There is wood, and then there is heartwood. The Santalum album of Mysuru has carried the prayers of this city for over a thousand years. Its scent is something you feel in your spine before you smell it in the air—creamy, deep, profoundly meditative.
I was raised surrounded by logs of it. My father could tell you what district a piece of wood came from just by running his thumb over the grain and smelling the sawdust. It was an era of abundance, before over-harvesting changed the landscape forever.
Today, true Mysuru sandalwood is heavily regulated, and rightly so. The forests need time to breathe and recover from a century of aggressive trade. But in the vacuum left behind, a flood of synthetic 'sandalwood' and lesser species from other continents have taken the name without bearing the soul.
We source our sandalwood exclusively through legitimate, regulated government auctions. Yes, it is rarer now. Yes, the prices have escalated beyond what we could have imagined in the eighty's. But when you distill the true heartwood, the result is unmistakable.
It doesn't scream for attention like modern synthetic bases. It lingers quietly, settling into your skin over the span of a day, becoming a part of you. The true scent of Mysuru sandalwood is the scent of permanence.