Of Wolves & Men: Muana Royale

I’ve been having that argument with Bhutan for years. Every time I pour some, I have to stop and do the math. Bhutanese oud might be the most overlooked chapter in the history of agarwood – the world remembers Pusong, Nha Trang, Malinau, Koh Kong, and almost nobody remembers the Forbidden Kingdom. I can count our total Bhutanese distillations on one hand. This particular batch was distilled in 2012, and you start to panic when you realize you can’t go back almost fifteen years.  You can’t even go back now. That’s the part that catches in my throat every time I open this bottle. When I pour the last of my precious Bhutanese oud, that chapter closes. The access that made this distillation possible in the first place no longer exists. And I’m awfully close to that happening. All this perfume did was bring me closer. You realize this rather suddenly when you’re standing there with the bottle open in your hand – about to pour – because there’s a moment – right before you pour – when almost fifteen years of restraint still belong to you. Then you tilt the bottle. And they don’t. Obsession, Unrationed I thought Private Blend was excessive. I made it for myself, so there was nobody to tell me how much musk was too much, how much oud made financial sense, or why you shouldn’t use ingredients you’d spent years hoarding in a perfume you spray on your neck. That was the whole point. Tonkin and Tibetan musk. Mongolian musk. Vintage Mysore. Oud. Jasmine, rose, blackcurrant, tea, spice, animalics – the kind of materials you normally ration, all steeped into musk tincture instead of the plain alcohol virtually every other perfume uses as its carrier. Private Blend was what happened when I stopped rationing. And once you start thinking that way, you inevitably start playing what if? What if I took one of the ouds I ration most, and gave Private Blend the same treatment? If you’ve smelled Muana before, you know what I mean. The few distillations we ever made have spent years aging quietly in the dark, becoming smoother, deeper, and increasingly difficult to describe by comparison with oud from anywhere else. Muana has its own smell. High-mountain wildflowers. Pollen. Forest honey. A strange white-chocolate creaminess. Tuberose, frangipani, freesia – the impression of flowers growing somewhere they have no business growing, high above the world, surrounded by forest and mountain air. But age does something else to Muana. The flowers darken and the honey thickens. And underneath them, this rouge begins to ooze through. Molasses-dark. Dried fruit. Warm tobacco. Sun-baked wood. Leather. Herbal red wildflowers steeped until their sweetness has gone almost tea-like. Muana Royale. Indecent Exposure The blackcurrant gets juicier. Its violet-purple tartness sinks into the rooibos depth of Muana. The spices melt into Muana’s signature red spices. Jasmine swells against the animalics while those strange Bhutanese wildflowers appear through it – sometimes creamy, sometimes pollenesque, sometimes so deeply stained by musk and oud that you catch them only for a second. This is where Of Wolves & Men starts behaving badly. Musk this strong should stink; oud at this dosage should dominate, and animalics piled onto both should send everybody running for the door. Instead, something almost indecent happens on your skin. Tonkin grains exude a truffly muskiness that seems less like something you applied than something your body is giving off. Tibetan musk projects. Mongolian musk’s earthy roar adds lift. Then Muana Royale moves through all three, and on your skin the whole thing turns almost pheromonal. Dried fruit and tobacco. Red wildflowers. Old leather admixed with a honeyed sweetness so dense it almost tastes resinous. Cream. Pollen. White flowers. That bizarre white-chocolate vanillic smoothness underneath a forest-honey glaze. Blackcurrants crushed into dark tea and oud. And every time you think it has settled down, another waft comes up. Musk. Oud. Pepper. Wildflowers. Tobacco. Honey. Musk again. The strange thing about Muana is how much force can come out of a scent this smooth. Poured into this much musk and the contradiction becomes addictive. The musk makes Muana darker; Muana makes the musk smoother. Blackcurrant stains the whole thing purple-red, while jasmine and those high-mountain floral facets keep flashing through the animal warmth. Some of us are wired for this. We need musk. We crave oud. And we chase everything that conspires between them. You need Muana old enough for its wildflowers to turn rouge, its honey to darken, its wood to soften into tobacco and leather. And then you need enough of all of it to find out what happens when nobody tells you to stop. That’s when you understand why I keep opening that bottle. Making this practically emptied what remained of Muana Royale. I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew how many years were inside that bottle. And I knew there would be no road back when I reached the bottom. I do the math every time. But once you smell what happens when Muana hits the musk, the pepper, the spice… …You almost can’t help yourself. I pour anyway.