Sinking Sekadau

This Sekadau tree is the most famous agarwood tree of our times. Everyone who had a share in its harvest became millionaires overnight.

It’s not that they sold the wood at inflated prices. It’s that the tree demanded a mighty price for what it was.

Not just that, the entire tree was a gigantic cylinder of solid, carvable goodness. They had to cut it up into massive slabs because they were too expensive to sell as-is. And when I say ‘cut up’… just one ‘smaller’ cut weighed about 20 kilos – and sank like a stone!

You’ll meet collectors from Hong Kong to Tokyo to Singapore to Jakarta, all with stories to tell about the find of the century. It took me years before I could get my hands on some of the Sekadau, and that was only thanks to my close relationship with one of the kingpins of the Chinese market.

And here it is, the first leak to the outside world.

I’ve been to a few of the mansions paid for by this tree, and I’ve watched millions gambled away. There’s still an 18-kg piece of the Sekadau for sale. The only reason it’s still there is because it requires you to sell one of those mansions to pay for it.

Surprisingly, from the entire tree, there were very few chips set aside. The bulk of the batch was reserved for carving, and these are of the few pieces that remain to be enjoyed the way oud was meant to be enjoyed: sizzling on your heater.

When they were busy cleaning the wood right after harvest, the big bosses wouldn’t hear anything about making oil from this wood. Whatever position I held with them wasn’t sufficient to score me any of the cleaning powder or smaller shavings. All was reserved for the bosses’ special brew of whiskey which they had made from the wood as they smirked and gave me sideways glances.

“This Muslim doesn’t really understand the value of a fine Scotch made from kinam dust, but we sure do!” their jubilant eyes said sarcastically.

My message was quite the opposite: “You non-Muslims only understand Scotch, and fail to see this could well be the oil of the century. Scotch, even if it had any value, is gone after a few shots; whereas even the smallest yield of oil can go a long way when distilled from such colossal agarwood.”

The bosses wouldn’t even part with the kyen (which needed to be removed so the seah could sink). I had to wait three years and watch the bosses file for bankruptcy before they gave me anything at all from the Sekadau.

In retrospect, I am thankful to have all the kyen (it is, according to most, shin kyara) and a few sinking medallions which I will take with me to the grave. Yet all I keep thinking about is the kind of oil we could have made if they didn’t insist on the Scotch idea.

The best of plans is surely God’s, and oil or no oil, what you have here is the wood of your olfactory lifetime. Only suited to slow gentle heat, it will open a world of sensual bewilderment like no other agarwood can with the possible exception of the other kynam varietals.

This is a higher-grade batch than Royal Sekadau (the kyen batch), giving you pieces from the sinking-grade batch. The aroma is still 100% Sekadau, with the peices denser and the burn longer.

The scent is piercing, not the warm, soothing kind. An aroma on par with the blackest, hardest sinking nuggets you’ve smelled — even better than many. Instead of clinking metallic-sounding chips, these are soft, even delicate. Yet, in a blind test, you’d equate the scent with heavy-resin sinkers.

Reviews of the standard batch…