Pattani

Pattani is Oud Yusuf’s great-granddaddy. The sickest wild Thai agarwood we’ve ever distilled, aged for over a decade already, there isn’t a higher quality Thai oud that I’m aware of.

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…

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 experimented so much, one of them used to break down and rebuild 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 altogether 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 gargantuan slab of old hard zesty resin that’s just in a league of its own. An oud that, like you’ll see below, goes beyond just its olfactory value. 

The only other wild Thai I offered was a vintage oil from the Sultan’s vault. We distilled this one, during The Great Cambodi Experiment that kicked off 2013, as well Sultan Series.

Despite the incredible ouds born during that time – the likes of Sultan Mehmet, Sultan Murad, Mission: Cambodi Kinam – and despite how far-out and unprecedented those co-distills were, Pattani remains in a league of its own.

You can often tell how dear an oud is to me by how long I’ve held onto it. You don’t keep a distillation for eleven years just for fun (well, actually, it’s been quite a fun journey to experience how well the oil has matured throughout the years) when you could have easily sold it a long time ago and funded new distillations or harvests. 

What’s even more telling is how you appreciate this caliber oud with every passing year as you look back in the rearview mirror at those days a decade ago that fade into the distance and your chance of redistilling this class of oud disappears into history. 

What you’ll love about Pattani is that it’s recognizably Thai. It’s not like you’re getting a different profile altogether. (If you love Vietnamese ouds, you’d crave Nha Trang, wouldn’t you?) This is great in that you can see where all modern Thai oils get their DNA from because, ultimately, they share the same soil and climate and overall terroir. But Pattani is your typical Thai oud in Full HD.

In fact, this is exactly the same oil as Nha Trang Sinking and Nha Trang Privée, the two ouds that were made in collaboration with TCM specialists and were not made for their olfactory profiles but for their medicinal value.

This is the only other oil that we’ve distilled that has those exact same facets; the same depth and baklava layeredness as its Vietnamese counterparts, only it was transmuted into a gargantuan Thai profile that’s insanely resinous – every bit as much as Nha Trang Sinking and Nha Trang Privée.

You smell the signature Thai fruitiness – except the fruitiness has been supplanted by medicinality, letting you experience facets of Thai crassna that have never before been captured. Not only do you smell the actual scent of agarwood – the oud itself – which obviously is lacking in lower-grade oils, you smell a full spectrum degree of resination that only comes from very old aquilarias… which I doubt any of us will get to experience again.

This oud won’t come around again. It hasn’t come around again since the time we distilled it! So, enjoy this swipe from yesteryear – it’ll refocus your love for oud and make you appreciate your collection all the more.