Santal Sultan 15ml By Ensar Oud
Recent EO Parfums have had a heavy focus on oud. Oud’s interaction with musk, ambergris, tobacco, precious florals, you name it.
This time, we wanted to showcase oud’s sidekick like you’ve never smelled it before. A sandalwood perfume that goes wacko overboard on every front…
If you’ve smelled Santal Royale next to the sandalwood oils produced en masse today, you know that when it comes to quality and contrast, the difference can be stark. Or those vintage creamy Mysores that make today’s fresh ones smell almost empty.
While we’ve had the enormous blessing of being able to acquire the finest oud, vintage musk, and ambergris from Sultan Qaboos’ royal collection, we were really dealt a Full House with the chance to acquire these:
One distinctly sweeter than the other, one uniquely herbaceous with a bitter-spicy veneer, and the third with santalum’s signature creaminess on full display, they all shared the same fate.
The thirty-year-old Timor joining the Sultan’s line-up may well be the youngest of the crew. With such a varied palette of sandalwood chords, I toyed with the idea of creating a simple soliflore to showcase the raw aroma—and it would have been perfume-ey enough to be offered as a spray perfume.
Of course, that would limit the number of bottles to only a fortunate few, and you’d forgo the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to use such precious oils in crafting your debut—and likely signature—sandalwood perfume.
You wouldn’t invest a million dollars into getting Sultan Qaboos’ own stash of the most prized items in his collection smelled like anything else. With Oud Royale, you even got to smell his attar yourself—and know that it’s in a different league.
To acquire such aromatics from another era is a window of opportunity that’s only open for a short while. It’s also a creative window that’s only open this time. To show the respect these delectable rarities deserve and to do them—and the chance to use them—justice. I hope Santal Sultan does so.
At 70% concentration, the Pure Parfum edition is the strongest concentration perfume we’ve made—and I’m sure the highest concentration you’ve ever smelled in anything short of a pure attar. And the entire carrier is tincture made from Mysore granules harvested in the 70s and 80s.
Purer than the purest parfums, you could not make this a more replete fragrance even if I gave you solid sandalwood absolute to add—upping the dose any more would make it un-sprayable!
To complement the distinct profiles of the Sultan’s santalums, you’ll smell chords of citrus and jasmine to augment the sweetness, cedar and pineapple to ride the bitter-spicy notes along with amber patchouli to play on the subtle herbaceous tone, while mimosa and rosemary layer the creamy banquet in a gourmand floral flush I find deeply addictive.
