What Does Agarwood Incense Smell Like?

There’s more than one way to smell woody

Think of the woody fragrances you already know. Some bring to mind the dry surface of freshly cut wood. Others smell warmer, almost sweet. With agarwood, you might pick up something lighter still, a passing impression of flowers.

Agarwood forms when resin accumulates in the wood of certain trees.^[1] Even the raw material varies. Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Forestry compared agarwood from two different strains of the same tree species and found differences in the compounds that contributed to their aromas.^[2]

For a first encounter, it helps to start with a distinction you can smell. Do you like the dryness of the wood, or is it the sweetness that holds your attention? Either will tell you more about your taste than memorizing a list of growing regions.

How a pear found its way into a description of wood

In the incense section of his Guihai Yuheng Zhi, Fan describes the character of the Hainan incense woods he knew. In our translation, their fragrances were

“clear and delicate, like lotus flowers, plum blossoms, goose pears or honeycomb.”^[3]

The “goose pear” is a variety of pear. The honeycomb is the part of the hive where bees store honey. If you’ve ever described a glass of wine as smelling of pear, you already understand what Fan was doing. The pear gives someone else a way to imagine what you smelled.

What we like about this passage is how precise the comparisons are. Call a wood precious and you learn what someone thinks it’s worth. Mention plum blossom and you can begin to imagine the lightness that caught the writer’s attention. There’s room in his account of agarwood for something as delicate as a flower.

What he noticed at the very end

A little further on, Fan describes turning the piece of wood as it burned. Even when it had burned down to embers, he writes, the fragrance had no scorched smell.^[3] He was paying attention long after the first impression had passed.

Fan was burning a piece of wood. With a modern incense stick, what carries over is his way of paying attention. Halfway through a stick, you might still notice the dry wood you smelled at first. Or a sweetness that barely registered at the beginning might now be what you like best. If all you remember is a pleasant woody scent, that’s a perfectly good description, too.

If you like oud perfume, will you like agarwood incense?

If you came to agarwood through perfume, you probably know it as oud. Agarwood has a place in both perfumery and incense.^[4] What you love in a particular oud perfume, though, is the whole composition. A burning stick made with agarwood will have a character of its own.

If your favourite oud is rich and powerful, the quieter scents in Fan’s description may come as a surprise. Give a stick a chance to make its own impression. Looking for the pear too intently can be as distracting as expecting every oud to fill the room.

An evening with a stick of incense

Imagine an ordinary evening at home. You close your laptop while there’s still daylight in the living room. If you light a stick, use a stable, heat-resistant holder that catches the ash, let fresh air into the room and stay nearby. Settle back in your chair and let the scent reach you.

Later, try putting one impression into words. Perhaps the scent was drier than you expected. Perhaps a little sweetness lingered. The next time you light a different stick, you’ll have something of your own to compare it with. Fan had his pear and honeycomb. You get to choose your own words.