Grand Emperor Tarakan

Grand Emperor Tarakan from Jinkoh Store. Highly complex, with a unique profile. I discovered this oil by accident. A friend insisted on showing this oil to me after he was taken aback by it. I was past my desire to search for new oud oils but knowing his tastes and high standards with oud, I had to see what was all about. Only took a sniff from the vial and the oil remained deeply embedded in my scent memory. When the planets aligned and a bottle popped up on the secondary market I picked it up. Quite insane, picking up something like this off a single whiff, but that's what high-quality agarwood will do to you, so stay away folks. After receiving it, I realized two things: first, I was right to get it, and second, how incredibly complex and unique an oil it is. I must admit, that I am not familiar with Tarakan oils or wood. From what I've seen around the oud community, it seems like they are quite hard to come by. So, I can't compare it to anything. It is its own thing. If anything, it does showcase some Borneo-like facets. Such as vanilla, some nutty notes, and prominent blueberry notes in the heart. The opening is delightfully weird. A watery, ozonic, green cucumber smell paired with an almost candy-like sweetness. I picture, cucumber ice cream. What a feast right? At times, coupled with that, there is a sawdusty vanillic quality, but not always present. This introductory phase slowly fades away and it's replaced by a combination of notes like vanilla, faint peanuts, faint tuberose, and prominent blueberries. This is the mid-phase, where the blueberry note is quite strong. The watery-green chord remains but hums in the background. The woodiness starts to reveal itself slowly. A this stage, it feels like a textured, hardwood. The wood note has this faint nutty quality to it and smooths out as time goes by to an almost suede-leather-like texture, only to finally develop into a smooth brown leather with a woody smell. The other notes come and go. In the dry-down, the blueberries leave only a faint candy-like violet hue, the tuberose barely whispers, the peanut note becomes more prominent with the wood, and the green chord feels rather bitter now and faintly adjoins to the overall scent profile. It settles down as a brown suede-leather, nutty wood, with slight strokes of violet and green, and murmurs of sweetness. It seems to evolve both vertically and horizontally, sometimes going in loops. The color spectrum is all over the place with shades of brown, yellow, green, violet, blue, and white. A unique oil that still needs to be explored. IG:@memory.of.scents