Stranded in Trat

(I recommend you read Oud vs. Durian for more context.)

Here’s a glimpse of where we’re heading: 

We’ve smelled oils that are sold as “wild Nha Trang” and “30-years-old 80% kinam”. Both are nothing more than cultivated Trat distillations, and even the sellers appear genuinely clueless about this most obvious detail.  

Labels are losing their meaning. When you hear “kinam” you must assume it means the imitation plantation kind, not actual kinam. But that’s always how it starts and before too long “kinam” has become redefined. Tofu beef, anyone?

In Thailand, the man who was the main supplier for two big companies in the Gulf for over twenty years hasn’t distilled anything in a few years, busying himself chiseling out the trees he has left to sell as oud chips.

We went to Mr. Katchii, whom we collaborated with on Thai Encens, hoping to buy his farm, distillery included, only to find more durian and mangosteen where glorious crassnas had once moved me to tears.

Mr. Chakloi, Oud Ilyas’ lemon cake meringue wizard, has been selling off his trees and focussing instead on chiseling oud chips. We hadn’t paid him a visit since 2020, so we walked hopefully towards his distillery only to find it in shambles, abandoned just as we last saw it.

Would you like us to distill a new Satori series of kyen oils? It took us about five years to gather enough kyen to distill the Satoris, while in the last four years we’ve only been able to gather enough kyen to fill a single pot. 

Come to the Far East and it’s like you came to the Sahara looking for water. You’ll find two men here, pioneers in the world of agarwood, who know all the pathways and all of the trajectories in the field – stranded. So, next time someone tells you Thai oud is everywhere, tell them, “Perhaps, but what kind of oud?”