Oud vs Durian

We were crestfallen to witness firsthand that Mr. Ananda, the man behind Oud Yusuf, is now the proud owner of several hectares of Durian trees.

“So, what about my next Oud Yusuf batch?” I asked him.

“We need at least five years,” he said.

The trees are uninfected as of yet, due to labor shortages and the logistical demands of his bustling durian business. He’s selling so much durian, he doesn’t have the time or manpower to take care of his agarwood trees.

Plus, with the pandemic, we practically dropped the ball on him. He, like other colleagues, observed our new forays into the world of artisanal perfumery and basically gave up hope and followed the Durian hype. I don’t blame them – I wouldn’t have waited for me forever either.

But it wasn’t just us…

With the collapse it faced during the Lockdown, plantation agarwood is likely not to recover for decades. 

It’s shocking to find out how many of the bigshots in the Thailand distillation scene are no longer distilling. And from the ones that are left, one of the biggest names in the business now only has ~16% of the trees he started out with left.

He has no time to wait for new saplings to become even young crassnas, so he’s not planting any agarwood. The same is true for the others, most of whom have already cleared out their dwindling agarwood land to grow durian or mangosteen instead. 

This doesn’t mean there’s no oud oil going around. Quite the contrary, Trat is flowing – but flowing with what exactly? (And you’d be shocked by how much of it ends up in China and Taiwan…)

I predict that there’ll be a decline in the next ten years where even good plantation agarwood becomes as scarce as wild oud now is.