Santal Royale: Men Tien

Santal Royale was distilled in 2013 and, to this day, remains the reddest sandalwood I’ve ever smelled. It retains the signature creamy heart of the finest Mysores, but also has this red spicy musky glaze that puts it in a league of its own.

Capturing those extra layers obviously requires the best santalum album heartwood combined with expert extraction. In this case, vintage granules dating back to the 1980s that were distilled in the same pots used to craft Royal Kinam and Men Tien – using the same Oriscent parameters that put these ouds in a league of their own.

While the Royal Kinam edition zooms in on the kinamic fusion of oud and sandalwood, this one-off Men Tien edition is all about taking Santal Royale’s distinct red spicy profile and reddening it further.

But it’s not just the deep burgundy red profile of this peerless Burmese distillation, but also its pollen-creamy heart that makes Men Tien a fantastic oud to help sculpt the red creamy tone of Santal Royale. (Not to mention, where in the world do you find a perfume built around vintage Mysore santal decked out with artisanal Burmese oud?)

I’m confident a little bit of Men Tien would go a long way towards beefing up that delectable creamy red tone, but EO Bepsokes don’t hold back…

That’s why this edition contains 3 full grams of Men Tien!

Now that the Santal is drenched in red wafts of Burmese gaharu, there’s also the musky pitch of Santal Royale which this edition exhalts by… guess what?

If you thought, “Musk, obviously!” you’d be half right…

Not only does this perfume actually contain Santal Royale, but this edition gets an added one-gram shot of Royal Tibetan (worth $199) – Santal Royale infused with Tibetan musk grains – to highlight the red musky profile all the more.

If you want the supreme red creamy musky sandalwood fragrance, this perfume is full-stack madness.

Extremely limited supply.

That was the challenge I set myself when taking on the task of…