Kanbojia Senkoh

I always talk about how distilling oud oil gives you more than what you would smell from raw oud chips on the burner. If you want to smell what I mean, then buckle up and sniff a whiff of this Kambodi…

A sour tart note that has the same effect the tongue-numbing bitterness of super fine Vietnamese agarwood has: you want to keep smelling it, over and over. And then, right behind it, you smell the red crassna smoke floating from a bowl of kodo powder.

You’d never smell the tart, touch-bitter, ripened fruit note in raw oud chips, no matter how high or low you set the temperature. At the same time, Kanbojia Senkoh exudes the scent you will smell from high quality Cambodian oud chips, except that it’s even louder and more… close-up.

Because this is oud oil, you don’t smell the heat of the smoke as you would when sipping on subtle oud vapor from a burner, so there’s a cooling quality to this scent that tunes the raw experience into better focus. 

(Needless to say, you can try this for yourself by smelling a swipe of Kanbojia Senkoh while heating high-grade Cambodian oud chips.)

This oud could be worn two ways: 

⦿ By oud junkies who will revel in the zesty bitter-sour notes, wondering how you could coax such an aroma out of aqualiaria resin – and how strangely different yet redolent those notes are to fine Yunnan or Nha Trang ouds. 

You’d try to analyze the pristine kodo connection as you marvel at the caliber agarwood responsible for this fragrance and obsess about how these raw-wood-heated notes buzz against the backdrop of that sweet acetic sinensis-like kernel that defines the profile and which, to me, makes it totally Senkoh.

⦿ By intermediate oud connoisseurs who want to trek deeper down the abyss.

That’s because Kanbojia Senkoh has the ‘accessibility’ factor, making it an easy wear anywhere (to others, you’d smell like you’ve fumigated your clothes with oud incense), and it has so much detail to explore once you start deep-sniffing… the way oudheads tend to when they encounter oud that’s addictive because it’s so good and intriguing at the same time. 

(If you’re in this group, this oud will level up your oud game by not just adding a unique profile to your scent palette but teach you about other ouds, and more about Cambodian oud specifically.)

But forget who it’s for and where it fits into your oud journey. Senkoh ouds are mainly there to just wear and smell and smell again because they’re addictive beyond what you’d normally uncap to wear that day. 

Old-timers will immediately be struck by how un-Cambodi this is – you’ve smelled your share of ‘em, and these savory tart top notes stand out from the usual jammy apricoty profiles. But you’d be just as struck by how the frequency of nose-to-hand (or wrist or fingers or scarf, or wherever you choose to swipe your oud) has jumped up. That’s what Senkoh ouds are really about…

If you own Suriranka, Assamugo, or Chugoku, Kanbojia Senkoh just unlocked a new door down in the rabbit hole. Step through and enjoy!