Oud Dhul Q 0.3g
Just when you thought oud couldn’t get any more Kodo… Just when you thought Aroha Kyaku is the most incense-heavy oud oil you’d ever smell… Aroha’s granddaddy steps into the room and says: ‘Excuse me!’
What you’ve got here is the most honed incensey top notes your olfactory receptors are able to decipher. I’d dare to say it’s even incensier than an actual oud chip fuming away right in front of you. It’s like you take the raw agarwood vapor exuding from that chip on your burner and place it under an olfactory magnifying lens. It’s because in oil form that scent is so concentrated, Oud Dhul Q literally zooms in closer to agarwood’s resinous heart than even straight-up oud smoke.
What puts Dhul Q a shelf above Aroha Kyaku is the depth of the incense chords, and the refined heart notes that follow. That’s when you realize you’re dealing with a different animal.
It’s when the smokiness recedes (ever so slightly) that your nose begins to twitch, starts to seek out the emerging notes. ‘Is that Oud Ishaq?’ you wonder. But it’s not. ‘Encens Khmer?’… close. That’s the aromatic caliber we’re talking about here. The scent of aged wild Cambodian aloes, rich in tobacco, matured molasses, a narcotic golden champa floweriness that compliments leafy notes of pu-erh. Zero barn – rather, somber cherry wood…….… And before too long, thick cherry jam. If you ever wondered about oud connoisseurs’ talk about aromatic complexity, this is the kind of aroma they’re dissecting.
Dhul Q is a fusion of organically grown Thai agarwood and a rare batch of wild Papuan wood, distilled in copper, brewed with a hybrid of different water sources (a hint to future distillers). But that doesn’t tell you anything about why it smells the way it does. The top profile is nothing like Thai or Cambodian oud. It’s in a scent category of its own.
