Yunnan 2003
If there’s anything in the world of Oud that’s even rarer than Vietnamese Kyara, it is Yunnan Oud. Yunnan Oud is so rare, I’ve only smelled one batch in my entire career. It so prized amid Chinese collectors it commands the same price as wild Vietnamese oils…
If there’s anything in the world of Oud that’s even rarer than Vietnamese Kyara, it is Yunnan Oud.
Yunnan Oud is so rare, I’ve only smelled one batch in my entire career. It’s so prized amid Chinese collectors it commands the same price as precious wild Vietnamese oils.
I am in Taiwan as we speak, in a futile effort to distill something worthy of Al-Saud and Al-Nahayan families who have requested our attendance at one of their festivities later this year, and the ground cost for producing any Chinese Oud is so silly I can’t even present it to Royalty.
My Taiwanese distiller hasn’t distilled anything from China for at least six years – and it doesn’t look like he’ll be doing anything from there ever again…
If you’ve never heard of Yunnan Oud, you’re not alone. Wild Yunnan oils are so prized, most distillations from there never even made it over the border… sold in obscurity to niche connoisseurs who collect them with even more zeal than they do kyara beads.
If you have enough money, you can buy kyara. Give me a million bucks and I’ll produce a 1 kg log within hours. But give me all the money in the world and I can’t help you find a single slither of true Yunnan Oud.
So what is it about Yunnan oud anyway? Why do all Chinese collectors hound it and pay the silliest prices for anything coming from China, such that no one but a Chinese baron can even come close to buying Chinese Oud?
There’s a sweetness to Chinese oud which cannot be found in any other type of agarwood. Smell deeply the amber and the musk… Pheromonal oomph you’ve never come across. A scent that’s extinct.
For someone ready to dive back into to the primordial pull of nature’s own cologne, boasting the ultimate refinement while addressing the wildest of human emotions, Chinese oud is the ultimate choice.
Its scent is not for the faint of heart, the unsuspecting nose, the uninitiated into the peculiarity of oud. Take raw musk, ground amber, infuse it with myrrh and frankincense, and you’ve got an idea of what you’re in for.
Thirteen years of gravity and vacuumed air, of molecular fusion and union, alchemized this oud into an olfactory pagoda of beauty that can never be captured in our day.
Fine Laotian Oud is its closest scent proxy, yet with a vibrant earthiness that’s closer to vintage Vietnam oils…
Think Laos 1987, marinated in dark cherry tobacco smoke, with a vintage oudiness that only comes with age.
Expect deep bass riffs packed with incense, pollen-powdered woodiness, orange peel, and wild animalics: A scent that sends you herding through the Himalayan foothills, compass set for Tibet.
So far as pricing goes, I want the Olde Ouds to be as accessible to every oud lover as possible. While $790 might not seem like a bargain, it is in fact more than that. For a thirteen year-old Yunnan – with no duplicate or replica anywhere in the entire oud collecting world – it is nothing short of an act of charity…
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about, the one whom has it, to be generous please 
Red crimson sunset packaging with Play-Doh surprise inside. This oil is a shapeshifter. Something totally unexpected. At first encounter you would assume it’s as Chinese as you know, raw and musky. It suddenly this becomes very golden woody incensey with some playdoh-like qualities. Oh, I used to be obsessed with playdoh smell as a kid. Guess that’s why I’m in a group full of super smellers.
