Pekanbaru opens from the dipstick with a bittersweet medicinal note interwoven with jungle florals — the kind of register that sits just on the border between green Indonesia and the lifted, slightly cooling profiles of the very best Qi Nam-style oils.
On the skin the composition resolves into a clear Indonesian jungle reading, but it carries an unusual dimension of brightness — a faint mentholic shimmer over the green, the sense that air is moving through the heart of the oil rather than sitting still. We find it fascinating in a region where most oils tend toward the dense and the still.
Sumatra has been quietly producing some of the more interesting wild Malaccensis distillations of the last few years, and Pekanbaru is, for our money, one of the finest examples we have yet sourced. A characterful, slightly unconventional Indonesian for the wearer who already knows the genre and wants to find a fresh corner of it.
Pekanbaru, Indonesia. 2021
Available in a 2.5g bottle
At Kinana, artisanal fragrance means perfumery made by hand, in small batches, by makers who answer to their materials rather than to a production schedule. Where an industrial scent is engineered for consistency and scale — built to smell identical across millions of bottles, to a tightly controlled cost, favouring synthetic bases and standardised accords — an artisanal one is composed with care around genuine naturals and well-chosen isolates, accepting the small variations that come with real ingredients rather than smoothing them away. It favours quality and provenance over yield: real oud rather than an oud-like accord, materials chosen for their character, and compositions given time to rest and mature. Our purpose at Kinana is to bring that craft within reach — fragrance with depth and individuality, revealing itself gradually on the skin and carrying the character of what it was made from, rather than a uniform impression produced at scale.
Shop with Confidence and Convenience
Enjoy a seamless shopping experience with flexible payment options and express delivery. And if you are a subscriber, receive your items with free samples with every order. Note that subscriber places are limited and if we are fully subscribed, you may be placed on a waiting list until a place becomes available.