Our collection of Sultani oils that are acquired directly from the vault of late Sultan Qaboos, through our Omani connections. Needless to say that over the years we have supplied through Elixir Attar a lot of these Sultani oils after rigorous scrutiny and our customers were always very satisfied with what they got. We only offered and continue to offer the best of what we source.
Sultani oils rarely come from one source in a country, as opposed to the modern distillations that may come from a certain forest having a more linear scent profile that is region specific like Assamese or Nagalandese, Borneo or Pinoy etc. Most Sultani oils are a result of a fusion of very high grade incense grade woods cooked traditionally over fire.
Because we are speaking scientifically, we can tell that there is no way to tell exactly the ratios of each region-specific woods used, there are however two tools available for agarwood experienced perfumers to tell roughly the ratios as well as the quality of woods based on the scent generated when test-smelling and from our study of this oil, we can say it has equal ratios since the scent does not lean toward one region or the other, the quality of the wood is also evident from the scent, which is another tool that we enable us to forensically tell based on the scent generated the grade of woods, certain markers hit the scent generated from incense grade and perhaps sinking grade, but because we are prudent we say that they have incense grade which is a very resin-rich grade of wood that is not just wild, but old wild.
During the 1980s and earlier, most oud cooking was done traditionally except for some sporadic events within science labs and when some Taiwanese agarwood traders who had had more experiences with distillation in general leaned more toward region specific and lower temperature as well as shorter soak time before distillation, with mostly experimental cooks yielding a few milliliters at a time.
We can tell the soak time based on the amount of butyric molecules (cheesiness) there is. Longer soak time definitely increased the yield of the oil but also contributed to extracting more of the “white wood” or boya smell in the oil, it is present mildly in this oil, hence our deduction for the soaking method, lower temperature was used because of the total absence of any “burn” notes that are a result of the partial burning of the oil when overheated during distillation.
These oils, if distilled today from the same grade of woods maybe a bit distilled in a more advanced way, but make no mistake, eitherway it would be multiple times more expensive. Added to that the wonderful effect of ageing, which anyone with the finer taste in things knows is irreplaceable no matter what you do to a modern oil. Ageing is not simple about finding a right chemical formula, it is also about how are brains are wired to smell the interactions as they age altogether- the old or ancient effect, we cannot do it to essential oils, and surely cannot do it to agarwood oils.
Who are these oils recommended for?
Experienced agarwood users who wish to try a complete oil from past times bygone. Ouds that were very rich and were made with woods that are very difficult to find now, let alone distill.
