Suriranka

Crafting Sri Lankan oud has been the biggest challenge of my career. Do you love the frangipani and mimosa blossoms though? And the little green algae swimming atop the pristine coral reef? That’s why I stick with it and grudgingly keep going.

Indian and Chinese buyers are cleaning out the Walla jungles as we speak. Three of our hunters drowned in the flood that hit a couple of months ago (may they rest in peace), as the biggest broker in the country watched his entire stock wash away.

It’s not just going neck and neck against what the Chinese are paying for wood – it’s that you’re competing for the same wood and you want to use it to make oil. (Who on Earth wants to make oil out of resinous agarwood?! That is the big mistake on your side, in a thick Indian accent).

Aside from that, prices here are already two, three, four times higher than the same grades command elsewhere, and not because of middlemen. I’m talking at the source!

Small wonder I just think of packing up all the time.

That’s until you empty the beaker and get your first whiff of oud like Suriranka. And it feels like you’ve just stumbled upon a forgotten trail that runs deep through a forest lush with colors you’ve never seen before. Suddenly, you don’t think of leaving anymore.

Suriranka is not the kind of oud you can distill at first attempt even with the best batches of wood at your disposal. There’s the temperature curves, the boiler angles, the condenser’s crooked neck, too many things you need to be intimately familiar with before you can ever pull out this kind of smell.

Sultan Salman added a New Guinea flare to Ceylon. This time you’re getting full-on incense-grade WP with front row seats for an up-close and personal with the oleoresin oozing on a low heat monkoh heater, Chukogu style. No yellow hued, fruity smells here. The blue-green resinous core is so deep it makes you want to pull your hair out in ecstasy and scream: a beauty almost too beautiful to behold.

The green frangipanied marine top notes of zesty Walla dart at you right through the drydown, where it’s still all that only more like Vietnamese bitterness that’s gone lemon blossom crazy. If you had your doubts about what real incense-grade Walla ought to smell like, doubt no more!

This is among the most precious oils I’ve ever made, and one I intended to release only a few years from now. The cucumber cool, mimosalicious top notes. The sinking incense note that’s so pretty you can’t believe it came out of wood. The pristine champa heart, filtered blue and green. I’d marry it if I could. The aquatic kiss that brands your cheeks aquamarine. The white frangipani that swims in monkoh smoke. The tuk-tuks, the missing yield, the drowned hunters, the heartbreak surrounding every single aspect of coaxing such odour out of trees. Oud that’s so in-your-face good I’m afraid I won’t be able to smell anything like it again.

This oil goes out to those people who have supported my craft over the years and tagged along to taste my struggles.