Myitkyina 1987

Oud wasn’t always an industry. It wasn’t always about branding or marketing tricks. It was simple: take the finest agarwood, distill it with skill, and let time do the rest. No shortcuts or gimmicks. Just pure, unfiltered Gaharu.

There was a time when distillers had access to the best agarwood without even regarding it as ‘the best’… centuries-old trees, untouched by mass demand. Back then, oud oil wasn’t about maximizing yield or rapid ROIs. It wasn’t diluted by shortcuts or driven by hype. It was simply made for those who knew its worth. 

That time is gone. And so are the trees. But this oil remains.

A Time Before the Rush

Myitkyina 1987 was distilled in the mid-1980s before the modern oud trade changed everything. There was no pressure to stretch the yield, no reason to cut corners. Only the finest, resin-rich agarwood went into the still. The result? A depth and richness that today’s distillations can only imitate – and boy, do they try to imitate! 

This is not an “aged” oil in the marketing sense. It wasn’t pushed through artificial processes, i.e. force-aged to make it smell older. It simply sat – untouched – for almost half a century, time working its magic in a way no lab ever could.

The Scent of Olde Oud

Swipe it once, and you’ll know.

It opens with a deep, resinous richness – like dark agarwood steeped in time. There’s a clarity to it, a smoothness that only real age brings. A faint sparkle of vintage agarwood liqueur, the same signature found in legends like Oud Mahmoud and Royale No 5.

There’s no sharpness, no rough edges. Just the quiet authority of an oud that has been waiting for decades to be experienced.

In contrast to olde Indo-Malay ouds, Myitkyina 1987 shows off the classic leathery, slightly spicy aroma of old-school Burmese oud. Compared to red Cambodis, zesty Guallams or cheesy Laotians, dig into this cuir profile tinged with the scent of sun-dried tobacco, black tea, and discreetly burnt caramel – all with the scent of gently heated Myitkyina vapor hovering over your skin.

The Myitkyina Magic

Myitkyina is to Myanmar what Nha Trang is to Vietnam. 

But modern Myitkyina is more like a museum than a hot spot for agarwood distillation. In fact, high-grade oud, or any wild oud, for that matter, is pretty much dead there now, just like it’s dead in Laos, Vietnam, and most of Cambodia. 

Unlike in Thailand, Vietnam, or Cambodia, agarwood cultivation hasn’t filled the void left by the mighty giants that once grew in those northern Burmese jungles.

So, today it kinda boils down to this: you either have the super-fine legendary Myitkyina ouds from the 70s and 80s or you have the generic variety that nobody even talks about… how much do you know about modern Myitkyina ouds? Or any Myitkyina ouds?

In my book, this fact makes this legendary Myitkyina distillation even more precious. 

Ouds That Change Hands, Not Markets

Oud like Myitkyina 1987 doesn’t just increase in value – it disappears.

The few, and there were only very few, who bought oils like this years ago aren’t selling. (I can repeat the question about how many Myitkyina ouds you even know about…)

This isn’t an investment in money. It’s an investment in something far rarer: the chance to own a piece of history. The chance to smell the past; an oud connoisseurs’ greatest pleasure, to indulge in the scent of super resin, bottled. 

Gone

I thought about keeping it. In fact, I have been keeping Myitkyina 1987 all these years. Oud like this doesn’t come back.

I’ve been dead sick with food poisoning in Burma trying, unsuccessfully, to track down the likes of it – and those oudscapades were over ten years ago already!

There are only two ways to acquire oud like Myitkyina 1987. 

1. Find such a precious vintage distillation.
2. Unearth a batch of old-stock Myitkyina wood dating back to that generation of trees (which, FYI, started to form resin as far back as the 1880s!) which you can then distill yourself. 

The latter is practically impossible (and extremely expensive if you could). BUT – even if you sold your house to score old-stock Myitkyina agarwood – how would you make up for forty years aging?

So, you’re basically left with option #1: go back in time.

That’s if you weren’t reading this…

If Myitkyina 1987 didn’t come to you. If DHL couldn’t be at your door in a few days to hand you centuries of oud history, bottled. If you couldn’t uncap that bottle that holds a story that began, resin pulsating and hardening in those centennial majesties on the other side of the world in jungles so dense it took hardened hunters to even get there, before you were born.

The oud world is different now – flooded with imitations, shortcuts, and noise. Acid soaks, double-distillation, and force-oxidation. All in order to re-capture the past. To capture this smell.

This oud deserves better. It deserves someone who understands. Someone who knows that once this is gone, it’s gone. That, when you pause and reflect for a second, you realize it already is gone.

If that’s you, you know what to do.