Agar Aura - pure oud products

Kanzen

This product has gone the way of all those before it...
Gone, never to come back.

Grab our other oud oils, before they are gone too!

Description
Reviews

Kanzen is one of those rare oils that punches far heavier than its weight class.

Raw materials picked up in Cambodia, checked in with my luggage and flown back home, meticulously hand-crafted for three weeks night and day; this is a wild Cambodian oud oil that will give a taste of what you may have been missing out on, if you haven't tried any of Agar Aura's handmade oud oils yet.

Before you take your first whiff of Kanzen, the first thing you will need to do is forget everything you have come to expect in Cambodian oud.
Forget about the typical fruity notes found in common Cambodian oud oils – there are none. And most certainly do not expect any unwelcome foreign odors that belong in farms and latrines.
Now picture yourself sitting in front of an agarwood sifu as he prepares a censer with the perfect temperature, and places on it a carefully sized and measured sliver of Cambodian agarwood.

Glowing golden chords greet your nose first. As you wonder how a scent could be so crystalline and scintillating yet so silky and warm, the second layer of effulgent top notes begins to reveal itself. Instead of the oh-so-typical cherries and plums, you find a prominent burnt toffee note along with the soothing scent of evaporated milk and creamy vanillic wood. Like many others of our hand-made Cambodian oils, the overall scent profile may perplex you as you wonder why it smells more Vietnamese than Cambodian.
Its simple really. The two countries are next to each other, and have the same species of agarwood. The reason why typical ouds from these countries smell 'typical' is because of the distillation habits employed by distillers of their respective geographies.

Strip away those scent filters and let the agarwood talk without disruption, and you get an entirely different breed of oud. Oud untainted by the hand of man, the limitations of apparatus setups, and sacrilegious distillation 'techniques' (or 'mistakes' in my vernacular).
Take that, go the extra mile to source carefully hand-picked vintage raw materials, and you get Kanzen – pure Cambodian oud, uninterrupted.

Whereas most of our distillations have been prohibitively costly (oud is a luxury product after all, and Agar Aura's aim is to deliver the best), this one turned out to have a significantly lower cost-per-gram. You will realize it truly does punch heavier than its weight, and I promise you won't find another Cambodian oud of this caliber at this price tag.
Best of all: it displays hints of Khmer Special K, the finest Cambodian oud ever distilled according to many... at a fraction of the price.

Kanzen is dedicated first and foremost to folks who have not yet tried my hand-made oils. After you try this oud, you may then start to realize what our top heavy-weight oud oils have to offer.

Are all oud oils created equal?
Do modern-day inferior harvests from the jungle compare to old batches (like the raw material for distilling this oil)?
Try Kanzen. Then you be the judge.

This Kanzen oil is what I dreamed of Cambodian Oudh being like. The oleresin notes of the Cambodian wood is dominant but yet so pleasure able.
A.K. (USA)

Wow wow wow wow wow. Yes 5 times typing wow on a small iPhone is not easy but this oils performance deserves it.
R.S. (Canada)

Sweet sour notes with high notes greet you on a camphourius cloud that is rising from a deep green color bamboo river bank. Beautiful tobacco note in the back ground and silver Frankincense. Sometimes when you pick a cooled down half burned chip it has this woody sweet burn which is exactly what the overall experience of this oil. It's extremely pleasing for the morning, nothing off putting or jarring. And while it's tasteless to talk about money when dealing with such such prettiness and effort, I'll be a miss not to mention that I find it to be one of the best value oils, scent profile and craft fir dollar 💵... And there's nothing Cambodie about it 😀😍
H.S. (USA)

Kanzen is a beauty and a bargain at the price level.
N.K. (UK)

The Kanzen is instant gratification. It is very close in profile to the Khmer Special K which is one of the finest oils I ever tried. There is a dark and delicious base with some Kinam notes in the background. Just a stunner for the price.
P.O. (USA)

initially i remembered this oil for its subtle yet present green oil kyara notes along with a very mild hainan/yunan like bitterness. not orange zest but more green like bergamot or keylime. @kesiro challenged me to have another go at it and boy am i glad i did. a rare quiet night and post-cold recovery, my nose was open and fresh and ready to go hunting :) last night, kanzen presented itself more as a vanilla pana cotta served with green ooolong. there is a very mildly sweet, very subtle vanillic and creamy/milky round quality to this oil. the bitterness of the tea grounds it and keeps the oil away from becoming too top note heavy. for the first time i am getting some mild tuberose and or other white floral notes like gardenia and jasmine prior to bloom (4am kind) that i tend to get in oils from koh kong.
note: this oil like many others from Taha needs a trained nose or at least a patient inquisitive nose. at a glance it comes across as super simple and straightforward. but that my friends is not all. the subtleties here are layered so fine that a casual nose needs a magnifier glass on to pick out more. give these oils more time. they deserve it and like ensar's senkoh oils, they will in turn shower you with other worldy sensations and pleasures.
R.S. (Canada)

it is a great idea for daily use especially for someone who is addicted and without hurting the wallet , loooool .
T.M. (UAE)

No way it smells this good - serious whiffs of Khmer Special K, and so so sooo smooth with a Cambodi red base. I cannot believe this.
R.S. (UK)

I didn't get the vanilla tbh, but I get an unusual sweet fruitiness. I do however get the Vietnamese aspect, maybe thats the special K aspect :)
Y.B. (UK)

I must really thank you for recommending the Kanzen. It's my favorite so far and I'm planning to get some more of it and Kalyani for my mother.
W.B. (Myanmar)