Borneo 2000

One thing the great Borneos – 3000, 4000, Kinam, 50K – have in common is their olfactory harmony.

This means that from top to drydown, you don’t find a dramatic change or decline in scent – the fruits don’t suddenly disappear to make way for the woods. This is the mark of a great Borneo.

Take the spicy raspberry tone of Borneo 2000: Whether it’s the first whiff or two hours later, the profile holds beautifully steady – three hours later you might well have to remind yourself that you’re smelling a swipe hours old.

In fact, try this at home… take a fresh swipe on your other hand and smell how acutely similar the pitch is velvet glaze from two hours ago.

I’d go so far as to say that the 2000 ranks top here. The scent progression is super steady and hardly swerves. You’ll need an extremely acute olfactory radar to pick up the drop from top to heart to drydown.

You’ll probably experience what I did… you never actually reach ‘the drydown’.

Instead of smelling the typically by-now-transformed scent we call the drydown that’s quite different from the opening whiffs – less fruity, no sweetness, for example – when you track a swipe of B2000 it’s more like the volume dial merely gets toned down as the hours go by. That vanillic raspberry cedar-cinnamon signature didn’t go anywhere.

Borneo 2000 was crafted five years ago and has been naturally aging since. During this time, you can probably count the number of quality Borneos you’ve come across on one hand, if you can count any at all.

The availability of proper Borneo agarwood has dropped like an anchor and you genuinely have to think thrice about embarking on an incense-grade distillation where the raw materials alone could shoot your cost per bottle into triple $ digits.

In the oud world, entire jungles can, and have, disappeared in five years. (Not to mention, Borneo is supposed to be host to the new Jakarta.) That this distillation is so well aged doesn’t just hint at the quality out there but also that costs were significantly lower than if you had to distill this same oil today.

That’s how we’re able to keep the price so low…

‘Dark and deep’ or ‘jungly and moist’ – the way cheap modern Borneos are described as if you’re getting an upgrade simply proves the disappearance of the signature Borneo profile (and the caliber malaccensis) that gave it its renown.

In this Borneo, there’s no shortage of the classic, premium Malinaus’ vanilla sweetness. At moments you smell fresh mahogany peeled from the bark. A semi-dry cedarwoodiness gently swiped with moist brown sugar, honey and spiced maple syrup. That makes this your go-to oud for going out. What Borneo 2000 adds to your palette is a musk-meets-frankincense mellowness that makes the 2000 fuller, more woody and less airy than the rest of the series.

Same techniques, same tradition, pristine wild Borneo agarwood. That’s how Borneo 2000 fits in with 3000, 4000 and Borneo Kinam….