(I like to recommend you learn Oud vs. Durian for extra context.)
Right here’s a glimpse of the place we’re heading:
We’ve smelled oils which are offered as “wild Nha Trang” and “30-years-old 80% kinam”. Each are nothing greater than cultivated Trat distillations, and even the sellers seem genuinely clueless about this most evident element.
Labels are shedding their that means. Once you hear “kinam” you will need to assume it means the imitation plantation type, not precise kinam. However that’s all the time the way it begins and earlier than too lengthy “kinam” has turn into redefined. Tofu beef, anybody?
In Thailand, the person who was the primary provider for 2 huge corporations within the Gulf for over twenty years hasn’t distilled something in a number of years, busying himself chiseling out the timber he has left to promote as oud chips.
We went to Mr. Katchii, whom we collaborated with on Thai Encens, hoping to purchase his farm, distillery included, solely to search out extra durian and mangosteen the place wonderful crassnas had as soon as moved me to tears.
Mr. Chakloi, Oud Ilyas’ lemon cake meringue wizard, has been promoting off his timber and focussing as an alternative on chiseling oud chips. We hadn’t paid him a go to since 2020, so we walked hopefully in direction of his distillery solely to search out it in shambles, deserted simply as we final noticed it.
Would you want us to distill a brand new Satori collection of chain oils? It took us about 5 years to assemble sufficient kyen to distill the Satoris, whereas within the final 4 years we’ve solely been in a position to collect sufficient kyen to fill a single pot.
Come to the Far East and it’s such as you got here to the Sahara in search of water. You’ll discover two males right here, pioneers on the planet of agarwood, who know all of the pathways and all the trajectories within the subject – stranded. So, subsequent time somebody tells you Thai oud is in every single place, inform them, “Maybe, however what type or previous?”
