Sacred Wood
Kilian (2014)

I suggest you only buy it for educational purpose: it's bitter sandalwood, and you'll never forget what sandalwood smell like after this. The smell itself is not unpleasant ...but that's all there is.

Even if I bathe in it, it still wouldn't have much project. So anyone looking for a subtle, keep-it-to-yourself smell...well, don't buy this, try Nassomatto.

Not sure where all the "cloying" comments are coming from. I'd call it "cool" not sweet. Cedar and Sandalwood combine to make a sharp green accord. There is a musty undertone that makes this a fuller fragrance, not musty in a bad way.

A sweet, smooth cedar/sandalwood mixture that is pleasant to smell all day.

Has a warmth to it so seems better suited for colder days. It's also big on projection and longevity, so too much heat might prove to bring out some cloying aspects. That said, I enjoyed it on an 80 degree day and it smelled great throughout.

Like others of the fragrances of by Kilian, Sacred Wood seems to be an exercise in creating almost painful beauty. Sacred Wood is beautiful. It is as good a sandalwood presentation as I've experienced in the years since true mysore sandalwood has become unavailable. It feels like sandalwood even if it doesn't exactly smell like the sandalwood of yesteryear.. This sandalwood scent is accented by a a delicious carrot note, some elemi, and a restrained cedar. Oddly enough I don't smell the cumin. I don't really get the steaming milk accord, although it is probably that which provides the opening's smoothness and the eerie / airy / resinous ambiance of the fragrance's first several minutes. Sacred Wood is short lived as a sillage producer, but holds beautifully as an ethereal skin scent. Painfully beautiful while it lasts.

A nice sandalwood. It's the Australian kind that smells sort of green and coconutty, as opposed to the Indian kind that smells like butter and sawdust. It reminds me of Le Labo's Santal 33, but sort of milky and with a sappy quality that brings to mind the smell of breaking open an aloe leaf to release its liquid. I also smell a hint of tuberose - not enough that it should scare anyone away, but just a little, working with the lactic notes to give a subtle milky femininity to what would otherwise be vaguely masculine.

All in all, I prefer my sandalwoods rough, as opposed to this milky and pretty, but Sacred Wood is still quite nice. Thumbs up.

Having grown up in a home where sandalwood chips were burned every evening as a ritual marker between the hours of daylight and those of night, I was pleased to find the scent of the wood truly represented here. Perhaps its profile is less mild and creamy than the sandalwood oils found in attars of old but it does the dry, sharp (almost tangy) but breath-catching fragrant aura of the woodchips well. What I most appreciate about Sacred Wood is its evocation of just split wood – the resinous dryness of it, the earthy sweetness (plant blood!), the suggestion of furniture and sawdust. I'll happily wear any perfume that brings those things to mind. The mild shadings of incense and elemi in the background serve to highlight the star.
I don't find the milky tones particularly evident, instead what I do get is something that registers like a mix between camphor and Vicks Vaporub around the edges. The only duff note in this otherwise starkly appealing creation, it does however vanish after a short while. It leaves behind pure mature sandalwood – the sweet rounded scent found in Indian emporia – all the just-cut or splintered wood tones also having disappeared.