I have forgotten how many times, i have tried capturing the scent profile of agarwood scent with some visual art or images. If you are an Oud lover, chances are, you will start sniffing your oil, test it on your skin and observe the different, top, middle and end notes.

There is one note which capture my mind very much, it is the "universal oud notes" which appears in almost any pure agarwood/ pure oud oil.

So back to this "universal oud note", if you wear some pure and high quality oud for certain hours, depending on the purity and materials, there will be a mild and  "standard woody notes". This, if we can classify as the "core" scent of agarwood oil. When you burn agarwood, you can also catch this universal oud notes on your burner, just control the temperature and slowly find the common notes which apprear in different agarwood of origin.

Another easy way to find this note, take one dark color t-shirt, apply some oud from time to time, wash the shirt as per normal, around some time later, try "sniffing" the portion where you apply the oud oil, that's the scent of oud which is one of my favorite.

If you manage to understand where i am coming from, or try out my silly method above, this "universal oud note" has a visual art image in abstract form which i manage to find, please see below :

The Standard Scent of Oud Oil in Visual Art Form

The photos below, are in my personal view, represent the standard woody scent of an Oud woodl/Oud oil, especially after the top notes has disappeared. Eeryone has their own visual match, so feel free to do it in your spare time :)

"Core Woody" notes of All Agarwood Oud Wood/ Oud Oil




How about i classify some oud notes from different region based of these visual art images?

Sabah Agarwood
Compare to West Malaysia Oud oil, the Sabah offers beautiful scent which i find it to be uplifting and bright.




Kalimantan Minty Agarwood
The Kalimantan family of oud/oud oil has many varieties so i am refering to the "minty kalimantan type" which produces some cooling notes but not quite up to the very light and refine Vietnam crassna and China Sinensis. There are still some slightly "heavy notes" in minty Kalimantan, but for the price, it is value for money.




China/Hong kong Sinensis Agarwood
There are many scent of agarwood trees from china, based on different parts of the tree, resination method, for oil, different extraction method such as CO2, old school distillation and etc. But most of the notes are on the cooling side, with incense notes hiding underneath. To my nose, the scent spectrum are cleaner, low profile and in deep in incense notes.



Cambodia Agarwood
Next, we will move to the next Visual Oud profile. There are some cambodia agarwood which provide a red visual image to my sense. It has this brown or red sugary scent, even from fresh wood if you happen to be able to sniff it.




Papua Agarwood
Coming up next is the popular Papua Agarwood, full of green notes and comes with sweet scent different from the offering of Sinensis from China. Try out some Papua agarwood and see if my visual image matches the one in you.


It's very hard to classify agarwood into just one visual image, because everyone's nose is different :) What i have posted above is just for the fun out of it on my agarwood sharing portal. If you have some visual oud images as well, you are welcome to send to my email info@agarwood.com.sg. Will do another post if i have more time :)

As of 25 May 2020, i have created the term "Visual Oud" and hope many will follow and come up with his/her visual image for beautiful scent of agarwood.