Oud Luwak II

Oud Luwak Part II, perfume Extrait. This was the biggest surprise for me, as I didn’t expect to like it. I didn’t enjoy the original, so I didn’t foresee things to be different this time around. I was wrong, as I love this version of Oud Luwak. It fills in the gaps, improves on the woods used, adds the perfect amount of sweetness and texture, and the civet is amazing. I’m very specific about coffee accords, and I’m not a fan of Merauke Agarwood, but the way they are used here is perfect. This is not a coffee-dominant fragrance on my skin (although a prominent facet) but rather a woody perfume. Out of all the Oud perfumes Adam has released thus far, this one is the woodiest, with a heavy Merauke profile. There is nothing funky or fermented here. If you ever smelled Merauke Oud oils or wood, it has a distinctive profile - earthy, petrichor-like, slightly green or jungly, clove-like camphoraceous, smoky, peaty, chocolaty, and yes, coffee-like, to name a few nuances. That’s the kind of wood profile you’ll encounter here. But the best part is that Adam used other woods and benzoin to pamper the less “pretty” traits, and coffee to complement its innate qualities. So, instead of the usual earthiness these oils tend to evoke, here you get an “antique wooden chest” type of smell, paired with the aroma of heating agarwood chips as well as a cozy “roasted chestnuts” accord that might be a facet of the vetiver. Picture this: You just brew a hot cup of coffee. You have some milk and honey on hand, and add a bit of both. You set the burner to medium heat and take out an antique-wooden chest full of Merauke aloes. You start adding wood to the burner, and while the smoke wafts, you inhale deeply alongside the fumes coming from the steaming cup of coffee. Then, you rub a tiny bit of civet paste on your pulse points and savor this ritual further. That’s it. The coffee note is present throughout, but tames down as the fragrance develops. As it mingles with the oud aroma, it might give off hints of chicory coffee due to the earthiness of the oud. The latter is the main player in the composition. If you love Merauke oud and wish for a well-made perfume built around it, this is hard to beat. The wooden chest accord is omnipresent alongside the smoking wood chips and hints of toasted chestnuts. The third most prominent note is the civet. And how glorious it is. Not your sharp, punchy, and pissy civet. This is good, aged, natural stuff. It pairs with the benzoin and other notes to showcase a milky, creamy, and animalic quality that brings to mind a similar use of the material in my beloved Cadavre Exquis. However, it doesn’t go as buttery and gourmand as in there. Lastly, there is a beautiful use of cinnamon that complements the sweetness of the benzoin. Just the perfect amount of sweetness, nothing overbearing. Its smokiness is more refined than in Oud Zhen while not feeling as gourmand as Russian Oud, and behaving more woody than both. I like it better than Oud Zhen and close to Russian Oud II. It is a mouth-drooling experience from start to finish: the smooth coffee-oud fumes, the antique wood, and the milky-steamed civet with just the right amount of sweetness. I also want to stress two things that I found with this fragrance: it smells much better on the skin, and it is better enjoyed with sprays on the neck and going out and about than smelling it up close. This is one of those cases where the aura the perfume creates is far more satisfying than a closed-up analysis. Bonus point with this one: go out and sweat. Physical exercise. Thank me later! I’d consider this a significantly improved version over the original, more complex, and with higher-quality materials that show. A very successful resurrection. IG:@memory.of.scents

Wore OL2 the 3rd time, it opens with a very pronounce Hindi Oud, it's clean, chocolatey, with minimal barnyard. The coffee note remains VERY subtle and shy, a bit on the dusty side, like a hint of lightly roasted ground coffee, it's just a shadow and overtone. The heart and core of the scent profile is mainly Ouds and warm woodsy notes, a slightly charred oak, but not particularly smoky, plus a bundle of fresh incense sticks. I also perceived plenty of medicinal bitter notes in the background from a series of Wild Papuan and Burmese Ouds. The Spikenard and Tonka bean are quite pronounce from the get go as well, lending to a thicker warm texture and earthiness to the woody core. For awhile, I kept thinking it had a bit of of Siberian or Mongolian Musk hidden in this composition, surprisingly it is coming from the vintage royal civet as @Tigs7 mentioned and reminded me, it's definitely prominent. It's harder for me to perceive the civet when I keep sniffing it up close, but more apparent when I leave it alone and smell the scent bubble from 1 to 2ft away, the civet is airy, light, velvety, and sparkly, it's effervescent and definitely an exceptional pillar to support the core profile. I didn't pick up any urinal off note like I did in Civet de Nuit. It's so clean and sparkly, probably why i almost mistaken it as deer musk, was expecting something urinal whenever i thought of Civet paste, but it's not the case here. Comparing OL2 to RO2 and AdN, It isn't as thick, dark, syrupy and sticky as AdN, while RO2 is a lot more simplistic and linear, almost to the point of being boring. OL2 smells a lot more complex and interesting than RO2 to me. The woody core turns a bit more dusty and powdery in the mid to far dry down, with medicinal bitter facet persist throughout the wearing. Overall this is a very warm, attractive, and comforting scent profile, I didn't pick up anything objectionable. Projection isn't bombastic by any mean, it perform in a similar fashion as RO2, which is a bit more reserved in the beginning. I'm fully expecting this OL2 to open up with age, like RO2 did after a year or so. Personally, I have never had any performance issue with any ALD releases, this one should be no exception. When all said and done, this is a rock solid release to me, a love at first sniff for sure. I've definitely enjoy and appreciate it more in the subsequent wearings. For me personally, this OL2 ranked higher than both RO2 and AdN combined. I have never smelled the Oud Luwak OG so I can't draw a comparison to it. I do wish the coffee note to be more forward and prominent though, but it's so cozy, balanced, easy to wear, and to love...I could be just as happy with the way it is now. In essence, OL2 smell like an Oud dominant scent profile to me, driven by various wild and vintage ouds, while the Luwak coffee is just playing a very minor role as a supportive side note, not detecting anything synthetic at all. This is still an ideal evening scent for me, especially in Autumn and Winter.

Areej Le Doré has been a house that thrives on the "unpleasant" edge transforming raw, primal scents into olfactory goodness by selecting and producing fine materials. With Oud Luwak II, the composition leans into its namesake: earthiness, coffee and felines. In fact, this isn't the usual oud gourmand. It is a recreation of the Luwak (natural) process or rather, its ecosystem. By pairing vintage Burmese oud (infused with aged civet) with a custom Indonesian coffee fermented in teak barrels, the "feline" element is definitely present. It is animalic, yet handled with a level of refinement that feels like a velvet glove over a predatory claw. In my opinion, the coup de theatre of this composition - missed by many - lies in the use of spikenard (Jatamansi). Its distinct and recognisable valerian-like aroma (bitter, medicinal, and intensely earthy) acts as the bridge between the roasted coffee beans and the animalic ouds' fumes. This synergy enhances the "earthiness" of the oud, creating a vibe that is less "café" and more "fermenting jungle floor." The result is the definitive "pooped coffee" accord, which takes a couple of hours to fully develop: a dark, damp, resinous brew that smells of the earth from which it came and the creature that prepared it. Oud Luwak II is another case of what I've previously termed "blocks of gold" fallacy, which will greatly intrigue the natural ingredient supremacists. The fragrance doesn't need a traditional pyramid because the materials are of such density and quality that they arrive as a singular, monolithic stack of scent. Rather than a sequence of top, heart, and base notes, the fragrance exists and develops in a state of natural "decay." The smoke, the civet, the bitter coffee, and the damp wood hit the palate at once, and slowly recede at different paces over time. To close the essay, let's quickly cover performance. Longevity: substantial. This is a "skin stayer" that lasts 10-12 hours, radiating a warm, musky glow long after the initial fumigation has cleared. Sillage: dense but very polite. It creates the usual Areej "scent bubble" rather than a room-filling cloud, which is fortunate given its profile. Final thought: Oud Luwak II - and Areej's work in general - proves that when a house doesn't not compromise on raw materials, the price tag is justified and should be looked as a comparison anchor.

On first blast you get a challenging, amazing roasted coffee beans with dark chocolate tones, then as it dries you smell the peaty, soft and mellow oud, conjuring images of black soil after the rain or felled trees under soil. High-grade wild oud is always the prevalent note here, all wrapped in a slight natural sweetness and enriched with aged animalics. The fragrance is extremely dry, so dry it makes my nose hurt a bit if I keep smelling my arm, and the oud is so strong that way. The cedar note is bold as well. It's a very dark cedar note. I haven't come across many ouds that are this well blended, stick to your skin properly, and are at the same different and unique. This one does all of that for me while still having this beautiful wearability for those who don't mind animalics. It's a totally unique scent I will pull out on rainy days. I also love the presentation. I would still rate Sultan Pasha's attar oud compositions as slightly superior even to this because I usually like wearing softer oud blends, this one is wearable and beautiful but also a bit of a punch in the face with that civet/oud pairing, ensuring this can never be a daily driver. This is the most challenging fragrance in the collection for me, which greatly surprised me. Good thing I like challenging. Edit; Wearing this again tonight on a balmy September evening in Los Angeles, dry and warm, and I'm realizing how stunning this actually is. There is a vintage powder feel that is blended in so well and is so natural, and contrasts with the dry woods and the coffee. As good as Inverno Russo and Antiquity....I have a really hard time ranking those three incredible works of perfume art.

It opens with a heavy roasted coffee bean scent, together with some civet, which is minimaly fecal. It is also spicy, which gives it a sort of warmth. Think of drinking your roasted black coffee with a spicy flavor. I also get some sort of faint, soft floral. After some time, the spicyness starts to fade, and an earthy and bland tone comes forward. Otherwise, the scent is kinds the same. After a while, the roasted coffee scent is very faint. The only remaining components I mostly get are the oud, civet, and vetiver. Only one drop of this projected heavily throughout the day, however it lasted less than the others on skin. Nonetheless, the performance is still outstanding. I really love this scent, since it gives me a cozy and pleasant feeling. It is like drinking the best black coffee in the world while taking a fika next to a fire. Be careful when using this because of how much it stains. The spot it applied the perfume on is still very dark after many hours. Yet another incredible perfume from the new collection.