A. With more brands offering perfumes containing oud these days, this is a very important question. If you work in sales and have been treating oud and wood as the same thing without questioning it, let us take this opportunity to learn the difference.
Rather than being completely unrelated, oud and wood differ in the breadth of what they refer to. Oud refers to one fragrance material, while wood refers to a category that includes several fragrance materials. Let us start by understanding oud.
Oud
Oud, also known as agarwood, is a fragrance material from aromatic wood, meaning wood that gives off a scent, in the Thymelaeaceae family. As the term aromatic wood suggests, its wood chips are sometimes sold as incense. High-grade material is extremely expensive and is also known as kyara.
Why is it so fragrant? When the tree is wounded and fungi enter its interior, it secretes fragrant sap to protect itself. As this dries and heat is applied, it gives off agarwood’s distinctive aroma.
Natural oud has a depth of scent that cannot be created artificially, but only a small amount is obtained over a very long period, so only a limited number of brands can use the real thing. Even when it is synthetic, however, the scent of oud differs from other woods: its distinctive rich animalic character and bitter sweetness make it extremely powerful.
To learn more, see below.
Wood and the Woody Category
We do not often say “a perfume containing wood”; instead, we call it a woody fragrance. Still, it is worth knowing that there are many different woods. The agarwood mentioned above also belongs to the woody category, but its scent is so deep that simply calling it woody seems inadequate. I think it is better to regard it as something of an exception within the woody category.
When we speak of woody fragrances or woody notes, we mean tree scents and scents associated with trees, such as forests, damp moss, and soil. I have listed some familiar fragrance materials below, so do explore them one by one.
