Satori Fusho

After the completion of Sultan Mustafa distillation, the question that came up: What’s going into the boiler next?

Sultan Mustafa was a once-in-a-lifetime co-distillation using a rare batch of New Guinea agarwood (which we haven’t been able to acquire again since) and an equally precious batch from Brunei. The yield was super limited and the last bottle has already sold out.

As you might know, pot conditioning is an excellent way to double up the caliber of certain ouds. It’s your chance to breathe the presence of Sultan Mustafa into whatever oil is distilled next by leaving remnants of the distillation material, hydrosol and debris in the cauldron, and distilling the follow-up batch admixed with all of that. And that’s what you’ve got here: oud conditioned by Sultan Mustafa. And not just any oud, mind you…

The top notes are pristine, crystal-green. Instead of fig plum fruit jam, you smell an ethereal kukicha-matcha leaf note that steeps and seeps throughout your wear. Upon the first whiff, you’d think the fragrance couldn’t get any more clear cut and translucent, but just wait an hour and take another whiff!

Satori Fusho wasn’t just distilled from organically grown agarwood. What we’re talking about are cultivated trees that are grown so naturally, they mimic wild agarwood even to the extent where the resin starts to permeate the deeper layers of the heartwood and forms kyen, an intricate phase of resin formation that leads into the hard incense-grade strains. Very few organic trees ever reach the stage of kyen formation. In fact, the first discovery of cultivated kyen was barely a few years ago! Instead of just mixing a few specs of kyen dust with regular grade agarwood, we went all out to ensure that Satori Fusho is exclusively kyen-distilled.

I’m inclined to call the heart note “frangisteria,” a see-through crispness that purrs with Thai frangipani and Western wisterias, infused with gently steeped Japanese green tea. And don’t forget, we’re talking about all-out kyen here, so you’ve got an all but silent flush of incense backing the body. The incense notes are so delicate, richly layered in phantom whiffs of Sultan Mustafa it makes the scent not just a feast of blue gyrinops painted green but doused in slow-releasing heavenly incense.

After 3 hours of dabbing this oil, you don’t pick up any overripe fruity twang, or dusty countertops that mark the beginning of the dry-down. Even the usual all-woods profile shared by most ouds during the dry-down remains in the lurk. Against your expectation, the frangisteria heart barely subdues to the green incense chords. You await the drydown, but it never comes.

Right from collecting the first drops, the signature kyen top notes that make you think this-is-menthol-but-it’s-not were so piercing they immediately cleared up any metallic tin notes you could otherwise expect fresh after distillation. But Satori Fusho’s already aged half a decade, so we don’t even need to mention still notes!

This is the most aged pure-kyen distillation you’re likely to find — or even hear about. All these years of maturation let the notes marry in a way only years of slow molecular fixation can, with the added slow oozing of Bruneian blue and New Guinea’s green. The result? Infuse a dash of dark citrus skin, a teaspoon of honey, and soon the sencha turns to steeped chimarrão infused with a pinch of that mint-that’ s-not-mint freshness, with a powdery pollen glaze I’m amazed to smell for the first time.

If only pure kyen wasn’t so rare, I’d wear Satori Fusho non-stop (the last Satori we offered has been sold out almost five years). Its clean green (dare I say kyara?) profile makes it a deeply meditative fragrance. It also makes it ideal to wear wherever you go ― and good luck trying to explain that you’re wearing oud oil. The penetrating beauty of the scent masks the oudiness and makes others believe you’re wearing an avant-garde release from a master perfumer.

Satori Fusho is an eccentric experimental kyen steel, conditioned distillation. I’m elated by the piercing zen sharpness of the scent and eager to share it with you. With it, we wish to give everybody the chance to wear the most exquisite oud oil imaginable. Thanks to our pioneering techniques and the collaboration with dedicated agarwood farmers, we’re able to make owning pure bottled kyen so much easier. And as you now know, you won’t smell just the kyen…