Santal Oil
Areej le Doré (2022)

This is the essential oil of pure santalum album (meaning ‘white sandalwood’), the species of sandalwood rightly prized for being the most fragrant sandalwood of all. Sandal was distilled from a vintage, well-aged batch of real Mysore sandalwood (22 years old at the time of writing). Due to current restrictions on Mysore sandalwood, this is a genuine rarity.

How does it smell? Well, to paraphrase Teri Hatcher in Seinfeld, it’s real and it’s spectacular. But lean in, folks, because real Mysore sandalwood is actually very quiet. A fun fact is that, when you first smell Mysore sandalwood – or indeed any santalum album at all, whether it is grown in Mysore or not – you have to make a physical effort to shake off any association with the loud, buttery, incensey scent familiar to you in commercial perfumery, because that’s an association largely formed thanks to widespread use of sandalwood replacers like Javanol or Ebanol. Commercial perfumes pre-1980s might have contained a certain quantity of real santalum album, but after that, you have been raised on the alluring lie that is sandalwood synthetics. Therefore, a person’s first sniff of real Mysore sandalwood oil can be disorienting.

At first, Sandal smells like freshly-felled lumber, with that slightly vaporous, high-pitched tone that all wood esters emit. This is a clean, soft, slightly peanutty aroma, with only the faintest whisper of rose and milk stirring in the undercarriage. Later on, it develops, in small tonal waves, into a warm scent that is typical of all s. album oils in its savory, milky-but-also-arid warmth. It smells rugged but also weirdly flat, like the surface of cream, with a musky, spicy element that reads sometimes like ambrette or carrot seed, and sometimes like cumin or black pepper. It remains extremely quiet and tonal, however, a gorgeous beige-blush-buff thing you instinctively want to drip-feed into your amygdala. There is none of the deep incense or amber tonalities that Mysore oils sometimes boast, but it is fairly rich and sturdy.

A thoroughly disappointing outing from Areej le Dore, and for fragrances in general. I'll write one review and post it on all six attars, since I was foolish enough to buy the whole set.

The scents...not even going to say much about them. Whatever the flower is as indicated in the name is what you get. If, for instance, you've smelled rose absolute, then Gulab smells like that, slightly diluted with the sandalwood base. They are all very potent straight from the bottle, and some, like Champa, to a nauseating degree. Applying to the skin and letting it die down a bit helps with this, but still leaves you with an underwhelming, single note. They're very boring across the board. The sandalwood oil is weak, and lasts but a mere 2-3 hours. I applied these mostly to the top of my hand to avoid any surface wear. The site, of course, advertises 12+ hours. The others last longer, but nowhere near advertised.

Aside from the weak and boring scents presented, the entire approach to this release is disappointing, and feels like a con. The descriptions are full of immature mumbo jumbo like descriptions of "whipped cream and bananas". They speak of the eternal journey you may go on when the indolic notes caress your cilia. Common with fragrance marketing of course, but poorly executed, like a Fragrantica review.

But wait, there's more! The drivel relating to traditional copper deg distillation and amount of petals required, etc, just doesn't really matter when you release something this unimaginative. These are supposed to be the ingredients that a perfumer uses to make a fragrance. In that regard, I have tried using them to add a note to a different fragrance, for instance placing some oil on my skin and then spraying a Gulf Collection Roja on top. It seems to have minimal effect, and certainly not worth having it in your collection for that. Otherwise, there is no use for these.

Further, we see Areej le Dore starting to use other lowly tactics to market. If you've ever purchased clothing from luxury brands, you will likely have seen the tag that says something to the effect of, "each garment possesses individual characteristics that make it unique. Variations in coloring and stitching are what make these garments stand out." Right. Marketing jargon to consumer translation is "we have poor production and quality control measures in place, and refuse to lose a dime on bad products that make it through, despite the exorbitant markups." In this case, it applies to the bottles, which may or may not have air bubbles in them. All of a sudden, that's an art piece. Sorry Adam, these Chinese glass bottles are not art pieces. The cheap sticker labels they placed on them are already peeling straight out of the package.

This is an enormous strike against the brand. Realistically speaking, several Areej le Dore fragrances aren't even that great. The compositions and progressions are interesting, and the quality of the ingredients is superb. I certainly appreciate that aspect. But rarely have I said "this smells amazing". The oud releases from the brand, however, are impeccable if one enjoys that family of scents.

The lids on these attars sure are nice, though.