‘Chewing a tiny bit of kinam is as good as anaesthesia. Your mouth’s gonna be numb for a good half hour. The numbing effect as the drop of Basic Kinam touches your tongue lasts only a few seconds. But isn’t that something?
The kinam-y menthol minty incense green high notes linger long enough to make you go – is this for real? – then smoothe into a gentle jasmine suave reminiscent of the mighty Oud Yaqoub.
The secret behind this jasmine limegreen scent is the same as that behind Oud Yaqoub, and the same secret behind the distillery’s amazing coffee brew: earthwater from an underground spring right beneath the distillery.
But the killer trick is how you put this water to use. So your first thought might be to soak the wood longer so that this fine water impregnates it fully. We did the complete opposite: zero soak.
Another suggestion would be to make this a straight steel distillation to preserve the clarity of the menthol hue. We’ll meet you half-way: this was a steel-copper dual distillation. One twist that really made the water sparkle was to install cooling condensers that don’t run straight into the beaker. These condensers are instead mediated through an amplified cooling device to sharpen the green note to its extreme.
The oil’s in its fourth year of maturation and Kruger wants to keep the whole batch to himself. “Half to use, half to age even more.” Actually, he owns the entire sister distillation to Basic Kinam and cherishes it more than his house. “But this one’s better. You want to trade?”
This is organic oud gone green—kinam green.’- Ensar Oud
‘ This has become another of those ouds that has become impossible to find. If this is basic Kinam, I can only imagine what non-basic Kinam must smell like. This has that pure ethereal thing—without barnyard—that for me makes oud so compelling. It seems that Kinam is a special kind of tree even rarer and more sought after than “regular” agar wood.’ PerfumeExplorations