Ensar Oud — EO No 2
Essence
EO No 2 is Ensar Oud’s deer-musk centerpiece, the second in the EO trilogy and an avowed “ode to musk.” Built around genuine, ethically and legally sourced Siberian deer musk, it surrounds that animalic core with cumin and coriander spice, dual roses, jasmine sambac, black tea, four sandalwoods, oud, civet, and labdanum. The result is a dark, earthy, spicy-animalic, woody musk that reads to many as a vintage-French chypre in modern artisanal dress, distinctive for foregrounding a real natural musk that synthetic-trained noses sometimes struggle to detect at first.
Scent Profile
The opening, in the first 10 to 20 minutes, is a fresh-ish spicy accord of coriander and cumin over pink pepper, sometimes reading green and bitter. The cumin gives a primal, sweaty-skin facet that defines the top; some noses catch a brief citrus brightness, but spice over musk is the signature open. The heart, from roughly one to three hours, brings a musky, woody, rose phase. The two roses and jasmine sambac soften the spice, black tea adds a dry tannic facet, and the deer musk asserts itself — dark, earthy, furry, even “mushroomy” and pheromonal, yet by most reports not skanky or barnyard. A notable quirk is that several experienced wearers cannot smell the musk at all for their first few wearings, since natural deer musk can read as near-anosmic to synthetic-trained noses; after that it becomes the dominant, almost overwhelming note. The drydown past three hours is a woody-ambered-musk skin scent. Mysore and the other sandalwoods turn creamy, labdanum adds resinous warmth, and Papuan oud and African civet supply a leathery-animalic depth, with the musk persisting to the very end. The fragrance moves through distinct stages — spicy-floral, then musky-woody-rose, then woody-ambered-musk — rather than running linear, but the deer musk is the constant thread.
Performance
Longevity is consistently rated very high, with wearers citing the musk abiding at least 10 hours and the EDP lasting to the very end. The Pure Parfum is extremely concentrated; its sillage dials back after one to two hours, settling into a potent skin scent rather than a room-filler, while projection is moderate after the opening. The musk’s intensity reportedly builds with maceration, a recurring trait of the house’s fresh bottles. A little goes a long way — two sprays of the Pure Parfum is potent — favoring careful skin application.
Wearing Context
EO No 2 is best framed as a cooler-weather, evening or intimate-setting fragrance given its dark, spicy-animalic musk and leather-chypre character. One devoted wearer calls the original unusually wearable for an animalic — it “shows, it does not shout,” an old-money musk wearable on most occasions — distinguishing it from funkier house variants. It skews masculine-of-unisex: wearers uncomfortable with dark woods, spice, resins, animalics, or natural non-laundry musk will read it as masculine, and anyone expecting clean or sweet musk should look elsewhere. It shines as a connoisseur’s experience scent in cool, close settings, while the cumin-and-sweat facet is its main social-perception risk.
Comparisons & DNA
EO No 2 is the musk pillar of the EO No 1 / No 2 / No 3 trilogy and is closely tied in-house to Tigerlust, sharing a vintage leather-chypre feel that reads more classically French than Arabian. For mainstream context, it is compared to Guerlain Mitsouko, and its related Tibetan Musk to vintage Guerlain Jicky and Mouchoir de Monsieur. Within its own lineage, the variants swap the musk type: Kashmir is greener and more bitter-pungent, while Tonkin is juicier, creamier, and more polished. Cross-house, Areej Le Doré’s musk-forward work occupies adjacent territory. As an all-natural deer-musk composition it has no designer-dupe clone; genuine natural musk cannot be meaningfully duplicated.
Reception
Reception is strongly positive among the small group who have tried it, though the volume is low and no mainstream critic has reviewed it. Admirers hail it as a benchmark natural musk — “the perfume of the century,” “the real deal” — and praise the superb blending and material quality; one wearer names it his single favorite Ensar. The criticisms cluster around four points: the anosmia issue, where many initially do not get the musk at all; the cumin-and-sweat “body odor” opening that some find off-putting; the price, judged a little too high; and a minority who find it boring or monochromatic. Some early skepticism questioned whether the house’s superlative marketing was outrunning the juice, and a few respected reviewers were notably reserved. The consensus verdict is to sample first rather than blind-buy.
Versions & Reformulation
EO No 2 launched in 2018 in two concentrations sharing the same formula: an EDP at $395/50ml and a much more concentrated Pure Parfum at $790/50ml. The two are identical in composition, the sole difference being that much of the Pure Parfum’s ethanol is deer-musk tincture rather than plain ethanol, giving it extra muskiness and a handmade leather case. The EDP reads more traditional and vintage-French, while the Pure Parfum is darker and more intense. Beyond the original, the house released musk-swapped editions — Kashmir (2021), Tonkin, and Tibet — which are distinct compositions rather than reformulations. Fans regard the original 2018 formula as a singular statement.
Acquisition Notes
This sits firmly in the ultra-luxury tier, with the EDP at $395 and the Pure Parfum at $790, both 50ml, at launch; later variants priced similarly or higher and are now largely sold out. The bottles ship in the house’s black box, the Pure Parfum in handmade Italian calf-leather casing. The house does not officially split or decant, so trial quantities flow through individual splitters rather than the major decant services. The realistic risks are turned or aged juice, confusing the many musk variants, and unmacerated fresh bottles underperforming, so confirm exactly which version a bottle is and buy from trusted sources.
Notable Facts & Lore
- Ensar framed EO No 2 as the culmination of “a 15-year-long obsession with musk,” a departure for a self-described “Oud Man” whose thing had “always been leather and tobacco.”
- His launch copy is vivid: musk “drinking black tea under a canopy of cedar — in a primal, peppery scent of steaming bedroom sweat.”
- He repeatedly laments modern perfumery’s debasement of musk: “today ‘musc’ means to perfume what ketchup does to hotdogs.”
- The musk was ethically and legally sourced via the Russian government’s small annual allotment of Siberian deer auctioned to hunters, and the Pure Parfum visibly contains musk residue in the juice.
- The leather casing was hand-worked by leather artisan Habib Dingle.
- The natural-musk anosmia phenomenon, where wearers cannot smell the musk for their first few wearings, is the fragrance’s defining talking point.