Oud perfumes worth knowing

Eau de Parfum is the standard in niche oud — typically 15 to 20 percent fragrance oil in alcohol. Extrait de Parfum sits higher, at 20 to 40 percent. The number is on the bottle. Six of the seven houses above sell Eau de Parfum. One sells Extrait.

More oil means more density, not necessarily more longevity — but it does change how the fragrance sits. An Extrait tends to stay closer to the skin and last longer, where an EDP projects further for a shorter time.

Synthetic oud is an accord — aroma molecules arranged to read as agarwood. It is stable, repeatable, affordable, and does not vary between batches. Those are real advantages. Six of the seven houses above use it.

Real agarwood is what an Aquilaria tree produces when it is wounded — resin laid down as defence, over decades. Roughly one tree in a hundred does this in the wild. The difference shows in hours three to six: an accord stays where it started, real agarwood shifts and keeps going.

After a fragrance is composed, the alcohol reacts with organic acids to form esters — molecules that smell rounder and softer than what they came from. Four weeks is the industry minimum. Most large houses stopped resting longer than that in the 1980s, because resting stock is capital standing still.

This is the one axis that almost no house talks about — which is why it is worth checking. The information is rarely on the bottle.