Sultan White Rose: Blue Yunnan – Running Low

There was a bottle of Blue Yunnan sitting in front of me that I hadn’t sold since 2021. It had been aging for a decade. And I was about to pour it into a white rose perfume.

This is that perfume.

Blue Yunnan’s character was born from soil running along a border that grew oud trees that don’t exist anywhere else – not in Hainan, mainland Yunnan, or Nha Trang. It smells blue. Lush with China’s orange peel sinensis zest, blueberries, carnations, pollen, and frankincense. But this isn’t just Blue Yunnan – it’s an exalted infusion. Irreplaceable Yunnanese sinensis steeped in Tonkin musk grains for so long I’ve lost track. You can already sense what this means, right?

In Purple Rain, this infusion went into the darkest, most animalic Purple Rain ever made and revved it to the red. Here, the same infusion goes into the most pristine white rose bouquet I’ve ever composed — six roses, six ouds, the Sultan’s own crystalline white rose at the center. Same oud. Entirely different world.

Injecting a pristine white rose bouquet with old-school, cannot-find-it sinensis – muskified with musk so old it’s already extinct – transforms Sultan White Rose from a white rose perfume into something that has never existed before. The blueberry-carnation sinensis character doesn’t compete with the roses, but mkes them even more sensual. The crystalline white rose heart stays intact while an entirely new dimension opens underneath it – blue, animalic, ancient, and unlike anything you’d expect to find alongside a rose bouquet this refined.

If I wanted to only give you a white rose soliflore, I could have handed you a tincture of Sultan’s relic and called it a day. But the perfume is a bouquet of accompanying aromatics that bring the rose to life – and those in turn are brought to life by an ensemble of roses.

A tasteful tinge of mandarin, dyed with a citrus-sweet Hojari note around a soft whiff of cardamom, all of which swims deep in an ocean of rare and exceptionally diffusive rose extracts bursting into full bloom. If you love Sultan Red Rose, imagine that aroma enhanced with a crystalline shot of incense-grade oud dressing the roses in fresh gyrinops, mimosa white, a fresh-flower aquatic oudy core that’s beautiful and so delectable. This sparkly walla tone smells sublime in unison with the exquisite lemony pitch of Ta’if rose, adding a layer of resinous delight to the composition.

Then there’s the Sultan’s white rose itself – the iciest, most crystalline white rose I’ve smelled. Weaving its pristine white petal aroma into the tapestry of those lemony citrus notes is what gives the profile its sublime bright tone.

A trio of the finest Persian ottos beautifully diffuse and lift the Sultan’s rose, giving body to the overall composition. We paid $50,000 and had someone fly into Afghanistan to bring back a stunning otto harvest from the Afghan mountains – so beautifully bright I have nothing to compare it with. While all roses have their unique texture – some smooth, some sharp, some fruity, some almost see-through – this beauty is intoxicating. And it packs flavor akin to an absolute.

Some roses make great carriers, while some are more tenacious and will impact the other aromatics in the perfume. The Afghani and Ta’ifi roses make fantastic carriers, while the Persian trio adds a beautiful whiteness to the profile. I mention this because of how much oud there is in this perfume.

In addition to the überblau sinensis, Sultan White Rose contains six ouds, one to match each of the roses.

Aged Sri Lankan Walla Patta soaks up the beauty of Ta’ifi petals to adorn the entire composition with its diffusive white-flower-injected-with-aloes soul. Fine Sri Lankan oud is known for its exquisite mimosa chord – just discreet enough to be highlighted – making it a fantastic complement to this rose bouquet without diverting the fragrance from its pure white rose heart.

To bolster the otherwise more fleeting yuzu-Hojari top notes, vintage incense-grade Kelantan oud imparts a pristine incense veneer that lets those top notes linger longer – oud as fixative, not just base.

This perfume also features an extremely limited harvest of wild Khao Yai oud. Take the signature lemony Ta’ifi note imbued with fresh tea-rose mountain rose, add Italian neroli and frangipani, and you have one sensual, creamy fruity chord. Letting an incense-grade rendition of the quintessential fruity oud ooze along thickens those frangi-citrus notes and makes the perfume pop with the whitest rose-oud fragrance imaginable.

And then: Pursat, Kampung Speu, and Koh Kong Island – miles off the coast, on a tiny island where agarwood grows. Take those ouds and add a dash of Pailin, and you get the craziest Cambodian oud trio ever featured in a perfume. Legendary crassnas that exude an incense-laced jammy rouge unlike any oud profile you can think of. It’s this twangy zest that makes the roses smell even more gorgeous – a subtle smokiness punctuated by a ripe-fruit jam chord that transforms the lush roses and accompanying ouds into a fragrance unlike anything.

And running through all of it: that blue Yunnan-musk infusion, extinct and irreplaceable, doing to this white rose perfume what Tonkin musk does to everything it touches – the blueberry-carnation sinensis threading through every rose and every oud.

TOP Korean Yuzu · Hojari Frankincense · Italian Neroli · Green Mandarin

HEART Vintage Ta’ifi Rose Otto · Persian Rose Otto Trio · Afghani Rose Otto Duo

BASE Pailin (Oriscent Oud) · Incense-Grade Sri Lankan Oud · Incense-Grade Malaysian Oud · Koh Kong Island Oud · Kampung Speu Oud · Wild Khao Yai Oud · Blue Yunnan-Tonkin Musk Infusion · Ambergris · Costus

EXTREMELY LIMITED.

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