Abuyog Soil

Everybody’s got their own grading system, from A to AAA to King Tiger Plus. Then there’s kyara, from white to purple and black. And then there’s soil agarwood, from red to yellow soil, that’s not supposed to look like much but smells like a million bucks.

(For a more detailed intro to soil agarwood, check out Brunei Kynam Soil.)

It’s true that soil agarwood generally looks more like clay than your typical black sinking oud nugget. That’s until you see these buried gems from the jungles of Abuyog in the Philippines:

Before too long, Abuyog will become known as the Nha Trang of the Philippines. From all the agarwood jungles in the world, I’d go as far as to say Abuyog is the most recognizable. You smell this gorgeous cool blue and it’s like ‘Abuyog’ gets branded in your brain the same way a single swipe of Nha Trang LTD becomes ingrained in your olfactory palette for life – and all you want is more!

Sweet blue and narcotic at the same time. Compared to Indo-Chinese varieties that pack more spice and have a warmer profile, this Filipino soil harvest is ocean cool bottled, drenched in such a deep resinous current the ambient aroma alone is enough to bliss out on.

Researchers speculate about how the fibers in soil resin have been loosened over the years as the tree lay in the mostly wet underearth. Often soil agarwood refers specifically to resinated aquilaria roots, while unearthing an entire tree could be a richer discovery, with a lot more work going into its recovery…

Technicalities aside, what makes a batch worthy of the EO label is the smell. 

It’s interesting how many Filipino regions delivered fantastic-looking, fat-armed-sized black solid logs that smell like… nothing. It’s as if the jungles of Abuyog drank up and kept all the flavor for themselves. Once a waft of this fragrance brands its narcotic cool signature in your olfactory receptors for life, you’d know why nothing beats Abuyog.