I haven’t seen, held, or smelled Cambodian agarwood like this. The scent is sublime and each piece feels like you’re handling an artifact that belongs in a museum.
We can’t date the harvest exactly, but it goes back to the 1950s/60s, which makes these the oldest agarwood pieces in our collection. Those years were the golden era of Cambodian oud, after which the curve starts to slope down and down until the late seventies / early eighties when you see the flat line that has stayed with us till this day. Agarwood like this hasn’t come from Cambodian jungles for half a century.
You may have heard of such oud, read about the legendary harvests that gave Cambodia its renown, the incredible red, spicy aroma of vintage Cambodi agarwood – yet, you rarely, if ever, see even a picture of the wood people talk about. It’s almost entirely anecdotal, memories collected from veteran distillers who reminisce about the pieces they once owned and stories from old-timers you meet in Koh Kong who have been mostly dealing in lue (early-stage resination) for the past twenty years.
Each piece is a rock-solid mass of resin – dense, sinking-grade resin. The pieces have been pristinely chiseled to leave only a uniform grade of resin, with no trace of kyen or anything but the solid chunk of hard oud. In the China Market, these pieces would likely not even be carved, but be adorned as ultra-luxury pendants or display pieces.
We’ve kept the pieces stored in an air-tight glass jar. The ambient aroma, especially when you open the jar and take a whiff, is out of this world – the air suddenly smells so thick and sweet you could taste it.
Heated, instead of a piercing green, the scent is warm and creamy sweet. A gentle bitter-red tinge, a subtle layer of earthy-spice, the aroma is the olfactory equivalent of liqueur in its texture.Â
What makes this a great burn is that, unlike soft-resin alternatives, you can heat Gao Mian at any temperature, low through high. In fact, despite its perfect kodo-value, these would have been heated on high-temp on charcoal back in the day. The low-heat kodo-experience only adds to the aromatic nuances this vintage resin has to offer. And because it’s proper hard resin, you can expect a longer burn compared to most other oud chips.
The best would be join between both worlds: start off low-temperature (on an electric burner or charcoal that’s been left to cool a bit, or mica plates stacked on the charcoal to reduce direct heat exposure) and once you’ve enjoyed the subtle nuances, you crank up the heat to you squeeze out all the sliver(s) has to give.
With that said, if I were you I’d probably shave off only a small sliver to bliss out to every now and then. Such heirloom pieces are just too precious. But then again… why not live a little?
 
