Chypre Sultan: Maroke no Kō

A chypre is one of perfumery’s great inventions.

Everything has its place. Bergamot and bitter citrus up top, a touch of rose and jasmine in the heart, and oakmoss underneath. You can change the proportions, dress it differently, make it darker or brighter, but the blueprint has been set for more than a century.

That’s the problem with chypres… they’re already good at being chypres.  

Which raises the question: why make another one?

You can swap bergamot for yuzu and push the oakmoss, or spend more on the flowers. But none of that gets you out of the building. You’re just rearranging the furniture.

But what if you could enhance a chypre to levels never before possible? What if you could take one of perfumery’s great acts of civilization and drench it in ingredients civilization has all but lost?

That’s where this gets interesting.

Japanese yuzu takes a dip in lily of the valley as a sprinkle of hyacinth steeped in jonquille tries to break onto the stage; just when you’ve taken a fresh spritz, all of the discreet top notes that await you first have to pass through a thick cloud of rare Mongolian Musk.

When a collision of Irian oud’s green cool and Mongolian Musk’s super earthy tenacity stirs up this tingling sensation in your gums – a tangible titillation that makes it more than just a smell…

And beneath it, around it, within it, merged with it, you have Maroke no Kō: dark Papuan resin and forest-floor incense shot through with that peculiar post-rain cool of vintage Maroke. 

After 15+ years of aging, this is the first time I’m using this irreplaceable distillation in a perfume. It takes the stunning green profile and gives it some proper old-school Oud Royale flair, like squashing yuzu and flowers into wet earth, crushed green leaves, and resinous incense.

Then this unique green-cool interplay that bursts through the cloud of musk comes courtesy of an exceptional cast of Filarian incense laced with precious Pursat, turning the green foundations of the chypre into complex agar tones where you’d normally find only moss – all composed around not your typical lemon/citrus chord, but a bouquet of flowers hovering around the fusion of yuzu and lily of the valley.

The heavy dose of vintage Mongolian Musk’s prism-like effect on the yuzu-hyacinth opening is tinged with a gentle sweetness blended with oakmoss and a montage of vintage sandalwood from Sultan Qaboos’ treasury.

Those who know something about musk ask me if I use the grains or the sack. It’s a fair question… until you work with musk this old and potent, where you literally don’t know where the sack ends and the grains begin. If not for a few hairs, you can hardly tell which side is the shell and which side the belly. (So, yes, both.)

At 40% oud concentration, there’s nearly twice as much oud in this edition as in any Chypre Sultan before it. And it isn’t just more oud, but oud of higher caliber.

Papuan oud and musk meet from opposite directions. The musk is earthy, warm, and relentlessly diffusive; Maroke no Kō is deep green resin, petrichor, and earthy agar incense, pierced by a cool, almost peppermint-like freshness. Put them together and the contrast electrifies the chypre. The distinct blast of Mongol Musk projects its zest while Papua keeps sending up cool, dark incense from underneath, and the profile keeps going for hours to enshroud you in a fragrant aura that penetrates whoever’s nose passes you.

COMPOSITION: Maroke no Kō (Vintage Oud) · Pursat Oud · Mysore Sandalwood · Yuzu · Sichuan Pepper · Indian Ginger · Angelica Root · Tuberose · Jasmine · Blue Lotus · Ylang Ylang · Jonquil · Helichrysum · Beeswax · Oakmoss · Bourbon Vetiver · Patchouli · Castoreum · Ambergris · Mongolian Musk

*15 ml & 30 ml editions come with our laminate plaques.

*50 ml edition comes in one of the last remaining original leather pouches made by Sidi Habib Dingle. Extremely limited.

Featured Testimonials…

After a long time of doing research on this perfume I’ve decided to pull the trigger and I haven’t regretted it.

The chypre sultan smells so extremely good, a green, oudy and ultra musky experience.

I’ve just applied 2 tiny sprays on my neck and I got covered in a cloud of this beautiful chypre.

Chypre perfumes have been always a difficult thing for me, somehow I couldn’t find a proper chypre that suits my preferences …

When I’ve tried Chypre Sultan it changed my view on chypre perfumes completely.

Chypre Sultan does have a few of the classic chypre characteristic but then there’s this extreme amount of musk and oud.

The musk hits so hard and it works perfectly with the other ingredients. It’s hard to pick up single notes since it’s so well blended. All I can say is, that this perfume is probably the most manly smell that I’ve ever got from an EO perfume.

Currently it’s extremely hot and humid over here and the Chypre Sultan is still a great performer but I think that it’ll unfold its true power in the colder months.

The brew itself is dark-brown and it seems like there’s an absurd amount of musk in it. I’ve only seen such a huge amount of residue on the bottom bottle of my

Chinese exclusive (which is also overloaded with musk tincture) and I love that. Can you have too much musk? I don’t think so.

The leather case on this perfume is probably one of my favorites in my entire collection. The clean brown leather looks phantastic.

Now I can understand why Josh got 3 bottles for himself.

Addictive stuff!

Big props to the maestro Ensar for creating this juice.

UPDATE:

In my opinion Chypre Sultan could be called the best masculine scent from the house of EO.

Tons of musk floating in a dark ocean of green notes, complimented with a creamy touch of sandalwood and the fresh bitterness of yuzu and cypress. The Irian and Sri Lankan oud adds even more green and dark notes with a slight hint of incense to the composition.

This is one of those scents that makes you want to spray more and more of it, it should come with a warning sign that tells the customer about the highly addictive smell.

…It was love at the first spray and I’m more than happy that I could manage to get a backup before it disappeared from the website.

UPDATE:

Today I’m wearing chypre sultan, one of the most musky perfumes in my collection.

The overdose of oakmoss is hitting hard and accompanies you over the entire time. The musk is heavy, animalic notes melting together with the dark irian oud and get rounded up with a proper dose of sandalwood.

It’s a dark and masculine scent that I could easily wear every day. The smell of this chypre is so unique and addictive that I had to get two bottles of it.

UPDATE:

The weather turned cold in the last few days and I had to get this legendary scent out of the vault again. Masculine darkness, tons of musk, even more dark and green oud drenched in a sandalicous pool of oak moss, complimented with splashes of yuzu and lily of the valley. A true royal scent in my eyes. These days I wish I had bought a third bottle of chypre sultan. Hands down one of my personal milestones in the EO journey!

—Chris A / Germany