Oud Shuayb

Jungle: Manipur
Aged: 9 Years (2011)

Oud Shuayb by Ensar Oud hails from easliy the most legendary region in India: Manipur, bordering Burma.

The pollen, vanillicious tone of Oud Idrees stuffed with sweet plum and cherry tobacco. The rich notes of plum and cherry and the scent wafting from a rugged Boer’s pipe infused with clementine peel and a sweet floral note—not honeysuckle, not jasmine, but almost. Rooibos shrubs show up thirty minutes in (sooner, if you smell closely) smoothed over with a herbaceous agalollochan warmth with an arcane Vietnamese tinge that only comes after a decade’s aging.

Though there’s an echo of fermentation, all that’s left of it after a decade oozing in Pyrex is the bold spicy bite it leaves in old, old resin. The spicy richness of eighty-year-old aloes distilled beautifully.

“I miss those days. Thankfully, a single swipe takes you back there. Throws you back. One whiff of Oud Shuayb and the floodgates open and you’re instantly back with the heavyweights.

From raw materials to production costs and logistics, you know as well as I do how everything’s gone up year by year. And India barely has a wild tree left.

On top of the 0% interest on the aging, I’m letting Oud Shuayb go for the same price it would have sold for in 2011.” — A note from the brand.