In our gulf region, just mentioning "Filipino Oud" is enough to trigger all sort of emotions. Emotions of infatuation, craving, love, but also of regret, hardships, and sometimes even laughter!
In the early days (2016 -2017), only a handful knew for a fact that Filipino oud existed. Mentioning the words Filipino + Oud was guaranteed to get you mocked and made fun of by many! Many who were ignorant at that time, and who now swear by the "Leyte" smell and ironically by now, have even managed to hoard some from recent lots.
At that time, Filipino Oud was introduced to the region under many names. "Vintage Malaysian" was mostly used.
"Why?" one might ask...
In the early days, those who landed connections to haul big lots of centuries-old Filipino Oud, thought of keeping it on the down-low to limit the demand/ competition and access of others. In those days, those who knew, were still able to get those dense sinking chunks from virgin forests. Keeping it on the down low meant more power to control the market. Moreover, as the Filipino profiles were fairly new and emerging, the closest to them were the Malay.
How relevant is all of this to Fili Denshō?
One of the very first few who managed to introduce Filipino Oud in 2017 to the GCC region happens to be one of my close mentors. Ever since 2017, he imported hundreds of kilos of oud. Luckily for us, all the cleaning took place here!.... in UAE!
Centennial chunks of Filipino Oud were carved and cleaned. Kilos over kilos of the highest grade pieces. Raw materials that now are worth way more to be even considered for a distillation project.
It took me over a year to convince my source to buy all of this raw material for a distillation project. It took some long time and some serious haggling too. days went by, months, a year, more than a year, until he finally agreed and we both reached a reasonable point to make this feasible.
Raw Materials - check ✔️
Now let's talk about the vision... why is the vision so important in such a project?
It's not every day that I get the chance to work with such raw materials. This might be a one shot that we need to make the best out of...
Should we make it a crystal clear & clean distillation? Unsoaked? Low temp? boost up those ethereal notes with Distiller-X's condenser setup or Distiller-Y's hybrid pots? How about making it ultra ultra clean? We can use some tricks and make it "kinamic" even!
Well......That might have been nice.......really nice......
but those who know Abu Tominaga,....... know better!
I personally enjoy complex notes. What came to be known as "Full-Spectrum" profiles. Nuances that have a backbone of resin/incense and woody notes. Those oils mostly happen to be high grade vintage oils which were distilled in the 80s and early 90s.
With the raw materials in hand, our vision was to fully capture the wood's potential and get the full kick of the wood/resin/age that this wood had to offer. To seize this opportunity to make an oil that is reminiscent of the old OGs at this day and age. So, with raw materials comparable to the ones in the 80s and 90s, what do you do? you distill them as they were traditionally distilled in the 80s and 90s! and this is what we did.
Minimum Soak: Get a deeper richer smell. disintegrate those fibers to get their heart out, however, we didn't want any animalic notes or rot. Soaked for around 7 days, we wanted to get the deep base notes and not only a the fragrant tops. To do justice to this kind of raw materials, we opted for a week's soak and we're happy we did.
Woodfire: let those natural heat acrobatics play and push out all those fragrant molecules in a harmonized divine choreography. We looked at legendary old oils from our GCC region and did the needed analysis. Most -if not all- were distilled on woodfire. When you have a great quality of raw materials like the old timers did, and you're craving a top oil from the old times,...... well, you do like the old timers!
Steel Pot: Capture the wood, no need to sugarize and sweeten up any notes. give me the raw wood, give me resin, give me smoke! Leyte profile is already sweet, so we opted for more woodiness.
As for the notes, it opens with smokey dark hues that later on open up to the sweet woody Leyte profile. A true blast from the past. People who experienced high grade old distillations will immediately connect the dots. Sweet licorice dipped in incense and woody goodness. It shares some notes with old Malaysian oils, specifically "Kelantan". No prickly citrussy sharp notes here! But rather a homogenous old blast with a dense backbone. Personally, this oil hits deep.....deep and yet not harsh or hard. It satisfies this hidden subconscious craving in the brain and it leaves one in awe! The energy of this oil is Meditative yet Regal. It's the old master with all of his skills sitting in Saiza doing a deep Mokusō meditation. It's meditative yet collected and heavy in the core.
Choosing the name Denshō 伝承 wasn't made on a whim.
I consulted my Japanese Kenjutsu Sensei and explained how this oil represents something precious of a bygone era. I suggested a number of names, and he chose Denshō as the one. He explained; "a rough translation of Denshō into english would be along the lines of: Tradition....Legacy.....something of great importance/value that is handed down from a generation to the next".... and I couldn't be happier with the name!