Oud Ezekiel

There was a time I took a swipe of Indian Oud on every flight, shortly before take-off, to help calm my nerves. A few minutes later, you’d start to notice strange looks from fellow passengers, as if they were trying to figure out if it was just them smelling something… ‘unusual’.

One time, a man a few rows ahead called the stewardess who then went row by row asking something until it was our turn, “Excuse me Sir, did you apply a… perfume… just now?” Turns out, the man was concerned about the strange smell now circulating in the cabin.

A proper blast of orthodox Hindi oud. Wild horses, pastures and summer sun. Imagine all those unsuspecting strangers around you in the sterile setting of an airplane whose noses are met by this burst of spiced-up boiled nectar, drenched in crushed wildflowers, bedazzled by the fruity-or-what-is-that? aroma wafting in waves of fragrant warmth.

Proper olfactory dissonance. A fragrance so primordial, it doesn’t fit the scene; feels like it’s from another time… 

That’s because our mainstream aromatocracy has all but castrated the dead-on oomph of oud like this: the dried-fruit, tobacco-heavy, bear-fur feel of a proper agallochan oud. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Oud Ezekiel’s got a lot to tell you. If you do get it, and you’ve been feeling the Hindi crave – this is your Oud.

If you’ve had your fill of metrosexual Hindis stripped of their mojo and crave the primal call of rustic leather-saddle cowboy suave, old-school out-in-the-wild agallocha, Oud Ezekiel is the scent of horseback, open air, the free-flow warm wind through your hair. Pollen-rich, amber animalic balsamic resin with punch enough to make you question just about every other fragrance you know.

But Oud Ezekiel isn’t a pure-bred Hindi…

Several people asked about what happened to the tinge of Chinese oud in the last Oud Mostafa (now sold out) that gave it such an exquisite bitter-sweet edge. That’s why I’ve decided to release this batch which includes the same Chinese agarwood used to distill Chugoku Senkoh.

The result is a scent boasting the zest of Chinese Exclusive. Imagine dry plum-candied lemon peel caressed with the calming aroma of dried rooibos twigs steeped in kaori cha which turns the initial ground pepper buchu spiciness almost sweet – and deep down that bottomless goodness lay blood orange zest, musk, ancient woods, civet, animalic elixirs from other eons.

You may have heard of ‘zero-soak-Hindis, ‘floral-Hindis, ‘non-barn-Hindis’ and that Assam is practically a World Heritage Site for oud oil. It’s not because of the soaking, the fermentation, or anything else distillers have done that keeps Indian oud on the map, but rather that primal blast of oomph you smell even in badly distilled Hindis. So, imagine a fine artisanal bottle of Oud Ezekiel…

When you open your bottle, I recommend you pull out the applicator first and just smell the oil directly from the dipstick. Spend some time with it to experience what it smells like without skin contact. Become familiar with that smell first before swiping it. 

When you do swipe the oil on your wrist, you’ll discover rich pollen-dry chords stuffed with sweet plum and cherry tobacco and the scent wafting from a rugged Boer’s pipe infused with clementine peel and a sweet floral note – not honeysuckle, not jasmine, but almost – courtesy of the Chinese aloes.

Only in mature Indian oud do so many different notes dance so tightly together. This is why for many, aquilaria agallocha (a.k.a. Indian agarwood) is the pinnacle of the spectrum; why, for so many who’ve spent some years exploring oud, Indian oud waits at the end of the road. 

Oud Ezekiel’s wild gusto is all you need to discover why.