EO 1: Men Tien

This edition comes in the very last of the original EO1 leathers made by the late Habib Dingle, which were also the first EO leathers we made together – for our maiden perfume.

That’s why I left nothing on the table to make this the most extravagant EO1 ever. Extravagant, but also the most faithful to the original profile… now more oud, and oud that the original could only have dreamed of.

Most people who think they know Myitkyina oud don’t. What circulates under that name is mostly just Assam at a markup, sold by people who never set foot in the Kachin jungle. Real Myitkyina – the old-stock wild harvests from deep in upper Myanmar – is dangerous to acquire, difficult to get out of the country, and almost never makes it to a distillery worth the name.

This did.

Men Tien is what happens when the kinamic Oriscent blueprint is applied to agallocha from a region nobody goes to easily.

I picked up the worst food poisoning of my life getting to Myanmar. Before that, there were border warnings, travel restrictions, a wood dealer who looked me in the eye and said don’t go now, you’re a foreigner. I went eventually. What came back from those jungles, distilled in Taiwan by my Sifu, has red kinamic top notes as acerbic as the highest-grade kyara in the Oriscent collection. Hours of bitter-zesty kyara tickling your nose, drenched in red resin. Its orange-yellow saffron hue – not the scent of saffron, the color of it, olfactively – is something no other Burmese oud produces. Men Tien smells more like sinensis than agallocha. It smells like proof that kinam is not limited to Vietnam, not limited to a species, not limited to a jungle anyone has already been in.

EO1’s profile — tobacco leaf, worn saddle leather, rare roses, ambergris — is meant to carry oud, not decorate it. Oud is the dojo. The tobacco and leather and roses are the atmosphere inside it.

Men Tien deepens the kinamic dimension in a direction EO1 we started exploiting with Crystal Kinam. The bitter-zesty red-resin acerbity that is Men Tien’s signature melts into the leather’s darkness and sharpens it. The saffron-orange olfactive hue of Men Tien runs through the Ta’ifi rose and pulls out facets that the rose has always had but that previous editions kept quiet. The tobacco, instead of staying dry, picks up the red kinamic warmth and turns ambered. That unprecedented note alone makes this edition worth it.

The Sultan Qaboos ambergris in the carrier does what it has always done – creates an atmosphere rather than a note, a mineral halo that adds diffusion. At this oud concentration, that halo is not gentle. A full quarter of the standard compound is already all oud. With 3 grams of Men Tien on top of that, this edition is ~40% oud… and not just oud, but among the finest distillations ever made.

EO1 was already one of the most commanding leather-oud perfumes ever produced. This edition takes it somewhere it has never been – into the Red Dragon’s den, through Kachin jungle, my Sifu in Taiwan, and back out as something that sounds impossible… until you spray it.

TOP: Men Tien · Myitkyina · SQ Ambergris · Rosewood · Castoreum · Nutmeg · Lavender · Siam Wood

HEART: Men Tien · Myitkyina · Afghan Rose · Vintage Ta’ifi Rose · Juhi Jasmine · Tolu Balsam · Civet

BASE: Men Tien · Myitkyina · Tobacco · Vanilla · Oakmoss · Frankincense

Additions: Vintage Myitkyina agarwood slivers inside your bottle.

Strictly limited.