Reference point
A piece of agarwood heated on charcoal, the cooled smoke smelled.
Do this before you read on. An entry only works when you have just smelled the thing.
Warm, sweet, with a leathery note and a touch of honey. It does not open up but spreads slowly, and clings to fabric for days.
It is unlike any other wood, because the smell does not come from the wood tissue but from resin the tree secretes when wounded and infected by fungi. Agarwood is the tree’s response to injury, not the product of a healthy tree — a healthy Aquilaria tree gives no agarwood.
That explains why agarwood is expensive and why its quality varies so wildly. You are not harvesting a product; you are harvesting a scar, and every scar forms in its own way.
How to smell it
Place a small piece of agarwood on a charcoal ember that has stopped flaming, or use an electric heater at low temperature. Don’t smell the smoke directly when it is hottest — wait until it cools and thins before smelling. Agarwood heated too strongly gives a burnt smell that drowns the sweetness.
Why this one is hard
The agarwood market has a very high share of fakes and fragrance-soaked pieces, so many people have smelled a fake before the real thing. If your sample gives a harsh, unusually uniform sweetness, it has very probably been soaked in fragrance.
Don’t confuse with
This entry
Agarwood
Woody & Resinous family
Agarwood has chromones, giving a honeyed, smoky note; sandalwood has santalol, giving a creamy, milky note. Agarwood is dry and deep, sandalwood soft and round.
Scientific note
Agarwood forms only when the Aquilaria tree is wounded and infected by certain fungi. The tree secretes a resin containing oxidised sesquiterpenes and 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromones to defend itself, and that resin layer is agarwood. The chromones hardly occur anywhere else in the plant kingdom, which makes them the chemical fingerprint of genuine agarwood.
In Vietnamese life
Vietnam was once one of the world’s most important sources of wild agarwood. Overharvesting put Aquilaria on the protected list, and most agarwood on the market today comes from plantation trees deliberately inoculated with fungi — that is, from wounds made by people.