There is a category of perfumery called oud. The tree behind it does nothing remarkable until it is injured. A.002 is built on the Assamese grade, which is the quietest of them.
Aquilaria agallocha is an unremarkable evergreen until it is wounded. When the tree is infected by a particular mould, it defends itself by saturating the affected heartwood with a dark, dense resin. That resin is agarwood. Distilled, it becomes oud — the most expensive raw material in perfumery by weight, and one of the oldest. The Assamese variety, what the trade calls Hindi oud, is widely held by serious perfumers to be the most layered of all: less brashly animalic than the Gulf material, more medicinal in the fine sense, quieter and more dignified as it dries.
Why it costs what it does
Wild Aquilaria is now listed under CITES, and most legitimate oud comes from plantation trees inoculated on purpose and left for years. Yield is low and variable, which is why the oil is priced by the tola and why a single reformulation can move a composition by more than a customer expects. The record carries a revision number for exactly that reason.
The tree makes the resin only where it has been wounded.
Most oud sold in fragrance is not oud. It is a reconstruction built from a handful of aroma chemicals, and it is a reasonable thing to make: it is stable, it is repeatable, and it does not depend on a wounded tree. It also smells like a decision rather than a material. We use the distillate, and the price of A.002 is mostly that choice.
How A.002 is built
A.002 After the Silence opens on Kashmir saffron and bergamot — dry, faintly metallic — then settles into the Assamese oud at its centre, with Turkish rose and nutmeg rounding its edges and Mysore sandalwood, patchouli and amber beneath. Macerated ten weeks, which is the longest of the five. Twelve hours or more on skin, and still on a scarf the next day.
The resin only forms where the tree has been damaged. That is the whole of the material, and most of the reason it is in this collection.