Papua oud05/22/2025
ClaireV
731 Reviews
ClaireV
1
A market breaking oud, first of its kind
Green Papua is to Ensar Oud as No. 5 is to Chanel and Joy to Patou – a reputation-maker. All market-breakers have one feature in common. They break with previous traditions and create something new, shocking even. When Ensar introduced Green Papua to the market in 2004, customers and fellow distillers must have thought he was crazy. Here was an oud oil that looked and smelled nothing like other oud oils out there. Instead of being dark brown or black, it was green, and instead of that fermented cow pat odor common to Hindi oils, it smelled clean and herbal. The original Green Papua sold out quickly. It was a revelation to customers that an oud oil could smell as bracingly green as a forest, and yet still identifiably oudy. For many, it did away with the notion that one must suffer through an overwhelmingly barnyardy opening to get to the good stuff two hours down the line. Green Papua was a gust of fresh air that blew the cobwebs of preconception away.
The sample I smelled was from a 2016 distillation of the same type of tree as the first batch, said to be similar in aroma profile and character to the original Green Papua. Distilled from the live wood of the Gyrinops tree from Papua, the oil smells fresh, clean, and alive, not at all sour or animalic. The opening is almost meaty in its fungal density, a viscous green-back smear of tree sap swiped from the bark. As the initial surge, there comes a succession of forest notes, one pasted thickly onto the next – tree moss, followed by mint, wintergreen, ferns, and a veil of something antiseptic, like Listerine. It is reminiscent of a freshly-split piece of green wood, so young that its sap runs milky rather than clear or sticky.
And yet, despite the overall greenness of the oil, it is also clearly oud. The fresh, fougère-like notes never float off into the ether but remain tethered to the earth by that familiar weight of leather, wood, tar, and medicine – those anchoring ‘core oud’ notes. Newcomers would do well to sample this particular oud, because it will teach their nose that real oud oil can smell like clover, green wood, and pine sap just as much as it can smell like wood rot and animal hide. A cleansing, spiritual oud oil that lends itself particularly well to meditation.
The sample I smelled was from a 2016 distillation of the same type of tree as the first batch, said to be similar in aroma profile and character to the original Green Papua. Distilled from the live wood of the Gyrinops tree from Papua, the oil smells fresh, clean, and alive, not at all sour or animalic. The opening is almost meaty in its fungal density, a viscous green-back smear of tree sap swiped from the bark. As the initial surge, there comes a succession of forest notes, one pasted thickly onto the next – tree moss, followed by mint, wintergreen, ferns, and a veil of something antiseptic, like Listerine. It is reminiscent of a freshly-split piece of green wood, so young that its sap runs milky rather than clear or sticky.
And yet, despite the overall greenness of the oil, it is also clearly oud. The fresh, fougère-like notes never float off into the ether but remain tethered to the earth by that familiar weight of leather, wood, tar, and medicine – those anchoring ‘core oud’ notes. Newcomers would do well to sample this particular oud, because it will teach their nose that real oud oil can smell like clover, green wood, and pine sap just as much as it can smell like wood rot and animal hide. A cleansing, spiritual oud oil that lends itself particularly well to meditation.
