Amber Oud
AbdesSalaam Attar Profumo

Reviews I've read emphasize the animalic character of Salaam's "wild" Laotian oud, as does Salaam's own description. This makes Amber Oud sound challenging, at least to noses not steeped in oud. Perhaps I've become more steeped in oud than I'd realized, but I don't find it challenging at all. Rather, the amber prettifies the oud (or, if you prefer, the oud dirties up the amber), such that I think anyone might wear this in polite company with confidence. That's not to be at all dismissive, as Amber Oud is a substantial scent—one that opens both sharper and sweeter on the skin before it blends itself harmoniously in drydown. It's just that, for something more daring, you might look to Salaam's magnificent Oud Caravan series, based on the same oud but with less mitigation.

While this amber-mellowed concoction is excellent—I anticipate getting plenty of use out of my mignon—I prefer the Oud Caravans to one flank and (unexpectedly) Amber Rose to the other. If you're more enamored of classic ambers than I, though, Amber Oud could easily be your Goldilocks fragrance, and I can recommend it to you without hesitation.

I wish I liked the opening more, but it's too playdough and rubber for me.
The drydown is excellent: as Darvant says, it's like ASA's Castoreum, but I prefer it to that in so far as it is less sweet.

A magnificent take on a real agarwood resin (a la Abdul Samad Al Qurashi) with all its "aged" array of "stuffy" nuances (musky, mossy, resinous, animalic, dirty, rubbery, honeyed, leathery, woody, fur-like, mouldy, steamy, camphoraceous). The rubbery/animalic (like castor sacs' aroma exuding) feel conjures me more than vaguely the By Kilian Pure Oud's boot polish-effect but while the latter creation is smokier Amber Oud is more mouldy/musky (and castoreum/truffles-like smelling). Hardly evolving juice, rising complex-multifaceted by nature di per se. Really close to Castoreum from the same house, with its wild-leather/fur's mossy feel (and its vague aroma of mexical Mezcal yet buck/reindeer's fur) while I detect as well a "black musk-typical" honeyed impenetrable dirtiness. A "veritable" raw material barely "caressed" and modulated by Dubrana in order to better "embellish" (and mitigate) its full range of "multiveined" prerogatives. La Via del Profumo Amber Oud is profound and arcane (but never oppressive and surprisingly wearable). I don't know whether ambergris is included in the potion (and surely some ambery nuances are in here detectable) but the most prominent feel I pick up is probably musky, yes a black musk's darkly honeyed presence quite oily, animalic (a sheer castoreum's oil seems to wave under my disreputable nose) and fungous-truffly. Moderate projection and good longevity on my skin.