Vial says 2013, but cross-referencing Ensar’s remark on ‘The End Of Oud’ (2011) it should be older.
‘Borneo Kinam is described as “The most beautiful and uplifting oud oil I have ever smelled.” Borneo 3000 now sells for thousands. Borneo 4000… I don’t even know of anybody who’s willing to sell it!
It’s something both distiller and connoisseur will ask themselves:
1. How do you follow up such a line-up? Oud that just gets better and better. Oud that doubles, triples and quadruples in value.
2. What’s more, how to distill a successor to such Borneos without the need to ask $2,000+ a bottle?
The short answer is:
1. Follow the blueprint. How’d we make those Borneo greats?
2. This is the tricky part…
Here’s how we did it: Team up with the man that almost single-handedly spread oud distillation throughout Malaysia. Take out a bag of wild black Borneo resin. Prep the pots and the pipes to run an artisanal extraction. Tweak the temperature. Fire up the burners. Then, wait… for seven years.
One thing the great Borneos—3000, 4000, Kinam, 50K—have in common is their olfactory harmony.
This means that from top to drydown, you don’t find a dramatic change or decline in scent—the fruits don-t suddenly disappear to make way for the woods. This is the mark of a great Borneo. Take the raspberry fruitiness of Borneo 3000.
Whether it’s the first whiff or two hours later, the profile holds beautifully steady—three hours later you might well fool yourself into thinking you just put on a swipe a minute ago!
I’d go so far as to say that the 2000 ranks top here. The scent progression is super steady and hardly swerves. You’ll need an extremely acute olfactory radar to pick up the drop from top to heart to drydown.
Borneo 2000 was crafted almost eight years ago and has been naturally aging since. Back then, it would still be another year before we published the first End of Oud announcement. For one, this meant that prices for rare raw agarwood were still sane! It also meant that we were still on a Borneo high and eager to make artisanal Borneo ouds the way we’ve been making them.
Think Borneo 3000 and you think vanilla. The sign of the successor is this: there’s no shortage of vanilla here! At moments you smell fresh Mahogany peeled from the bark. A semi-dry cedarwoodiness gently swiped with moist brown sugar, honey and maple syrup. That makes this your go-to Oud for going out. What Borneo 2000 adds to the palette is a musk-meets-frankincense mellowness that makes the 2000 fuller, more woody and less airy than the rest of the series.
Same techniques, same tradition, pristine wild Borneo agarwood. That’s how Borneo 2000 fits in with 3000, 4000 and Borneo Kinam….’ – Ensar Oud
‘It is difficult for me to describe this oud oil, as I have an intense physical reaction whenever I smell it. Specifically, parts of my scalp and jaw begin to tighten and my skin begins to ‘crawl’. Perhaps it is an exaggerated response of my body to the umami flavors deep within this oil.
Borneo 2000 is the second generation of super star Borneo oud oils produced by Ensar Oud previously, such as Borneo 3000 and Borneo 4000. It opens with a hit of boozy peanut shell, cinnamon, and a raw wood aroma similar to the topnotes of wild Mysore sandalwood. It is clean, light, and polished, with no off-putting notes that might challenge a beginner. Note that there is a high-toned fruitiness here, like the heady fumes off a glass of grappa or stepping into a leather tannery. When people describe oud oil as ‘vaporous’, I think they are mostly referring to this quasi-hallucinogenic effect on the senses.
Like alcohol esters from the wood itself, Borneo 2000 is medicinal in its purity, and although the color of the oil is a light straw color, the olfactory color that presents itself to the mind is ice blue. There is a nutty, musky hum in the background, as if a nubbin of cedar incense had worked its way into the oil at some point in the process.
The trace of fruitiness in this oud is not the juiciness of fresh fruit but rather the leathery skin of a fig or plum neglected in a fruit bowl. This nuance also encapsulates the scent of the brown paper bag in which the fruit has withered. With its hints of sawdust, cedar, and peanut shell, Borneo 2000’s dusty, savory side balances out the dry fruit skin to perfection. Borneo 2000 finishes in a wisp of clean woodsmoke.
Overall, I find Borneo 2000 to be more physically intoxicating than spiritually exalting. It gives me the natural high of breathing in air freshly exhaled by trees in a forest, air so intensely ion-charged that it challenges your lungs to double their capacity. Some oud oils take time and reflection to unlock, but Borneo 2000 makes an immediate lunge for your solar plexus. A key advantage is that this oud is highly legible to newcomers. You don’t need experience to enjoy it.’ – TakeOneThingOff
ENSAR OUD