Palembang Sumatra Emerald (2021, Agarwood Indonesia)

PALEMBANG SUMATRA EMERALD (2021) by Agarwood Indonesia is distilled from wild Sumatran incense grade chips from Palembang area with zero soaking. I wore it 5 times since buying it about 3 weeks ago.

Palembang Sumatra Emerald (2021)

From the bottle, it is very camphoric, spicy, intensely green, and grassy. I also get a hint ​​of ambergris-laced of green leathery quality.

Initially, on skin, it is quite camphorous, terpenic (slightly), bitter and foresty green, spicy, and piquant. I then get hints of soft hay with a touch of dry museli-like smell. In case someone is wondering, it is not yeasty. I do not get anything scatological. There is also angelica root, ambrette seed absolute, green tea, neroli, watercress (that peppery smell when we start biting), freshly cut/crushed coriander leaves/stems, and many more. I need to spend more time.

After 10 minutes: as soon as the sharp green tones down (i.e. camphorous and terpenic facets), I get a beautiful incensy waft similar to Filipino, Malaysian, Merauke and more recently, some non-soak Assam-belt oils.

15 minutes: It is blue, oceanic (cleanest-slightly animalic ambergris), and mineral, jungle soil, intensely green and wet stone with full of minerals beside a freshly ice-melted stream.

Between 15-30 minutes (depending on the weather): I get a sparkly grassy smell – more specifically, a combination of freshly cut grass and the green grassy smell of the top-heart section of north Indian wild vetiver (SD EO). The cooler it is, the longer this odour facet lasts on me.

Around an hour, just underneath the slowly turning blueish incensy smell, I get a beautiful spicy (albeit toned down), resinous (labdanum, styrax) smoke. Recently I discovered some Bangladeshi oils with similar profiles (South-East Asian region, mentholic, spicy and jungly green oud with prominent vetiver and nagarmotha type green smells) - cooked from incense grade chips like PSE. The leathery facet in PSE is less prominent but more nuanced on skin, which also helps to retain the oudy smell longer.

Vernal Jewel

The smoke has some similarities with Bulgarian smoke tree (Cotinus coggygria) EO and zanthoxylum (Zanthoxylum armatum) extract. I also get a 'heart' facet of mustard seed oil (the one we use for food), Himalayan/Atlas cedar's peppery flutter (i.e. the flinty part), clove bud's warm and spicy sweetness and a few more things. All of them at this stage are rounder, and softer.

I still get those mineral (occasionally) and spicy and Indo-Malay oud smoke facets (especially their top notes when I burn them at lower temperature) with some super clean ambergris-like smell. Together they give me an impression of something blue and oceanic. I occasionally get the top-heart notes of some spicy (Sri Lankan and Indonesian) sandalwood oils too. But at this point, I may be confusing it with the aforementioned cedar facet.

After 1.5 hours, I still get the musky hum of ambrette seed absolute and anglelica's vernal musky waft. But now, they are accompanied by a sweet, resinous, slightly green oudy smell that is so common across many well-distilled oils from that region.

After 2.5 hours, it becomes a ghost scent of an oud incense with a gentle green and herbaceous leather & a slightly cereal/soft sweet hay undertone. But this scent hangs around for a very long time on well moisturised skin - another 3-4 hours - when I occasionally get that aforementioned oudy smell.

A general and important point: Post-initial wearing, I thought PSE did not last that long. Because it is still a fresh oil and has a hefty dose of camphorous/terpenic green qualities to it, by bringing the oil-applied area closer to my nose (instead of letting the aroma reach my nose), I was making my olfactive system go on a defensive mode. In other words, I got less PSE during earlier wearing due to olfactory fatigue. I was aware of this phenomenon, and even wrote it somewhere - but I forgot. In my note, I wrote that with intensely green, camphorous, spicy, smoky and stinky materials, I should not sniff them actively (close to my nose) and instead, I should smell them passively (or at least from a distance).

A tangential point: PSE is well filtered as I do not see any sediments at any temperature. It could also be because (i) either the raw materials did not have too much resin as opposed to oil in them and/or, (ii) it is distilled in a way that only oils are retained in this final product, and/or, (iii) resins is converted into oil using certain catalyst, and/or, with the help of a solvent during/after distillation. But this method is not a good practise. Muhammad Taftazani informed me that he does not do it.

I speculate that the intense camphor and grassiness, spicy and flinty cedar, spicy sandalwood, and jungly green, and ambergris/oceanic smells, overtime, will all morphed into something woody, more resinous, deeper and a more nuanced smell of highly resinated oud smoke at lower temperature that has been burning for a long time. Simply put, this fantastic oil will only get better with age. So I will update this review as time passes with date codes.

This is the first time I am trying Muhammad Taftazani's work. I am quite impressed with this vernal jewel - a complete perfume on it's own that is worth sampling.