Oud Royale: OR II

This bespoke edition contains the very last OR leather Habib made, so I’m bidding farewell to it by enhancing your bottle with one of my most prized ouds – a full 3 gram bottle of it!

Oud Royale II is the first Oriscent Filipino ouds ever made. When it was released a decade ago, oud lovers didn’t even know that Filipino oud existed…

Years ago, I had sold the last of what we had to a single collector. Years later, and much the wiser, I bought it back from him.

Knowing what I know now about Filipino oud (and the oud scene at large), I would have kept more of it – and would certainly not have sold any of it at that point.

Violet is the word I was looking for. While violet leaf absolute smells like cucumbers, rather than proper violets, Filipino Oud oil offers a closer approximation to the narcotic scent of the flower itself.

Its bold embracing taste of naked earth just after an early-morning drizzle epitomizes its uniqueness. Bolder than Borneo, cleaner than Cambodi, this Filipino personifies more than just a fragrant montage of her neighboring islands.

In 1982, Sultan Qaboos stamped his royal wax seal on a glass flask that would come to define the oud world.

Inside that flask was Oud Royale. 

Everything started with this man, may he rest in peace. At a time before terms like ‘incense-grade’ or ‘triple-super’ were coined, the Sultan didn’t think about 12mm shavings vs. powder, steam vs. hydro, steel vs. copper. His orders were simply to distill the best oud possible—whatever that took.  

In 2004, we received a sealed crystal flask directly from Sultan Qaboos’ royal palace, followed by a second flask filled with Ward Sultani—the rose oil that haunts rose lovers to this day, and which I use exclusively in my parfums.

Now, Sultan Qaboos was a very generous man, and such royal gifts are not unknown to those who have been at his service in some way. But what’s inside the bottles would differ—that after forty years you’ve yet to smell the likes of Oud Royale is proof enough.

We’ve been waiting sixteen years to get something of the same quality again. Flasks of similar appearance were specially flown across continents and into Jordan for inspection, only to be sent back. So, when I got in touch with the perfumers of the royal court to source ethically harvested (and very old) Tibetan musk, and they told me about this one bottle of Sultan Qaboos’ oil… my heart nearly stopped.

You might have heard about the legendary Oud Royale (1982). It’s finally hit home that ouds of such caliber aren’t stories used to sell products, but true olfactory heirlooms.

Now, what if I told you that Oud Royale (1982) is the dominant oud in this perfume?

Rather than a feat of perfumery, this is a tribute. To the man who fueled my olfactory journey from the very beginning. Sultan Qaboos is due an enormous debt of gratitude for showing me the way from the start, a kindred soul who had a taste for nothing but the best. If there’s a real Sultan behind all my “Sultan” products, from the famed Leather Attar to the foundation of my main accomplishments to date, that Sultan is none other than Qaboos himself.

If this oil was in your possession, it’s only fair to keep the best and not part with it. Oud of this caliber, of such stature and historic significance, means more to you than even kinam and isn’t something you’d otherwise ever sell.

All these decades later, from the Sultan’s royal palace to me, to you; to own what is the OG Royale. The legendary Maroke that lets you feast on a montage of the sickest, most resinated agarwood ever distilled. 

The concentration of oleoresin-rich aloes in this oil is clear as day, the crème de la crème of it all, showcased in opulent Arabian tradition, with flair and impeccable taste. If you took fifty tolas of what is distilled today by the most finicky distillers around and compressed it all into one drop, you wouldn’t get half the repleteness and sheer opulence of this oil.

If it wasn’t clear, this is the Oud Royale, distilled in 1982, and exclusively available on Oriscent.

EO No 1 was meant to be all oud and leather drenched in ambergris—and I always wanted to create a Private Edition for myself. Well, I finally found the right steroids for it…

Not only do you get Oud Royale (1982) on full display, but the ambergris that brings it all together, too, is straight from Sultan Qaboos’ royal collection…

And I don’t mean we added a tiny granule so we could tell you a story… As with Private Blend, the entire carrier is tincture. Most perfumers consider any tinctures part of the compound (which includes diluting otherwise hard to work with absolutes, pastes, resins, etc) when calculating concentrations that determine if the juice is a cologne, Eau or Extrait de Parfum. 

That means they often end up calling what in my book would range between a cologne or EDP… an extrait. But at close to 40% concentrate—proper concentration, not considering any tincture or local carriers part of the equation—Oud Royale goes beyond most standards.

And as for carrier……… revel in the Sultan’s decades-old ambergris.

If all one seeks from perfume is strong projection or if a spritz can be smelled a day later, then I suspect the incredible beauty of vintage sinking-grade oud, antique amber, and old, old Mongolian musk will go unnoticed. Oud Royale is a fine fragrance intended for connoisseurs—and may not appeal to you if all you want is a spray-and-off-you-go sort of juice.

Sultan Qaboos’s own ambergris is so precious that if I was just selling you the tincture neat, no perfume inside, it alone would be worth this price.

You see £2,500+ perfumes where the most expensive ingredient is vetiver. So, imagine 40-year-old Oud Royale reeling in equally old ambergris. We could have charged a lot more money for this… You’re technically buying the tincture, and getting the finest oud on earth on the house!

Oud Royale (1982) is available for all to see and purchase on Oriscent; everybody knows what the oud in this bottle of perfume is worth.

But we’re so happy to see the fantastic reception our perfumes have received and I hope by now you’ve come to realize it’s not about money—as you’ve seen with Tibetan Musk, Iris Ghalia, and Oud Yusuf. At a time when the niche-est perfumes themed around “Musk & Woods” — but contain no musk and likely no woods either — in reality cost hundreds of times what they’re actually worth, Oud Royale plays on totally other turf.

If there was ever a true ghalia, this would be it. Actually… ghalias were made for the sultans, so that makes this perfume a true Royale. It would have been an honor to present a bottle to Sultan Qaboos himself, head lowered in gratitude as I handed it to him. 

This farewell bespoke contains 3 gram bottle of Oud Royale II (Philippines) to accompany OR 1 that’s already in the perfume, for a true Royale olfactory experience.