Sultan Abd?l Hamit

I’m a natural perfumer. With not so much as a drop of synthetics in my atelier, pure oud has been the cornerstone of my perfumes. But more than concerning myself with the creation of perfumes, of fusing lilacs with lilies, I specialize in distilling single origin oud oils.

But specializing is simply a means whereby the artist creates, delves, discovers. In a series of über exclusive distillations, I wanted to dig down deeper. I wanted to synthesize single-origin distillation, modern perfumery, and natural olfaction to create a timeless scent—a fragrance nobody could ever replicate, and history could never repeat.

Sultan Abdül Hamit is a milestone in pure oud distillation and modern perfumery. When Ernest Beaux set out to create Chanel No 5 he looked beyond the norm of single profile scents. He wasn’t out to capture the essence of rose or jasmine anymore. What mattered was a new composition that captured not a note, but a feeling.

The secret behind this series of nu-Sultans was to marry different species of agarwood and bring to life an alchemical innovation that is impossible to pinpoint in any given jungle.

It’s not about cooking at 30 degrees or 300, it’s not about glass pots or crystal condensers. It’s about the fluency of the composition. The shocking uniqueness of the scent.

Artisanal Oud Oil is all about getting a multi-layered fragrance. It’s about capturing complexity. It’s about evoking emotion. Like a great symphony, every instrument has to work symbiotically to create a majestic masterpiece. What you have in Sultan Abdül Hamit is your Symphony No 9.

And this takes oud to a new level: synergistic distillation. Wild-harvested seah flown in from Kalimantan, gyrinops all the way from New Guinea, red Koh Kong water straight from Mr Nhek’s well, stainless steel, German glass, Cambodian craftsmen, home baked ceramic. The moaning of a silver sax, a piano to soothe its cry.

The top notes are insane: guava, kyara, frangipani, vapored neroli. Heart notes, floral. Ocean green. Kinam dust. The scent of gently heated aloes. Incense. Kodo. Sencha. A dry-down of forest air and crisp pine leaf green. Perfection.

Over the years, Chanel had to adapt her No 5—leave the civet, drop the musk. It’s a challenge each natural perfumer has to face: scarcity, rarity. But when you take on a grand scale synergistic distillation like this, with incense-grade oud as your only ingredient, the risk quadruples and you only get one shot. This was a once in a lifetime distillation.

Our synergistic distillation is nu-perfumery—all oud, and nothing but. Chanel’s No 5 had aldehydes, Sultan Abdül Hamit has New Guinea gyrinops, signing its Sultan scent.

I’m blessed to have had the opportunity to compose this scent. We only had one chance to get it right. Even if we wanted to re-distill it, the raw materials are gone.

A bottle of Sultan Abdül Hamit is irreplaceable. Its beauty, timeless.