Choya Loban
Note Profile
About
Choya loban is frankincense that has been burnt on purpose and the smoke collected. Indian loban resin is roasted in a sealed pot until it chars and the aromatic smoke is condensed, so the bright citrus-pine top of ordinary olibanum is gone and what remains is smoke over balsamic resin. It smells of the aftermath of burning incense rather than of incense.
Scent Profile
Smoke dominates and is the point of the material: the smell of resin that has been through fire. Beside it and nearly as strong is the tar itself - the phenols, cresols and guaiacol that dry distillation makes, read as tarry and medicinal rather than burnt. Under both, a broad amber-resinous balsamic body survives the charring and gives the note its warmth. A dry woody floor sits below that. There is an animalic edge from p-cresol and a burnt-sugar sweetness from the furfural derivatives. A faint earthy quality closes it. Sources disagree about how much sweetness the fire leaves behind.
ScentWheel
Read off the wheel, not a label applied to the note.
Origin
Destructive, or dry, distillation of Indian frankincense resin. The resin is heated in a closed clay or iron vessel without steam until it pyrolyses, and the tarry condensate is collected from a gooseneck. Pyrolysis breaks the resin down into phenols, cresols, guaiacol and tar compounds that steam-distilled olibanum does not contain. The product is a dark amber to brown viscous liquid. Choya is the process, not the material: choya raal is dry-distilled sal resin and choya nakh dry-distilled seashell.
Usage in Perfumery
A base note and a fixative for dark incense work. It goes into heavy amber accords, ecclesiastical and temple-incense compositions, oud bases and dark-woody structures where ordinary olibanum reads too clean or too bright. It pairs with labdanum, benzoin, opoponax and styrax. It is a traditional backbone of Indian attars such as shamama and hina, and it is dosed in drops.
Similar Notes
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