Oud is the dark, resin-saturated heartwood of Aquilaria and Gyrinops trees, and its price varies more than almost any other perfumery material — from roughly USD $20 per kilogram for low-resin plantation chips to over USD $30,000 per kilogram for exceptional wild specimens. That thousand-fold spread is not marketing. It reflects real differences in resin content, wild versus cultivated origin, region and species, distillation method, and the cost of trading a material listed under CITES Appendix II. This guide explains how agarwood forms, how it is graded, how the major regional styles differ, and how all of that maps to the prices you see on a Canadian shelf.

What Oud Actually Is — and How It Forms

Oud (agarwood) is not a tree species but a wound response: healthy Aquilaria wood is pale, soft, and nearly odourless, and only becomes fragrant when the tree is injured and infected, triggering it to saturate the damaged tissue with defensive oleoresin. Two genera in the family Thymelaeaceae supply commercial agarwood. At least 13 species of Aquilaria — a genus of roughly 19 to 31 species depending on the taxonomy used — produce it, along with at least 8 species of Gyrinops, most notably Gyrinops versteegii.

In wild forests, the infection happens by accident: ants and wood-boring insects breach the bark and carry fungi into the trunk. On plantations, growers replicate this deliberately by drilling holes into the trunk and introducing fungal inoculants. A 2017 study published in Frontiers in Microbiology found that artificial inoculation of Aquilaria malaccensis with fungi and bacteria isolated from wild trees induced agarospirol — one of the signature agarwood sesquiterpenes — within three months.

Two facts follow from this biology and drive everything about oud economics:

• Resination is rare in the wild. CITES trade reviews estimate that fewer than 10% of wild Aquilaria trees contain any agarwood at all, which historically led hunters to fell many healthy trees to find one resinous one.
• Resin accumulates over years. Older infections in slow-growing wild trees generally produce denser, more complex resin than young, artificially induced plantation wood.

How Agarwood Is Graded

There is no single universal grading standard for agarwood; graders instead assess resin density — most famously by whether the wood sinks in water — alongside resin percentage, colour, and aroma. A typical trade framework looks like this:

• Sinking grades (names such as Super King or Double Super): fully submerging wood with roughly 30% resin content or more and near-total black resin coverage.
• High and mid grades (Super, A, AB): approximately 20–30% resin content; dark wood that may partially sink.
• Standard grades (B): roughly 9–20% resin content; visibly streaked rather than saturated wood.
• Low grades (C, D): under 9% resin; pale, floating wood used for lower-cost distillation and incense powders.

Kinam (also kynam, qinan, or kyara in the Japanese incense tradition) sits outside this ladder entirely. It is a rare resin type — estimated at fewer than 1 in 10,000 trees — prized for a soft, malleable texture and a distinct bitter-cooling aroma, and it trades at prices far above ordinary sinking-grade wood.

Chemistry backs up the sensory grading. Agarwood's character comes from sesquiterpenes such as β-agarofuran and 10-epi-γ-eudesmol together with 2-(2-phenylethyl)chromones, and the chromone share separates grades sharply: one published analysis measured about 66% chromone content in top-grade kanankoh incense wood against roughly 1.5% in lower-grade jinkoh. Distillers and serious buyers increasingly use GC-MS (gas chromatography–mass spectrometry) to profile oils rather than relying on grade names alone — worth remembering, because labels like "Super" or "A+" are seller conventions, not certifications.

Regional Profiles: Hindi, Cambodi, Laotian, Borneo

Region — meaning the local species, terroir, and distillation tradition together — shapes an oud's character more than any grade label does. These are the four profiles you will encounter most often in Arabian perfumery.

Hindi (Indian, Assam)

Hindi oud, distilled mainly from Aquilaria malaccensis in northeast India, is the deep, animalic style: leather, smoke, hay, and a fermented "barnyard" edge that softens into dark wood. Indian distillers traditionally soak ground wood in water for days before distillation, and that fermentation step is widely credited with the style's leathery pungency. Hindi profiles anchor many classic mukhallat (blended) compositions from houses such as Ajmal and Rasasi, and they polarize newcomers more than any other style — many wearers need two or three exposures before the drydown clicks.

Cambodi (Cambodian)

Cambodi oud, associated with Aquilaria crassna, is the fruity, approachable style: figs, prunes, berry jam, and caramel over a sweet, gently spicy woody drydown. Because it is the most immediately likeable profile, "Cambodian oud" is the reference point for a large share of commercial Arabian oud fragrances, and sweet rose-oud pairings — such as Ministry of Oud's Oud Satin or Maison Alhambra's Jean Lowe Noir — lean on this fruity-resinous register.

Laotian and Thai

Laotian oud, also from Aquilaria crassna, often opens with a pungent, almost fecal blast and then performs an about-face into an unexpectedly sweet drydown within the first hour. That contrast makes Laotian oils a favourite for incense-style and meditative blends rather than fresh daytime wear.

Borneo, Indonesian, and Malaysian

Borneo-style oud — from island Southeast Asian species such as Aquilaria filaria and from Gyrinops trees — is the lightest of the major profiles: ethereal, terpenic top notes often compared to camphor and mint, over a clear, clean woody drydown with little of the Hindi animalic character. Vietnam deserves a footnote here: it is the historical source of the most celebrated kinam, but genuine wild Vietnamese material is now vanishingly scarce in open trade.

Chips, Pure Oil, and Oud Fragrances: Three Different Products

The same raw material reaches you in three forms with very different economics: wood chips for burning, distilled oil, and alcohol-based fragrances built on oud accords.

Chips are graded and sold by weight for burning on charcoal or electric heaters, priced almost entirely by resin density — the USD $20 to $6,000-plus per kilogram range quoted by trade dealers spans floating plantation wood to wild sinking grade.

Pure oud oil is produced mostly by hydro-distillation: the wood is ground, traditionally soaked for anywhere from 2 to 30 days, then boiled at around 100°C, with runs commonly lasting 72 hours or more. Modern steam-distillation setups run hotter (120–150°C) and faster (20–40 hours) with higher yields, generally at some cost to complexity. Yields are tiny relative to input wood, which is why pure oil is sold in tola bottles — a traditional unit of about 11.7 grams — rather than by the 100 ml flacon. Alcohol-free concentrated oils in the Arabian tradition, including oud-forward attars, are worn directly on skin; you can browse the format in our perfume oils collection, including 12 ml concentrated oils like Ard Al Zaafaran's Mousuf.

Oud eaux de parfum at mainstream prices are built on oud accords — compositions of woody-amber aroma materials, sometimes rounded with small amounts of natural oil — rather than on pure wild oud. This is straightforward arithmetic, not a scandal: a material that can cost more per gram than gold cannot fill a 100 ml bottle retailing at CAD $60–110. Houses such as Lattafa, Rasasi, Ajmal, and Swiss Arabian use these accords to make the oud profile wearable and affordable, and a well-built accord captures the smoky-woody character convincingly. Our oud fragrance collection spans this range, from entry compositions like Almas Ashek Al Oud to spicier takes such as Rasasi Hawas Kobra.

CITES: Why Legal Oud Carries Compliance Costs

All agarwood-producing trees are listed under Appendix II of CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which means international trade is legal but requires export permits. Aquilaria malaccensis was listed first, in 1995, after India proposed that international demand threatened the species' survival; at CoP13 in Bangkok (2004), the listing was extended to every Aquilaria and Gyrinops species, taking effect in 2005.

Appendix II permits require a "non-detriment finding" (NDF) — a scientific determination that exports will not harm wild populations — and only four range states have published one: Malaysia (2008), Indonesia (2009), Thailand (2016), and India (2021). That paperwork bottleneck constrains legal wild supply and adds cost to every compliant shipment of chips and oil.

Plantations are the pressure valve. CITES reviews estimate the global stock of planted agarwood trees may have exceeded 60 million by 2022, mostly across Southeast Asia. Plantation wood is legal, traceable, and increasingly consistent, but it is generally younger and less densely resinated than wild wood, and the market prices it accordingly — which is precisely what makes plantation-derived oud viable for perfumery at accessible prices.

So Why Does the Price Vary So Much?

Oud pricing comes down to five compounding variables: resin content (grade), wild versus plantation origin, region and species, product form, and legal compliance. Stack them and the spread stops being mysterious:

• Low-resin plantation chips: from roughly USD $20/kg. Wild sinking-grade chips: up to USD $6,000/kg. Exceptional wild or kinam-type material: USD $30,000/kg and beyond.
• Pure oils multiply those inputs by distillation losses, then add days of soaking and up to 72 hours of fuel and labour per run.
• CITES permits and NDF-constrained supply add cost to every legal cross-border shipment of natural material.
• Analysts put the combined oud and agarwood market at USD $6–8 billion — large enough to sustain both $20 bakhoor chips and five-figure collector wood.

For a Canadian buyer, the practical takeaway is simple: a CAD $60–110 Arabian eau de parfum labelled "oud" is buying you a skilled oud accord; a small tola of genuine distilled oil is a different product at a different price; and any "pure wild oud" offered cheaply deserves skepticism. If you want to calibrate your nose before buying, we keep testers of our oud range on the bar at the SARA SAKINA boutique at Oakville Place (Unit 242, Oakville, Ontario), and online orders ship from Ontario with free shipping over CAD $99.