Oud Sultani: Kelantan

Oud Sultani, the long sold-out oud oil, was a resinous floral fusion that when I showed it to an olfactory savant in Thailand (this one), he said – without me telling him anything about the oil—that “this is one of those rare, old Malaysians… the ones that smell like flowers.” Imagine Oud Royale… but draped in a dark blue purple floral garb that has baffled oud lovers till this day. 

I started making attars and perfumes almost two decades ago and “Oud Sultani” has been a defining fragrance throughout. Naturally, I’ve been mulling over the idea for years and years waiting for the right time, the right… something… for things to fall into place to actually create Oud Sultani, the perfume.

There are no sinking-grade distillations around. Nobody makes them (it’s too expensive), and certainly nobody ages one for forty years. So, how are you supposed to compose a perfume built on such a class of oud?

You may not know this, but Oud Sultani and Oud Ahmad (twin sinking-grade distillations from 2001) were directly obtained from one of the Sultan’s distillers. At that point, in 2012, it would have been easier to rob a bank than to get into Sultan Qaboos’ vault. We were going all around the oud world for years and nobody was making oud like what the Sultan had made. Why the distiller got in touch with us and how we ended up spending weeks on an island near Penang to finalize the deal is a story for another day, but in the end, I could never bring myself to use such precious oud in a perfume. Surely, we would never unearth anything comparable again.

That you’d, eight years later, gain direct access to Sultan Qaboos’ collection was unthinkable. Now that the royal treasury is shut, it still feels surreal that we had this brief moment to descend into oud paradise and bring a distillation that precedes Oud Sultani by 20+ years back with us.

I wasn’t going to make the mistake again. If the Sultan’s own oud in your hands isn’t reason enough to finally step up to the pitch, there would never be a right time. Access to a precious batch of vintage sinking-grade oud happily pushes you over the edge, and practically compels you to create this perfume.

The Sultan’s distillation style is all about auxiliary notes—the lush plums and raspberries, thick sweet molasses and oud smoke wafting through them all. Its layeredness and olfactory density makes the Sultan’s vintage Kelantan distillation a fantastic oud to use in a perfume. The accessory notes bubbling from the oud mean a hundred different micro-interactions with the cast of ingredients around it.

Certain ouds are stripped of auxiliary notes and have unitone buzz from start to finish, and they’re difficult to incorporate into a perfume. Their linear profiles also make them hard to use in a composition – blend such ouds with rose or orris butter, for example, and the rose and orris will dominate.

Auxiliary-rich oud offers you more in terms of perfumery. Pair iris root and rose with aged Kelantan, and you end up with a new fragrance. As if the auxiliary notes each sip from the orris and rose to create a series of small alterations to create a new scent, one that’s different from the parts that make it.

• • Melayu SQ
  • Oud Ahmad (Kelantan)
  • Nepalese Spikenard
  • Bourbon Vanilla
  • Vintage Orris
  • Castoreum
  • Jasmine
  • Rose
  • Violet Leaf
  • Tigerwood 1990
  • Raw Agarwood Resin

These are some of the notes that have been welded by the red resinous grip of Oud Ahmad, which have been transmuted by the only Tonkin Musk Absolute in existence (made in-house), metamorphosed by the Sultan’s own Ambergris, transformed by the final fusion of the entire blend.

That’s why this perfume has seen numerous drafts and the final iteration took about a year to finalize.

Oud Sultani’s signature is a wild, auxiliary-licious concoction that ditches any monkoh serenity for a deep purple floral heart characteristic of “one of those rare, old Malaysians… the ones that smell like flowers” punctuated with the heavy toned duo of violet leaf and rare Nepalese spikenard infused into crimson jasmine petals sweetened by castoreum.

Many people won’t be able to handle smelling our in-house Tonkin musk absolute neat; it’s that raw. But in Oud Sultani, that raw tenacity turns into an exalting, savory sweet glow, brighter as you smell the spritz mid-air, while once it settles on your skin or collar, you’d smell the sweet purple orris oudy liqueur up-close.

At 30% concentration, excluding the musk and ambergris that make up the carrier, featuring rarities like Vintage Melayu Oud from the early 1980s (also from Sultan Qaboos’ collection), Tigerwood 1990, Bourbon vanilla, and raw agarwood resin, this perfume is already worth $1,500.

After being discontinued a long time ago already, we’re using the very last Oud Ahmad (Kelantan, 2001) to produce this perfume. On top of the legendary distillation, this 50ml semi-bespoke edition tops that off with an additional two full grams of Melayu SQ, valued at $1,000. The extra two grams of M-SQ are literally injected individually into each bottle by hand.

This semi-bespoke edition is being released to commemorate this year’s Boxing Day. What you have here is the most collectible bottle of perfume that I could produce, with a $1,000 bonus that we’re giving out with each bottle of Oud Sultani: Kelantan PP.

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