All Posts

Precious piece of Vietnamese agarwood oud While the strong demand of recent decades has led to overexploitation and the rarity of producing species-driving up the price per kilo of agarwood-oud has always  been a coveted, precious material. Across cultures and centuries, this scent is a mark of wealth , a gift to honor gods and kings . Thus, in the Mahabharata -the great Sanskrit epic of Hindu mythology composed in the final centuries BCE -we find some of the earliest account

While the earliest records of the oud trade mention trees originating in India, from the very first centuries CE agarwood was exported from other parts of its natural range, including Vietnam. From the 4th century onward, China imported Vietnamese oud, and Vietnamese emperors presented agarwood as tribute to Chinese emperors throughout the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE). In accounts written at the end of the 13th century, Marco Polo relates that agarwood was then found in abundan

Illustrated page from the Greek herbal "De Materia Medica" showing ancient botanical drawings and handwritten notes In De materia medica -the Greek pharmacopoeia that spread widely throughout Antiquity and the Middle Ages, translated into Latin, Arabic, Persian, and European languages-Dioscorides records various virtues of agarwood, which he calls Agallocha. Agarwood is described as having an astringent, bitter taste, useful for refreshing the mouth and breath, either chewed