Men Tien

I picked up the worst food poisoning of my life in Myanmar. But I consider myself fortunate not to have ended up worse…

Before I eventually made it into Myanmar, there were several spoiled plans to venture through the country up north to Myitkyina. There were either tourist travel restrictions or sincere warnings from friends in the region not to go until the political turmoil had settled down.

At one point, we were set to cross the border from Thailand when a wood dealer we knew insisted we stay.

“I just came from up there, and I’m not going back for a while. And you’re a foreigner… don’t go now,” he said.

It’s one thing to be a typical site-seer, but another to find yourself man-alone in the treacherous currents of the agarwood world. The safest way would have been to meet the hunters in neighboring countries. But because of the trouble crossing the borders (especially with wild agarwood), this was easier said than done, and even then there was seldom any guarantee the wood in fact came from the Burmese jungles. Unless you’re trained, you may well have ended up buying oud chips from Assam at a markup.

Having since been on the ground in person, I learned how the gears move in the country and how tracking down not just authentic Myanmar agarwood but quality, old-stock wild harvests was, as my friends had told me, dangerous and difficult.

Of course, acquiring the raw material is just the beginning of crafting an oud of Men Tien proportions. With the wood on hand, how do you now get it all the way to Taiwan?

When you buy an Oriscent Myanmar distillation, you know you’re not in for anything ordinary and that you can safely ignore whatever Myanmar profiles you may have in mind to compare it to.

Instead, smell it next to Nha Trang or Royal Guallam. You’ll run straight into the same bitter Indo-Chinese DNA that tells you this is oud oil of a different order.

Its red kinamic top notes are every bit as acerbic as the highest-grade kyara oils in the Oriscent collection. Hours of bitter-zesty kyara tickles your nose with a scent that’s drenched in red resin.

Usually, Burmese ouds tend strongly towards Indian profiles – distillation in the country itself is far less developed than in India, and typically you’ll still find outdated extraction methods being deployed (oils scraped with bare hands, not collected in beakers, etc). The oils smell over-fermented and the low-medium grade agarwood they were distilled from is apparent. This is the exact opposite experience Men Tien gives you.

The kinamic Indo-Chinese thread that runs through Oriscent ouds isn’t merely a distillation signature. It has as much to do with the caliber agarwood the scent emerged from. More specifically, the fact that you can capture this gently bitter kyara verve from various jungles from distant countries endorses my Sifus’ conviction that kinam is not limited to Vietnam or even sinensis…

That Men Tien smells far more like sinensis than agallocha, a thousand times cleaner and pristine than anything locally distilled in Myanmar, with the Oriscent aesthetic oozing out of every whiff, proves this once and for all.

Men Tien is a beautiful, piercing, makes-your-brain-buzzz tribute to my Sifus’ kyara heritage and an intoxicating foray into the Red Dragon’s den.