White Kinam

In the current Chinese Market, ‘white kinam’ is heralded as the costliest and most highly sought after.

To be honest, most of the specimens I’ve seen looked like average oil-grade wood to me, although they came straight out of the safe deposit box of the biggest ‘boss’ of the China Market. And most were soil harvests.

What you see pictured below, on the other hand, looks like text-book live kinam taken directly from a vintage Japanese treatise on this peerless aromatic.

Compared to red kinam, white kinam is equally spicy but drier in tone, whereas the green is more lush and zesty. The dryness lends itself to a warmer tone, in contrast to the more cooling elements of, say, green kinam.

While many are under the impression that they’ve smelled kinam, many oud lovers might smell kinam once in their lives. Or never. Kinam is the Red Sulphur of all things fragrant. The Holy Grail of olfaction. It’s the most sought after and precious strand of agarwood in the world, second to none. The medicinal bitterness of the scent is intoxicating to no end.

Anyone who keeps their eye on kinam prices would have noticed how the big Japanese houses have dramatically jacked up the price of kinam within this two last years. For established and respected companies to do this is very telling. And the offerings rarely, if at all, list white kinam…

A small chunk of white kinam can easily command $20,000+, with kinam prices in general ranging from $300 to $2,000 for the highest caliber. Because there’s so much buzz about kinam and so many haven’t had the chance (or the funds) to experience it, we wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to own your own stash of authentic Vietnamese white kinam

Despite price hikes and a sharp drop in availability (especially white kinam), to make things easier on your wallet, we’re offering .5 gr and 1 gr V-vials. Please note that v-vials are unavailable at the moment so sturdy glass bottles will be used instead.