Firdaus

In the last few years, we've fixated on collecting the greatest oils: those with unique stories, connections to Royalty, those crafted from the most excellent and rarest of woods and, crucially, oils from regions no longer around today.

By this point everyone in fragrance will be familiar with SQ, that is oud connected to the former Sultan of Oman. What made its greatest oils worlds apart from other oud (none of these were sold publicly) was that these were the result of a Royal blank cheque used to purchase the greatest oud wood, the sort traded for over $100,000 today, and a combination of the finest artisans to distil these grail items of wood, together bringing us some of the finest oud oil known to man.

Our dream has always been similar: the greatest material, the sort that was abundant in the 20th century, combined with modern distillation technique and artisanal vision.

What makes ours more aspirational than every other is that we're doing it in the modern day, with astronomical costs for woods today and scarcity beyond imagination. The rational collector would cherish these woods for the future, or use and sell them purely for burning and heating as incense. However, we put all rationality to one side for this project, unleashing our passion to overcome any obstacles in our path in building our greatest oil yet.

This project is the realisation of our dream: to juice the finest agarwood oil from the greatest of woods, both new and old, to go back in time using the woods of the 80s and 90s to create pure magical oud oil, just like the Sultan's.

For our modern day Sultani like oil, we collected the finest grail like wood of the modern day: Filipino and Silani. With our material collected (including some 50kg of Filipino Dugga Sinking alone), and a distiller and location handpicked to cook this oil, there was one parameter left, the part that would raise this already elite distillation a notch higher: Zam Zam water.

For those unfamiliar, Zam Zam is the precious holy water revered in Islam, originating from the Zam Zam well in the Holy City of Mecca, and shipped all the way to the distillery afar. An arduous task in itself, you could probably count on one hand the number of oils claimed to be distilled with Zam Zam, but how many of those could even claim to be crafted with material like this?

Over the years we've been trading some of the finest woods possible from every region, working with veterans across the GCC, Taiwan, China, Japan and on the ground in the producing regions, yet one region has always stood out for demand and its abundant dense wood till very recently: Leyte.

Working with the pioneers who brought Leyte to the level of popularity it is today has given us unparalleled proximity to the best of Leyte. With their own Leyte endeavours complete, for the Leyte today is nothing like the material they brought to surface, we were able to persuade them to join our irrational experiment: juicing the penultimate oil using the uber precious material from their greatest batches of Filipino from 2018 to 2019.

But the pursuit for wood didn't stop there. The artisanal world of oud here in the West and online is at times a bubble, convincing itself that it has the greatest woods and oils possible. Whilst the Filipino craze made its way all across the globe, with prices reaching eyewatering sums of $110,000 and more, followed by the SQ oil craze, it might pain some to know that the greatest gems never reached the West or even the general public.

The Arabs know oud like the back of their hand, causing the greatest SQ woods to seldom change hands today, their owners preferring to cherish the ultra rare gems they have, for they are truly irreplaceable. Those that did sold in exclusive transactions to millionaires and billionaires, with millions of dollars changing hands for the woods in any one evening.

As for the oils? They're not as prized as woods in the culture, however the greatest oils were retained by their original owners and seldom traded. If they were, it was in huge original gold plated bottles; you can only begin to imagine the cost.

Sultani woods were our next step. Whilst thought to be impossible, with such a profound project we had their owners running to us eager to partake in this ultimate oud oil project, bringing forward all sorts of elite gems: Hindi, Cambodi, Malay, Vietnam. Today, these woods are several hundred thousands of dollars per kilogram, on the rare occasion they are traded. This is the first modern day attempt we know of to distil Sultani woods from the 20th century.

After pouring every bit of effort, resources and our most beloved woods into this oil, and after ageing it for 3 years, for our team behind it there's one word that comes to mind when naming this gem: heaven.

Hence its name of Firdaus, meaning paradise or garden in Arabic, revered in Islam as the highest tier of heaven in the afterlife that one could hope to obtain, the ultimate reward.

Storing your oud oil correctly is the final step in the journey of an ultra high grade oil.

We make that easy with our selection of laboratory vials from J.G. Finneran and DWK Wheaton (Next Gen V-Vials), manufactured in the USA and perfect for long term storage and aging.

Alternatively, for the daily users preferring the traditional quarter tola bottles, our glass bottles use glass dipsticks, making application easy and keeping your oil safe from any plastic contamination.