Review of Aoud Damascus by aad de gids

yesterday I 'wore' this perfume the whole day, into the night, respraying it several times, to form a vision about the fragrance. it is a marvelous perfume. reading the reviews from the others before this, about as well the rose as the oud I read such different meanings and insights. this is always informative and along with those reviews I get means to build my own. foremost: there is a great variability in visions about the oud and the rose. I have the feeling Montales' perfume do contain 'a drop of oud oil', and before (here: below) me it is characterized as 'none present', 'barnyard', 'oud al dehn' (Hindi oud), 'woody'. I definitely smelled the oud when you first spritz the perfume on your pulse, and there is a short time window where you smell different aspects of this oud. 'barnyard' very slightly and then rather medicinal, band-aid like. even (paradoxically) synthetic like (having read this just now in an arabian website for oud (and other) attars as a characteristic of Assam-oud). then the most obvious sensation I smelled was that of a dry wood, a woody smell, deeper than sandelwood. this brought me to Tierry de Gunzberg perfume 'Terryfic Oud Extrême'. we all know there is not a kilogramme of oud oil in a canister of montale perfume. yet a tiny droplet of oud sits in the perfume, this one and others of his stable. when you can still smell the oud 'isolatory', separately, there drips through the most heavenly rose smell which defines her as just the queen of flowers. she mingles with the oud and the oud doesn't disappear but form a symbiotic dual beam of the most clear and heavenly scent. so that that is synthetics, is a fable. neither the rose nor the oud are synthetic, the synthetics of the oud is its very medicinal aspect. I have had oil of Turkish and Bulgarian Roses too. that is precisely what you smell. I have a trick developed in smelling, sniffing (yes that too). take one long haul of a sniff ininterrupted so that you almost choke in it. but that sniff takes in the seamless and sturdy clarity and depth of this twosome oud-rose or rose-oud. this is the essence of montale. yet I must not forget the resins used in this perfume, which make a foundation of frankincense-like dustiness as as well, resinoid earth-like groundedness. then I have thought about the safflower which I know since the 1970s when I was an ardent vegetarian (still am). in dutch 'saffloer' oil, but here the thistle-like flower is used for a delicate flowery smell. now in that the rose blooms backed by and fromout the oud with the persistence of the woody and synthetic (medicinal) (as being the physical essence of this oud) trait throughout the perfumes radiance, it is these TWO that constitute this perfume. the rose is really the physical and metaphysical rose from heaven, as I always smell in montales' REAL oud-rose, rose-oud perfumes. perhaps the safflower backs this strong duo also and the whole trip then is earthed in the olibanum resin and gurjam balsem. a fantastic experience. I wouldn't want it cheaper.