The perfumista chorus constantly chants “Enough Oud!” “Stop Oud!”** and all of a sudden I’m beginning to feel protective of oud perfumes. True, the market is flooded with oud fragrances but it’s also flooded with sport and gourmand and jasmine colognes. The perennial pet of the perfume world, orange blossom, gets to star in fragrance after fragrance without complaints from the “perfume gallery.” Oud is like any other ingredient; it can be placed in an unimaginative setting, or showcased with ingenuity.
Recently I’ve come across several oud fragrances that deserve respect; Humiecki & Graef Blask is one of them. You can read the convoluted “backstory” of Blask here. I’ll just say it was created by the perfume team of Christoph Hornetz and Christophe Laudamiel and has fragrance notes of bay laurel, “red wine,” walnut wood, floral notes and agarwood/oud.
Blask opens with a warm, rich bay leaf aroma…
