It’s a long step-by-step process that’s not only time-sensitive but also labor-intensive. Let’s have a look at how to archive Oud Oil 

The infection

Since the resin is only released after an infection of the mold, only one out of ten trees may have an infected heartwood. In fact, a total of two percent of these wild agar trees produce oud.

Expert artisans seek out these rare infected trees due to the unique superior aroma of the oud. 

The mold infection naturally takes a long time to produce oud.

Sometimes wounds are created artificially to provoke an infection. This artificial process may help yield harvesting agarwood faster, but the oud produced this way lacks the concentration of that made from natural infection just like cultured versus natural pearls.

Sorting resinous agarwood chips

After harvesting, agarwood is cut down into small chips. Skilled professionals remove unusable woods and sort out the resinous agarwood chips for making incense or oud oil.

Processing

Then the agarwood chips are soaked into water for a while until they become soft and ready for distillation. There are more than 150 grades within agarwood substances and each of them has a distinct smell.

The artisans separate different grades of agarwood that can produce different essences of pure oud. This is an extraordinary art. These artisans are extremely skilled to find out and differentiate many different grades of agarwood.

Distillation process

The process of distillation from oud wood to oud oil is quite vast. However, here is a brief summary. The resinous wood chips are ground into tiny pieces like powder which are then soaked into water and left for a considerable amount of time to ferment properly. Then the ingredients are transferred to distillation vessels for steaming.

After heating with adequate temperature, the wood particles release oud oil that floats on the top portion of the water as it is lighter. The condensed water along with oud oil is received in a vessel and then pure oud oil is dissociated from water and kept in a separate container.

Why oud perfumes are so expensive

Infection is the first and foremost condition for releasing the aromatic resin for an Agar tree. Without infection, agar trees don’t bear any resinous substance and thus, can’t produce even a small piece of agarwood. Because of this brutal fact, only a total of two percent of wild Agar trees can actually produce oud or oudh.

Only a mature fungal infection can produce high-quality agarwood and trees that are more than 50 years old have the desirable ability to produce superior quality agarwood. Even though the infection occurs in a tree as early as 5 to 6 years of age, it takes around 10 years in total to produce good quality agarwood. Besides, many countries consider these old wild trees as threatened species.

Finally, Although the scents of oud are described as woody, deep, heavy, and many other ways, pure oud has the astonishing property to release many different distinct smells that neither have any comparison nor people can express in their words. 

The rarity, uniqueness, and long duration are the major contributing factors to its value and status. In addition, perfumes made from oud essential oils are becoming increasingly popular day by day across modern Western societies. All these factors contribute to its position as one of the costliest fragrant commodities in the global market.  

Final Words

Oud is by far one of the most expensive natural perfumes in the world. To understand the rationality of its value, it’s worth knowing how oud perfumes are made and how it smells. If you ever experience its mesmerizing deep, heavy, woody, warm, animalic, and balsamic notes that don’t have any analog in the world, you will definitely agree with its value.