Zafran Sultan

The brilliant crimson stigmas that peek out from lustrous purple petals is one of those sights that reminds you what a miracle nature is. 

Saffron has gained superfood status in many parts, and if you’ve bought quality saffron you’d know how pricey even a tiny bit can be.

It’s not hard to see why…

Each bulb grows only one flower and each flower contains only three delicate stigmas (or threads) that must be plucked carefully – only three, and they weigh almost nothing. It’s easy to appreciate how it can take 20-hour work days that go on for weeks when harvest time comes in autumn. 

You’d need 150,000+ flowers (i.e. almost half a million threads) and countless hours of labor to get just one kilo of dried saffron. But it’s one thing to harvest those three stigmas one at a time to use as spice, and quite another to produce proper saffron oleoresin oil…

As expensive as good saffron gets, it’s actually the cheapest aromatic in this attar.

Drenched in saffron’s red, wild agallocha agarwood incense-fies a batch of creamy sandalwood, sweetened by the cherry-liqueur-like flavor of Rose 1978.

Not just that, the attar itself was steeped directly in Sultan Qaboos’ ancient Mongolian musk which takes the wholesome savory scent of pure saffron and transmutes it with an earthen-brewed-cacao aroma.

I’m not aware of another saffron fragrance that compares in composition – certainly not one that lets you indulge in the world’s most exquisite versions of each.

The scent is rich and warm – saffron has that effect, but the richness is enhanced by the buttery texture of santalum, with a vibrant spice accord punctuated by rooibos incense courtesy of the oud.

Premium vintage rose inject both its subtle sweetness as well as its diffusive effect – rose is the only non-base note in here, so it carries and spreads the musked-out brew like it couldn’t without it. And I chose Rose 1978 specifically because of its almost grape-like redness that imbues the saffron infusion with a smooth glacé.

Zafran Sultan is an elegant, regal fragrance. And I don’t mean a cheaply concocted cologne with a crown sticker on it. I mean a proper ghalia.

*Includes a saffron thread or two inside your bottle.