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Every oud lover from the good old days bemoans the oils from that bygone era and wishes if he/she could get anything on par with those qualities nowadays.
Was it the way the oils were distilled? or was it the elders who had the secret technicalities of distillation?
Neither I'd say.......It was simply the raw materials.
Many of the qualities of oud-woods being sold nowadays for fumigation purposes, would "barely" make it to the distillation pot in the old days. Why? The demand was way less before the "China Craze" and before Oud gained such a popularity.
As the demand was less, there was no "organic/plantation" oud. The wild forests were still there. This was before most wild forests in Cambodia/Vietnam/Laos were eradicated as oud got highly in demand.
Time goes by and history repeats itself again. Oud is found in a new country and the cycle repeats itself again! However, only the ones with the right connections and cash will get the crème de la crème of what that country has got to offer. The earliest, the better!
In the case of Srilanka "Ceylon", the oud craze started around 2016. The demand kept increasing until 2018-2019, that's when it started to boom. Mind you, at that time there were very very few distillers in Srilanka who could distill oud oils. As the demand boomed, more distillers traveled to Srilanka to distill, and now we have tens of distillers there. Most are not even native to the country!
How is this relevant to our oil one might ask?
At the beginning of the oud craze in Srilanka, and as very few distillers existed there, the demand for high quality dust was low. It wasn't cheap by any means, but at least you could commission a distillation and find the needed high grade shavings and small chunks that didn't make it to the oud-wood market.
As more people started distilling, the quality of the raw materials in general declined. Untapped forests = Old sinking grade chips and logs. As time goes by, the amount of money that got you sinking grade big chunks, will get you sinking grade chips, and then highly resinated chips, and so on. The quality keeps dropping at the price point due to the availability and the demand!
This means that what you could distill in 2018/2019 will cost you 5 times that amount nowadays, and that's if you could manage to find anyone with the needed raw materials.
Silani OG was distilled in 2019. Any experienced veteran will be able to tell the grade of raw materials of this oil just by smelling it. The raw materials were chosen meticulously. We were able at that time to include actual sinking grade chips in the woods recipe. We still have some of those chips to date!
Silani OG opens with a terpenic blast of green/blue notes that are reminiscent of walking down in Amsterdam next to those "cafes". Smelling those hemp green fume notes in the air. it has the greenness without the smokiness. Heat a high grade Adam's peak oud chip on a heater, and multiply the smell and intensity by 10! This is the woody bluish green backbone that you have in Silani OG. Pair all of this with a sweetness that gets more prominent on the dry down. The kind of sweetness that you find in Borneo Kin and the highest grades of Malinau/Tarakan oils.
The dust was soaked for around 6 days, however, it was a "clean soak" to get all the woodiness and resin out of the wood. This oil is more of an experience. Something that will get your nose glued to your wrist. Every inhale evokes a multi-dimensional trip in your psyche that will leave you in total bliss.