Botanicals
Botanicals
Pure high grade aromatic extracts of some of the world's most exquisite and rare botanicals
Bourbon Vetiver
This is an exceptionally beautiful Bourbon Vetiver essential oil from Reunion Islands that is rich and complex and yet ultra suave and smooth, making it gorgeous worn as an attar or as an ingredient in the natural perfumer's arsenal.
Testing on my skin, the aroma immediately oozes with the soft warmth of baked earth, clay, roots and dry soil with a touch of woods, petrichor and campfire smoke. I also detect a beautiful undercurrent of warm sweetness throughout, calling to mind labdanum, tolu balsam, sandalwood, and a variety of other resins and woods that it would pair well with.
As a heavy base note, it displays typical soft projection with incredible tenacity, lasting for many days on a paper strip. It also makes for a great study in comparison with Ruh Khus, the wild North Indian variety, which is a much more green, grassy and wet soily affair.
Overall, this is a truly beautiful vetiver oil and one that I'd definitely recommend for vetiver connoisseurs and natural perfume enthusiasts alike.
Java Vetiver
Comparable in profile to the Madagascan variety, yet sweeter and lighter, this low-temp Javan distillation opens with a gorgeously sweet earthiness that's simply a joy to behold.
While not quite out-and-out floral or vanillic, it carries wonderful hints of those facets, intertwined together with earthy, woody and lightly smoky notes that all combine to create an incredibly beautiful and balanced opening.
As the scent progresses, it gradually becomes more tobacco-like, with dry-earthy, smoky, and astringent nuances - akin to red tea - as the sweetness recedes and its darker facets come to the fore - lasting for many hours with typical tenacity.
Overall, this is an incredibly complex oil that can be worn alone or used in blends, and a great example of just how beautiful vetiver can be.
Patchouli, India
Botanical Name: Pogostemon cablin
Origin: India, 2022
Process: Iron-Distilled Essential Oil, Dark
Note: Base
Perfumery: Excellent fixative
This is a gorgeous iron-distilled Indian patchouli oil bursting with its characteristically sweet, warm, rich, herbaceous, spicy, minty, woody, and earthy profile that makes it so valuable in natural perfumery and perfumery at large.
Comparing this Indian distillation to the more common Indonesian one, I personally prefer the Indian variety due to its deeper and richer profile that feels more earthy, chocolaty, and almost caramel-like in its sweetness, compared with its more herbaceous, minty and fruity Indonesian counterpart that feels lighter and more top-note heavy.
An incredibly versatile oil due to its outstandingly beautiful and complex profile, patchouli is a great fixative that can find use in almost all accords, from earthy, green and forest-type blends to spicy orientals, florals, and woods. It also improves with ageing if stored correctly, and should become smoother, rounder and fuller in profile with time.
Ruh Khus 2020
This is a beautiful example of India's famed Ruh Khus, the essential oil distilled from the roots of wild vetiver plants (Vetiveria zizanioides) in northern India.
Distilled in 2020, it now has a beautifully soft and rounded profile with almost no harsh notes, displaying a soft and yet ultra-dense character instead (much like oud and sandalwood, vetiver improves with age, the scent becoming deeper and more rounded).
Testing on my skin, it opens up with a quiet, complex and yet very smooth leathery and rooty profile - a touch more than others I've encountered - before slowly revealing its classic Ruh Khus profile: an incredibly rich bouquet of green grass along with leafy, earthy, rooty, leathery and woody notes that lasts for many hours.
Gorgeous worn neat as a standalone attar, its excellent tenacity and fixative properties also make it an exceptional base note and ingredient in natural perfumery, working well in fougères, chypres and mossy, woody and green accords amongst others.
Note:
• As with all natural materials, the scent, colour, and profile can vary slightly from batch to batch. Please note reviews include those from previous batches
Collection:Â Kannauj Chronicles
In the Kannauj Chronicles, I explore and share with you the wonderful natural oils and attars of India’s historic perfume capital, Kannauj. The oils in this collection are pure botanical extracts and attars distilled in sandalwood oil by some of Kannauj's most renowned and trusted artisans, who share our passion for distilling the highest quality of aromatics and attars.
These attars are distilled using the ancient ‘deg and bhapka’ apparatus; a traditional distilling method largely unchanged for 400 years. I hope you enjoy these breathtaking scents of nature from a bygone era, an era fast being forgotten in today's race towards modernity and industrialisation at all costs.
Santal Ceylon Red
Distilled from wild santal roots in 2021, Santal Ceylon Red is a gorgeous Sri Lankan sandalwood oil oozing with notes of gourmand red woodiness throughout.
Unlike many other Sri Lankan santals which open with sharp piney-camphoric top notes - which I also adore - this oil is all about deeply rich base woods from the get-go.
Opening with freshly sawn woods alongside perhaps a slightly lactonic touch, it soon begins to transform into a sweet honeyed profile that reminds me of powdered almonds and tonka bean’s coumarinic marzipan-like goodness.
This golden-hued coumarin-like sweetness balances out a base of freshly sawn, almost dark red woods throughout the oil's journey, with some creaminess, and perhaps even a slightly musky animalic warmth deep down in its layers adding to its beautiful complexity and depth.
Overall, with its rich woody character and gorgeous sweetness, this makes for an exceptional sandalwood oil to wear neat. I also think it would work fantastically in blends and macerations, especially where musk or civet is used or where a strong woody character is desired.
Santal Ceylon Silk
Just like Ceylon Red, this is a wild Sri Lankan santal that has aged beautifully since it was distilled in 2021. Very much unlike CR, however, Ceylon Silk replaces those deep gourmand woody hues with a gorgeously airy and smooth butteriness throughout its olfactory journey.
Testing on the skin, its initial sharp green piney top notes after distillation have almost completely disappeared, with the oil now a lot more smooth and rounded from start to finish.
It opens up with a beautifully rich butteriness that's delicate and airy, and yet so very buttery at the same time. To me, it's quite reminiscent of Mysore's famed sandalwoods, minus the lime opening that typify oils from that region.
As the scent progresses, you might also pick up on a hint of powdery nuttiness or earthiness, especially in the later stages. This powdery earthiness is not the soily facet found in vetiver, but a much more light and airy note that reminds me of Mitti attar's delicate nuttiness.
Overall, this is a fantastic sandalwood oil that I'd very highly recommend if you're looking for a light, clean, and yet beautifully rich and buttery sandalwood oil to wear neat. I think it would also work fantastically well in almost any attar or perfume blend, providing an incredibly smooth base without overwhelming the rest of the composition.
Santal Signature 2020
NEW BATCH: Please note that I've renamed this Mysore sandalwood series to Santal Signature - India. The reason is that many Mysore oils today are likely distilled using at least some sandalwood from other regions of India or further afield, due to high demand and scarcity of supply of course. Therefore, I'm simply erring on the side of caution and will only use the Mysore label in future when I can personally oversee the provenance of the wood, selection, grinding and distillation etc.
Aromatically speaking, however, this oil is nothing short of gorgeous. Bearing the hallmarks of India's exquisite santals, it opens on the skin with a deeply sweet and smooth buttery goodness that's simply hard to beat. The sweetness here is especially beautiful, and the woody facets are smooth, rounded, and devoid of any sharp notes, almost as if caressed by the rich buttery nuances flowing around them.
Overall, the profile is deeper, woodier and richer than most, trading the light citrusy nuances for a deeper, almost musky, rich woodiness. Exquisite, whether worn on its own or in blends and macerations, this is Santal Signature 2020. An oil that reminds you why the finest Santalum Albums of al-Hind are the true crème de la crème of santals.
