Pattani SQ

Isn’t it strange how the world’s most prolific oud hub is also the last place you think of when you think ‘wild oud’?

At least, that’s how I am. I think of wild Cambodi, Borneo, Papua, Laos, Vietnam, they all come to mind. Even if you think the most prolific oud hub is actually India, the same applies.

It’s because there’s a reason Thailand is an oud-cultivation pioneer and why Thai cultivation efforts are so far ahead of anyone else in the oud world…

I’ve only managed two wild Thai distillations in my career, and both are extremely limited.

Also unlike other regions, you hardly find any vintage Thai ouds anywhere. If you know the right veteran distillers in Cambodia, for example, they’d show you a bottle of vintage Cambodi they’ve kept in their prayer area. Same thing in Vietnam or India.

But ask Thai distillers, and they’re as keen as you are to find wild Thai ouds.

I personally know the biggest distillers there, old and new, and even they lament not having kept some old wild Thai oils. They didn’t think it would disappear so fast, one of them told us. 

Two of them have made it their life’s mission to replicate the smell of those vintage oils they were once able to make. They experiment so much, one of them used to break down and rebuilds his distillery practically every year. 

Every time I’d visit, there’d be new condensers being unpacked as the old ones are piled up behind broken pots ready to be replaced.

The same guy has since stopped distilling and is selling his trees. 

It boils down to time. Even if they foresaw the future and planted a special tree forty years ago when their careers started, they can’t afford to wait forty more… 

(The wild Thai ouds you do hear about are ‘wild’ the way industrial Vietnamese ouds are ‘wild’. That, or they’re actually Malaysian imports, a.k.a. ‘Southern’ Thai ouds.)

You should have guessed by now what I’m getting at. That the only way to score vintage Thai oud would be to go back in time. 

And that’s what you’ve got here.

Imagine fine Cambodian oud without the plum, a golden yellow-hued rendition of Koh Kong’s reds.

Instead of dense and jammy crassna like its Cambodi cousin, Pattani shows off a resinous, sour zing that makes modern day Thai oils smell…… petite? A gargantuan slab of old hard zest resin that’s just in a league of of its own.