What is Oud?
Oud is an essential oil derived from aquilaria trees, a species of evergreens native to North India and Southeast Asia. Healthy Aquilaria trees do not produce oud. When the tree becomes infected with a particular fungus " a reaction creates a strong fragrant resin that slowly embeds in the heart of the wood. Creating agarwood known as oud. This is what we mean by What Exactly is OUD?
Why is oud so special?
Oud has a lot of spiritual and religious uses. Oud is used almost all over the world including Chinese, Japanese and Arab cultures respectively. Oud is called “gahara” in Malay, “chen xiang” in Chinese, and “jinko” in Japanese, and oud, its Arabic name, has been used for centuries across different cultures and religions. Before the advent of modern perfumery, oud was used for aphrodisiacal, medicinal and aromatic purposes.
Although Oud didn't originate from Middle East, it has always been used widely in the Middle East region. In addition to the religious texts, agarwood chips are burned as an incense in many homes and places of worships all over the world.
How did oud actually become so popular?
Because of the deep connection with oud in the Middle East, Modern Oud based fragrances were introduced in the region before they reached the western markets. oud is traditionally known as the black gold in the Middle East.YSL's M7, which was launched in 2002 when Tom Ford was the brand’s creative director, is often credited for heralding oud into the Western fragrances.
What does Oud Smell like?
Oud has a musky, warm, leather, animalic and slightly sweet, deep rich and complex scent that feels like a walking cologne bottle if you wear it. But all Jokes aside it has a very strong smell, and some people might not like it if they haven't been introduced to it before.
Across other countries there are many different variations of Oud, like aquilaria crassna from Laos and aquilaria sinensis from China." Oud is derived from aquilaria crassna leans more musty, nutty, woody, and animalic smell, while aquilaria sinensis-based oud is often softer and on the sweeter side. Different types of Oud smell differently than the others some are sweater and some are more towards the musky side.
Why is Oud so Expensive?
In natural forests, approximately 10% of the wild aquilaria trees produce agarwood. Then it can take at least 25 years for the tree to naturally produce the harvestable oud. Additionally, the amount of oud an infected tree can produce can vary greatly; Just because a tree is big doesn't mean that it can contain large amounts of agarwood. According to these factors the fragrance note's global popularity and natural oud sourcing has become tough to keep up with the demand in the market.
Determining that an aquilaria tree contains oud is not an exact science. Even if the tree looks sick from the outside (yellowish leaves, dry bark and bare branches) it may contain little no agarwood. This means that a lot of trees have been cut down in the pursuit of the precious ingredient.
The aquilaria tree is now protected under the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), while the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed all 20 aquilaria agarwood species for the organization’s the Red List, which provides information about the status of the world’s natural resources.
