To be blunt about this, the one thing a fanatic could not call Agarwood oil or “Oud Oil” as it is more commonly known as is cheap. The most affordable Oud oils are on the lower end of $200 per Tola. This is a price that many would still feel is unusually high for an oil of any kind. Of course, Oud oils are not your typical oils, being a much high caliber with a much more complicated distilling process. In fact, these differences are a major reason why the prices for Oud oils have reached over of $5000 per Tola bottle. Of course such an exorbitant price is extremely rare, but it begs the question: Why can it get so expensive?

If there’s one thing I’m certain about, it’s the fact that the pricing is entirely determined by the market itself. The amount of genuine care and dedication a purveyor of Oud oils puts into their product, greed is out of the question. The thing with Oud oils is a drop can go a long way. So when you see that price of forty, seventy, two hundred, or even one thousand, you know it is worth every drop. Barring that, the prices aren’t gouged to make a massive profit off of a little bit of oil. Not in the slightest. The price is almost entirely equal to the cost of making the oil.

This cost comes from the extravagant woods used to produce the oils in the first place. Agarwoods are a rare form of wood that yields the most exotic Oud oils. These woods can cost as high as one thousand dollars or more per kilogram. So simply to purchase the agarwood necessary to create a high-end blend of oils, an artisan of the craft might have to spend upwards of five to ten thousand dollars on materials alone. This is before distilling costs as well. But aside from spending thousands of dollars on agarwood to produce these magnificent oils from, there is another reason why the prices stay so consistently high.

From five kilograms of Agarwood, in which a master might have spent five thousand dollars to obtain, they might only be able to produce a meager amount of oil. After shelling out thousands of dollars, spending countless hours, days, or even weeks distilling the wood and carefully crafting the environment in which the wood distills, an oil craftsman might only be able to squeeze about 1.5 grams of oil out of it. After all of their hard work and tireless effort, the yield is laughably small. This is by no means the fault of any of these incredible artists or the woods that they use. This is simply the way it is. It’s the double-edged sword of being an artisan of Oud oils. On one side, they are creating unmatchable oils with a scent that is incorruptible and unlike anything anyone has ever experienced before and will most likely never experience again. But on the other side, they must sink their time and, most importantly, money into an art where the amount of yield from the final product is eclipsed by the amount of effort and material necessary to produce it.

In short, at the end of the day creating Oud oil is a passion that is shared by only a handful of people. These oils are simply divine and to go through ones entire life without experiencing the unique and prodigious scents of the one and only Oud is simply regrettable. The prices that might drive one away from indulging in these wonders of the world are not a product of greed or inflation. It is in fact the very opposite of that. The Plantations International price represents all of the blood and sweat these artisan shed to bring the world the very best that the scented oil industry has to offer. It represents the sacrifice the craftsman endure to bring you these few drops of heavenly glory. From countless hours distilling the highest quality and highly expensive Agarwoods to squeezing out what little oil these woods will allow, that price represents the sacred culture of Oud oils. It embodies the unwillingness to compromise their proud and innovative methods for the sake of making a quick and easy profit. That is why Oud oils can and should be so expensive.