Ruh Khus 2020
From £14.00
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: 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.
Reviews (15)
Related products
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.
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.
Lesley –
Really like this. Smooth and more subtle than some vetiver but has its own prescense and gentleness.
Manohar –
Absolutely authentic,very pleased indeed.Love it
Oliver –
An absolutely glorious vetiver
Elise –
This is the scent I have been looking for all my life, this is basically IT! I have a collection of over 100 essential oils and I have been blending for over 25 years in the hope of finding the one scent that can define me, and here we have it… Muhammad is an absolute top star man, this is my second purchase from him and it certainly won’t be my last. The packaging is adorable and I really appreciated the complimentary sample. Buy with confidence, fellow Etsy-ers.
Sulaiman (verified owner) –
Really good khus, hits all the notes I’d want any vetiver to and is extremely balanced starting off with fresh grass and sweet green notes just as Muhammad explained, and dries down to bring in darker earthy scents and some light smoke. Would definitely recommend.
Jonathan E. (verified owner) –
My first Indian Khus (vetiver) so not much basis for comparison–smells very very grassy-green, less earthy than I had imagined, and slightly watery. I was hoping for something a little richer and deeper, but that may not be what Khus is about.
Mick –
Great oil and amazing packaging from AshworthOud. Muhammad was great to communicate with – thanks for the extra samples!
Anonymous (verified owner) –
Samuel Egglenton –
kalmek17 –
Responsive seller and excellent quality product.
Nasra nasra –
I really love the ruh kuhs oil Muhammed soo kind to add extra sample will buy again next time with same shop thumbs up 👍✨🎇
Simone –
Quality/price ratio over the top. Really recommented
Susan D –
It’s a beautiful vetiver. It has been helping me when I find it hard to sleepÉ
Nasra nasra –
MASHALLAH the best ruh khus oil my favorite ❤ 😍 thank u soo much for the gift Muhammad May Allah pak always keep u bless Ameen 🙌
Anonymous (verified owner) –