Tabac is what an organic Trat oil can become when given the conditions that almost no organic Trat oil ever gets — old trees, real time, and a distiller who knows better than to rush a single stage of the work. The trees behind this oil are not the standard plantation Aquilaria. The distiller we partnered with inherited his agarwood from his father — between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age at harvest, on land that has been in the family for two generations. That depth of wood is something you can smell. There is no shortcut to it. There never has been. The classic fruity-yellow Trat opening — guava, banana, a kind of tropical brightness — is gone. It has been ten years in the bottle and the sweetness has transformed. What rises now is a deep, glorious resinous tobacco. Not the harsh edge of cheap pipe tobacco; closer to the soft, sweet, faintly floral haze of a fine Cuban after a slow draw. There is a smoothness and an interior light to it. You will not find yourself searching for the oud beneath the tobacco; the two have become one thing. In an ordinary blind comparison, Tabac would pass for a vintage wild oil with no difficulty. We have run that test internally more than once. Between us, there are still members of the team who would not bet on telling them apart. For the price of an organic Trat, you are getting a piece of olfactory history and, quietly, a benchmark against which other Trat oils ought to be measured. Stock is limited and will not be replenished. Trat, Thailand. 2015 Available in a 2.5g bottle only
