Agarwood
Real oud or synthetic — how to tell
Most fragrances sold as oud contain no agarwood at all. That is not a scandal — it is economics. Here is what the difference actually is, and how it behaves on skin.
The short answer
What is synthetic oud?
Synthetic oud is an accord — a blend of aroma molecules arranged to read as agarwood. No tree is involved. It is stable, repeatable, affordable, and it does not vary between batches. Those are real advantages, and any perfumer will say so.
What it cannot do is behave like wood. An accord holds its shape. Real agarwood shifts — it opens differently on one person than on another, and it moves across the hours. That movement is the thing people mean when they say a fragrance feels alive.
1 %
der Aquilaria-Bäume in freier Natur bilden überhaupt Harz
20+
Jahre bis ein Baum verwertbares Agarholz trägt
CITES
Aquilaria steht unter Artenschutz, Anhang II
Why so rare
Why is real oud expensive?
Agarwood is not a wood a tree grows. It is what an Aquilaria tree produces when it is wounded and a mould takes hold — resin laid down as a defence, over decades. Roughly one tree in a hundred does this in the wild. The genus is listed under CITES Appendix II, which means every legal shipment carries paperwork.
So the price is not a mark-up. It is a tree, twenty years, an injury, and a permit.
From tree to bottle
Twenty years, then six months
Nothing here can be shortened. That is the whole cost of real oud.
01
Der Baum
Aquilaria, Thailand. Zwanzig Jahre und mehr, bevor er ueberhaupt in Frage kommt.
02
Die Verletzung
Erst eine Wunde und ein Pilz loesen die Harzbildung aus. Etwa ein Prozent der Baeume tut das in freier Natur.
03
Das Holz
Harzdurchzogenes Kernholz. Je dunkler die Adern, desto dichter das Harz.
04
Die Destillation
Wasserdampf loest das Harz aus dem Holz. Aus Kilogramm Holz werden Milliliter Oel.
05
Die Reifung
Schweiz. Jede Charge ruht sechs Monate, bevor sie abgefuellt wird. Vier Wochen waeren ueblich.
Agarwood does not grow in Switzerland. Stations one to four happen in Thailand. What Switzerland adds is station five — and that is where a fragrance decides how it will behave on skin.
On skin
How do you tell the difference?
Not by the opening. In the first ten minutes a good synthetic accord can be indistinguishable, sometimes louder. The difference shows in hours three to six.
An accord stays where it started, then fades in one piece. Real agarwood loses its top and keeps going — smokier, drier, closer to the skin. Two people wearing the same real oud will not smell the same by evening. Two people wearing the same accord usually will.
The processing
Where the material stops mattering
Real agarwood alone guarantees nothing. What a fragrance does on skin is decided after the raw material arrives — in the composition, in how long it is left to rest, in where the filtration line is drawn.
During maturation, alcohols react with organic acids to form esters — molecules that smell rounder and softer than what they came from. Four weeks is the industry minimum. Every M'OUD batch rests six months. Most large houses stopped doing this in the 1980s, because six months of resting stock is capital standing still.
Where we stand
What M'OUD uses
Genuine Thai agarwood in all four extraits — the same material beneath each one. No synthetic oud. That was a founding decision, taken while reading into a category where synthetic oud is the norm.
It is not a claim about being better. It is a decision about what the house is for.
None of this settles on paper. Three extraits, 2 ml each, and the full CHF 40 comes off your first bottle.
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