VIET HERITAGE ANTS' NEST 2021 • 100% Wild Ants' Nest Oud • Dong Nai, Vietnam
This product is 100% wild artisanal Oud oil (agarwood essential oil), a single distillation from authentic wild-harvested natural agarwood.
Highlights: Old-school Vietnamese profile. Intense antique hardwood, Chinese apothecary, old books, pipe tobacco.
Material: 100% wild natural Aquilaria crassna
Production: Micro-batch limited edition 2021 distillation by a trusted artisan partner-distiller, from only a few fully mature and heavily ant-colonized Aquilaria crassna trees growing together in the wild forests of Dong Nai province, Vietnam. Stainless steel still with glass collector.
Scent description: Complex, deep, and distinguished, Viet Heritage Ants' Nest 2021 represents a very particular style of traditional Vietnamese Oud oil, and has had time to mature and come fully into itself. Far more than a collection of easily discerned and more common Oudy notes, this Oud strikes a mood and an ambiance. It evokes an old study or beautifully appointed private library: antique hardwood furniture, old books and parchments, leather chairs and sheepskin, dark rum and very old whiskey, black and amber pipe tobacco, a wall of Chinese apothecary, a naturalist's collection of taxidermy crowding every shelf: antlers and glass eyes catching the low light, and a few old oil paintings, their varnish gone dark with age. There are some early interjections of intense bitter green, like galbanum, or freshly trimmed flowerless rosebush. There is a powerful sweetness here too, but it's the tempered, more covert, more mature sweetness of almost-rotten black cherry, schisandra berry and tamarind, carob and astringent black manuka honey, Chinese angelica root and red ginseng. There is only a thread of refined smoke here: the pipe is present, but unlit, alongside jars of fine dark tobacco. (Almost a museum unto itself; perhaps no one would dare smoke inside this room.) Well into the dry-down, some more typical Oud notes do emerge: dates, raisin and dried apricot, orange marmalade, cassia... but without giving way to the preponderant antique complexity of this oil. Even as this oil sweetens and smooths, somehow vintage books, taxidermy, sheepskin, and antique hardwood continue to abide.
Notes of controversy: Refined and desirable "barny" aspects. Intense and complex, but not fermented. A thread of smoke, but nothing burned or overheated.
About all Oud from Aroma Sublime
• How we describe Oud: our scent notes begin about 60 seconds after application to skin, not from the bottle. Why: Hype, Poetry, or Precision?
• Wild means wild: no human intervention before harvest. Anything cultivated or semi-wild is labelled as such. Sustainability in Sourcing Wild Agarwood
• One tree where possible: we prefer single-tree distillations, otherwise a few mature trees of known provenance. Standards and Nomenclature
• Oud or agarwood: on this site, Oud means the oil and agarwood means the raw wood.
New to Oud? Start with The Ritual of Oud for Beginners, or browse the Learning Center.
VIET HERITAGE ANTS' NEST 2021 • 100% Wild Ants' Nest Oud • Dong Nai, Vietnam
This product is 100% wild artisanal Oud oil (agarwood essential oil), a single distillation from authentic wild-harvested natural agarwood.
Highlights: Old-school Vietnamese profile. Intense antique hardwood, Chinese apothecary, old books, pipe tobacco.
Material: 100% wild natural Aquilaria crassna
Production: Micro-batch limited edition 2021 distillation by a trusted artisan partner-distiller, from only a few fully mature and heavily ant-colonized Aquilaria crassna trees growing together in the wild forests of Dong Nai province, Vietnam. Stainless steel still with glass collector.
Scent description: Complex, deep, and distinguished, Viet Heritage Ants' Nest 2021 represents a very particular style of traditional Vietnamese Oud oil, and has had time to mature and come fully into itself. Far more than a collection of easily discerned and more common Oudy notes, this Oud strikes a mood and an ambiance. It evokes an old study or beautifully appointed private library: antique hardwood furniture, old books and parchments, leather chairs and sheepskin, dark rum and very old whiskey, black and amber pipe tobacco, a wall of Chinese apothecary, a naturalist's collection of taxidermy crowding every shelf: antlers and glass eyes catching the low light, and a few old oil paintings, their varnish gone dark with age. There are some early interjections of intense bitter green, like galbanum, or freshly trimmed flowerless rosebush. There is a powerful sweetness here too, but it's the tempered, more covert, more mature sweetness of almost-rotten black cherry, schisandra berry and tamarind, carob and astringent black manuka honey, Chinese angelica root and red ginseng. There is only a thread of refined smoke here: the pipe is present, but unlit, alongside jars of fine dark tobacco. (Almost a museum unto itself; perhaps no one would dare smoke inside this room.) Well into the dry-down, some more typical Oud notes do emerge: dates, raisin and dried apricot, orange marmalade, cassia... but without giving way to the preponderant antique complexity of this oil. Even as this oil sweetens and smooths, somehow vintage books, taxidermy, sheepskin, and antique hardwood continue to abide.
Notes of controversy: Refined and desirable "barny" aspects. Intense and complex, but not fermented. A thread of smoke, but nothing burned or overheated.
About all Oud from Aroma Sublime
• How we describe Oud: our scent notes begin about 60 seconds after application to skin, not from the bottle. Why: Hype, Poetry, or Precision?
• Wild means wild: no human intervention before harvest. Anything cultivated or semi-wild is labelled as such. Sustainability in Sourcing Wild Agarwood
• One tree where possible: we prefer single-tree distillations, otherwise a few mature trees of known provenance. Standards and Nomenclature
• Oud or agarwood: on this site, Oud means the oil and agarwood means the raw wood.
New to Oud? Start with The Ritual of Oud for Beginners, or browse the Learning Center.
