Sultani 1982

pure oud oil

The most famous of oud oils are no doubt those commissioned for HM Sultan Qaboos, with so much of perfume history tied to his illustrious reign, the emergence of Sultani oud oils truly redefined the understanding of vintage oud across the world.

The most note worthy of them all, Sultani 1982 - known by many different names now - was one of the earliest oils to reach the artisanal community in the 2000s, long after it sold out it began to fetch sums several times its original value.

Despite the modern wonders of distillation practiced and taught throughout the world, nothing can eclipse the wood sourced for a Sultan in the 1980s, a time when dense sinking agarwood was nothing but abundant in the quantities needed for oil.

When one sees the Sultani (SQ) Iriani and Merauke wood traded from that era - sold in auctions and privately - and we're talking solid thick pieces the size of one's arm, oozing with resin and heavenly smelling at room temperature - you can just about to begin to imagine what an oil cooked from such wood would smell like.

No doubt every collector of oud imagines taking their highest grade woods, the sinking underwater ones, the deeply resinated ones and the kinamic/chinese grade ones and distill them into immaculate oils - provided we all had a blank check. 

A shared dream that all of us in this special tradition have is to have a lifetime supply of the few pieces of the dark deeply resinated sinking woods that we own, or time travelling to a distant past where this wood was all too abundant.

For the more ..... collector, the imagination runs endless fantasising over what oils we could possibly craft from such jaw dropping wood.

Today, however, with high grade sinking stocks almost entirely gone - save for the odd small batches reserved for incense wood - these dreams will remain just dreams.

Yet for the Sultan this was everyday reality, ultra high grade sinking stocks from every region at the drop of a hat, with the custom distillation apparatus set up to distill these magnificent woods into some of the most legendary oils known.

Sultani 1982 needs no more introduction, described as the king of oud by many prominent collectors, it is truly the pinnacle of oud.

You could not recreate Sultani 1982 today even if one was given a blank cheque and a lifetime to collect the material necessary, it simply cannot be created again.