The opening immediately gives me incense, smoke and deep forest. There is a bitter green character to it, but not a bright green. More like the smell of a wet jungle after rain, where everything feels darker, heavier and saturated.
Sometimes I even think of the colour as somewhere between deep green and purple.
After around thirty minutes on the skin, the oil becomes more woody, but the resinous character never really leaves. It stays underneath everything, giving the oil that dark Malaysian identity I wanted from the beginning.
Then, after more time, the Malino material begins to show itself.
A softer powderiness starts appearing, rounding the heavier woods without taking away their depth.
That evolution is what I enjoy most about this oil.
It begins almost like dark incense and wet resin.
Then wood.
Then powder.
But it never loses that deep forest character.
For me, Emirati Malaya is also personal because it represents two places at once.
The wood carries the character of Southeast Asia.
The distillation carries my hand and my UAE distillery.
That is why I did not want to call it simply Malaysian 2024.
Emirati Malaya tells the fuller story.
Mostly Malaysian wood, supported by Indonesian and Malino material, transformed through an artisanal distillation in the UAE.
And when I smell it today, the one thing that keeps coming back to me is this:
Wet forest. Dark resin. Incense.
That is Emirati Malaya.
