Introduction
In the central highlands of Vietnam, a bolt of lightning strikes an Aquilaria tree. In the following years, this tree will flood the wound with a dark and aromatic resin that has been considered more valuable than gold.
The substance is oud, a resin the Aquilaria tree produces in response to wounding and microbial colonisation (Tan et al., 2019). While this organic process often takes decades, only a small amount of oud is often produced. Despite oud’s rarity though, its smoke continues to sit at the center of religious practice across Asia and the Middle East: it is burned in Buddhist temples, named in Islamic tradition as oud al-hindi, and carried through the Muslim world as bakhoor.
However, the tension between high demand due to its ubiquitous value and long growth times has not come without a cost: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) reports that the global wild population of Aquilaria trees has dropped around 80 percent in little more than a century (CITES, 2022). All Aquilaria species are listed on CITES Appendix II, and Aquilaria crassna, the principal species planted and harvested in Vietnam, is assessed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List (CITES, n.d.; Harvey-Brown, 2018).
With its depleting quantities, the market has reached for many alternatives to oud. Today, the word oud stretches across three different meanings: wild oud formed in forest trees by natural causes; cultivated oud formed in plantation trees through inoculation; and synthetic oud formed by chemicals produced in laboratories. Yet, while countless studies have noted the differing chemical composition between the three different substances, the question of which represents “real” oud has no consensus.
Vietnam is a useful case study for this. In addition to being one of the major producers of oud, Vietnam has a century-old heritage for authenticating oud. So, as cultivated and synthetic oud increasingly displace an endangered wild supply, how do Vietnamese stakeholders define what counts as “real” oud?
This paper utilizes five original interviews with Vietnamese stakeholders: a scientist, a farmer, a business owner, a connoisseur, and a monk. While these interviews show these stakeholders agree on very little, they agree on one point: every interviewee believes that real oud begins in a wound of a tree, and that purely synthetic oud made in labs should not be considered real oud. Beyond this agreement however, their definitions diverge as each stakeholder defines authenticity through different lines of reasoning. This exploratory study argues that the perception of authenticity in oud corresponds to the unique experiences each participant has through their position in the trade. Additionally, they do not name a physical property of the wood. A second pattern also surfaces: in every interview, the stakeholder’s own words show that their definition can leak. Moreover, each interviewee concedes a case where their definition doesn’t hold true. The June 2025 decision to certify the knowledge of harvesting and processing Khánh Hòa agarwood as national intangible cultural heritage is the most recent case of a Vietnamese authority certifying oud knowledge. What that certification means for authenticity is contested among the five.
Literature Review
Disagreement over what material counts as real oud is not new in Vietnam. In Phủ biên tạp lục of 1776, Lê Quý Đôn’s survey of the southern frontier, oud was already functioning as a currency. Specifically, a village in Thuận Hóa met its annual tax obligation by owing seventy-one kilograms of agarwood sorted into two grades (Lê Quý Đôn, 1776/1959). Specifically, this hierarchy places kỳ nam oud, priced nearly the same as the weight of gold, at the top and then ranks it by colour according to a centuries-old sequence, nhất bạch, nhì thanh, tam huỳnh, tứ hắc (first white, second green, third yellow, fourth black), with all lesser grades of trầm falling below kỳ nam entirely. In fact, this is the same grading vocabulary that the connoisseur interviewee in this study uses. Historian Li Tana traces the oud trade further back to a royal monopoly held by the Nguyễn lords; Before them, it was the Cham polity whose territory the Vietnamese state absorbed (Li Tana, 1998). In fact, the search for agarwood on the central coast was a Cham institution before it was a Vietnamese one, and the heritage inscribed in 2025 rests on a Cham foundation — despite not naming it. History shows that across Vietnam, real oud has always been an instrument that an authority ranks, and furthermore, that the authority holding the power to rank has changed across centuries.
Today, this power is disputed three ways. CITES listed all Aquilaria species on its Appendix II in 2004. Under its rules, the legitimacy of oud is a question of documentation by source codes and export permits (CITES, n.d.). Then, there’s the fragrance and incense industry which now chiefly uses farmed agarwood or synthetic accords (Le, 2018). As for the large body of research, they compared the chemistry of wild and cultivated agarwood, identifying the sesquiterpenes and chromones that the wood develops, and even extending it to trace how different inoculation methods may shape different smell profiles for cultivated oud (Dinh et al., 2019; Tan et al., 2019). In short, the authority to define real oud has therefore scattered away from the Vietnamese grading tradition and toward laboratories, regulators, and marketing departments that do not share an answer.
While the chemistry is getting more precise day-by day, it still can’t establish what the people in the trade mean when they call oud real. Regina Bendix’s scholarship on authenticity argues that authenticity is a judgment produced by whoever holds the standing to make it. Thus, the more useful question rather is who is authorized to decide (Bendix, 1997). Arjun Appadurai similarly claims that objects pass between regimes of value where different criteria apply, and that each criteria depends on the person (Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986). In fact, this question of standing has its own body of literature. There’s Harry Collins and Robert Evans who argue that each group has different expertise, so a supposedly technical dispute is often more of a dispute about whose opinion matters (Collins & Evans, 2007). Similarly with official certification, Laurajane Smith says an authorized heritage where a designation confers the power to say what a tradition is also creates disagreement within the trade (Smith, 2006). Together, these literatures already suggest that authenticity is directly tied to regimes of expertise.
Research currently explains the chemistry, production, trade, and historical classification of agarwood (Dinh et al., 2019; Jung, 2013; López-Sampson & Page, 2018). Ethnographic work in Vietnam has established that quality in this trade is uncertified and that judgments of it are “inconsistent, variable across types of consumers, and highly subjective” (Le, 2018, p. 27). It also states that there’s great variation across consumer markets. Yet still, much less attention has been paid to how differently positioned participants on the production side of a single national trade adjudicate authenticity. This study will explore that gap, treating disagreement among participants as the object of study.
Materials and Methods
Research design and data collection. The primary evidence for this paper is five semi-structured original interviews which the author conducted in Vietnamese in 2026. Each interview lasted around twenty minutes and was recorded with written consent. Additionally, they followed the same sequence of questions: (1) what does real oud mean; (2) whether there was a difference between wild and cultivated oud; (3) what the interviewee thinks of synthetic aromas sold as oud; (4) whether the interviewee’s perception of “real” oud has changed over time; (5) who the interview trusts on identifying what’s real or not, (6) a question based on the their position in the trade, and (7) a closing question on the June 2025 Khánh Hòa heritage decision. Follow-up questions were improvised within each interview so that the informant could develop or qualify an answer.
Sampling. The five interviewees were chosen to span the oud trade: a research scientist, a farmer, a founder of an oud export business, a connoisseur and oud grader, and a Buddhist monk.
Transcription and translation. The recordings were transcribed to Vietnamese, then translated into English using Google Translate Advance. The author verified every translation. Terms with no English equivalent were kept in Vietnamese (ex. khí, duyên, and kỳ nam). Some translations were also discussed with the supervising teacher Mr. Creek.
Data analysis. The analysis is based on two planned comparisons. First, the study compares the informants to one another. Specifically, the different answers to each question were compared in a matrix. The five anchors came after, and inductively out of that matrix. Each answer was what the interview treated as sufficient proof. Repeated labels were grouped. The second comparison is per interview and compares the definition of an informant against a case he’d later concede. Sometimes, claims from earlier interviews were also brought up to later interviews, producing indirect exchanges.
Limitations. There are four main limitations. First, since the study is exploratory and does not generalize any interviewee into a group. Secondly, with all five informants being men, perspectives by women are missing. Thirdly, some English wording is based on the author’s reading of the Vietnamese transcription. Lastly, there’s two conflicts of interest described later.
Results
“Real” oud comes from the wound. We started with the most direct question, “When you say real oud, what do you mean?” The scientist defined oud as the chemistry of injury, calling it “scar tissue” and “wound chemistry.” The farmer said that “the dó tree [the Aquilaria tree] has to suffer before it gives agarwood.” The business owner said that “what we sell is the tree’s wound.” The connoisseur called oud “the record of how long the tree was in pain.” The monk said that “that fragrance is born from the place of pain.” While the answers are phrased differently, they are essentially pointing at the Aquilaria tree’s wound.
This agreement makes sense botanically as well, as a healthy Aquilaria tree only forms oud as a healing mechanism when injured. This agreement also implies none of the informants accepts purely synthetic oud as authentic. The reason each gives for that view is different: the scientist rejects synthetic oud because it doesn’t release the same chromone as real oud. The farmer rejects synthetic oud because a tree didn’t produce it. The business owner rejects undisclosed synthetic oud because selling it as natural is fraud. The connoisseur rejects it because synthetic oud lacks khí (living character). The monk rejects it because it skips the long chain of cause and condition that he calls duyên.
Where “real” is anchored. Each informant locates authenticity in different places that form a spectrum. Table 1 below maps this out.
The scientist believes that real oud should pass three instrumental tests: (1) DNA confirmation of the Aquilaria species, (2) microscopic confirmation of resin inside the wood structure, and (3) a gas chromatography reading of the expected compounds. He calls this standard “a chemistry question, not a metaphysical one.” The farmer anchors authenticity further out, judging based on whether the resin runs when he cuts them. When asked about his cultivated tree, he defends that “the resin comes out of the tree itself; I never made a single drop.” The business owner anchors authenticity outside the wood entirely: specifically, in documents and demand, stating that “real does not sit inside the piece of wood; it sits between me and the buyer.” The connoisseur anchors the real in the trained senses and the fire, holding that “only when oud meets fire do you know real from fake.” The monk anchors the real furthest from the wood of all, in the intention of the person making the offering, and defines real oud as “oud offered with a sincere heart.”
The wild line. The interviewee answers start diving when asked, “Is cultivated oud real oud?” The connoisseur holds the strongest opinion, ranking wild oud above cultivated and describing the difference as one between “aged wine” and “rice wine fresh from the still.” The scientist refuses that ranking as he classes cultivated oud as genuine agarwood of “a different chemotype.” The business owner goes further than the scientist and treats the preference for wild oud as commercially obsolete, calling the belief that “wild is the only real” a “1995 mindset.” The monk steps outside the dispute holding that the difference between wild and cultivated oud is “a secondary matter.” The farmer, when told that the scientist believes wild and cultivated oud are converging, agrees that: “if the substance inside is the same, then my tree and a forest tree, at bottom they are the same thing.” While the farmer and the scientist share didn’t answer using the same words, the essence of their beliefs are the same
Chemistry doesn’t make this fuzzy problem much clearer. Indeed, lab analysis of wild and cultivated agarwood does find consistent differences, and mass spectrometry identified eleven of thirteen samples correctly across a wide sample size of 150+ specimens from five countries (Espinoza et al., 2014). However, samples with little resin weren’t able to be sorted.. So, chemical research can confirm that wild and cultivated agarwood differ, and it can often say which is which. Still, it doesn’t confirm whether the difference the connoisseur detects is significant. When asked whether aged cultivated oud is the same as wild oud (cultivate oud becomes more similar to wild oud with age), the business owner accepts that buyers can often not tell the two apart. The connoisseur answers more directly, claiming that: “that is eighty percent of the market, not eighty percent of the trained nose.”
The leak in “real.” Side by side, the five definitions may look like stable parallels of disagreement. Nearing the end of the interview though, the reality was very different: every interviewee concedes a case where their own definition didn’t hold. The scientist for instance, whose real is dependent on chemical findings, concedes that his instrument cannot identify kỳ nam, the highest grade in the trade. The farmer, whose real is oud that a genuine tree produced, concedes that he has never seen wild oud and thus, is judging his own trees against a standard he’s never seen. The business owner, whose real is based on paperwork, concedes that Vietnamese oud is often relabeled in the Gulf as “Cambodia” to fetch a better price. The connoisseur, whose real is read by the trained nose, makes two concessions: (1) he reports that most oud now sold as wild is dug from dead stumps or smuggled across the Lao border and (2) that an aged cultivated sample once deceived him to the point where he refunded his grading fee. The monk concedes the largest case of all, observing that the oud treated with the most reverence such as those burned during ancestors’ mournings on the family altar, is also the oud that is least inspected.
Five readings of one decision. In June 2025 the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism issued Decision 1651, which inscribed knowledge of harvesting and processing Khánh Hòa agarwood on Vietnam’s list of national intangible cultural heritage under the category of folk knowledge (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, 2025). It should be clarified this certifies a body of knowledge and craft practice rather than defining which oud is authentic. At the same time, Vietnam has started leveraging its agarwood heritage to form soft power (Nguyễn Duy Thái, 2023). When asked about the decision, the five interviewees had very different responses.
The scientist read the decision as a category error that should be kept in check. He held that heritage recognition “is a cultural act, not a scientific act” and that chemistry “cannot certify terroir.” The farmer believes these changes don’t affect him, stating that “a decision way down in the Center does not make my dó trees any different.” The business owner read it as a commercial instrument, reducing it to purely whether “Khánh Hòa heritage” can allow him to sell at a higher price. If it can, he states, “it is a good tool.” Otherwise it is “noise.” The connoisseur read it with unease, fearing that “heritage” can form “a halo” over cultivated oud so that buyers “buy with an easy mind.” Lastly, the connoisseur judges the decision as “polishing a name,” and the monk reads it as a worldly matter that “adds nothing and takes away nothing.” He says we should be more focused on farmers and ethics.
Discussion
Standpoint and criteria of authenticity. Across the interviews, each interviewee’s definition of authenticity is simply based on each person’s unique perspective. This study cannot confirm whether participants strategically defend those definitions as no clear evidence is available. However, these interviews do demonstrate a recurring correspondence between standpoint, expertise, and criteria of authenticity, which is the pattern Collins and Evans (2007) describe when an apparent dispute about evidence turns out to be a dispute about whose expertise counts. For instance, the farmer’s agreement with the scientist shows that the divergence is not one between expert and layman. Similarly, the indirect exchange between the business owner and the connoisseur over aged cultivated oud shows the question on cultivated oud can’t be confirmed by data. Moreover, the two are disagreeing about whose verdict counts rather than a measurement.
Where each criterion meets its limit. These five concessions form a pattern that is the main finding in this paper: the informant states a precise definition of “real” oud that breaks down where it matters most. For instance, the scientist bases oud’s authenticity in chemistry but cannot verify “kỳ nam,” the most valuable grade of oud. Furthermore, each informant is most confident in the area where his definition fails. Since no one agrees that the authenticity of the oud relies on the physical wood material itself, its authenticity must be based elsewhere. Rather, the authenticity is based on what “tools” of verification his role has given him, and where this verification tool stops working shows how much authority his role has in the trade.
One might argue that these stakeholders are not defending a specific position, but are just believing in good faith what real oud is based on their training. This is reasonable given that each stakeholder presents a case his position doesn’t support. Indeed, a sincere belief can have a limit without being selfish; the pattern noted here does not explore the motive of each stakeholder. What the pattern does establish though is that sincerity and verifiability are separate in this case, and each stakeholder’s instrument for verifiability is based on his background.
What certification cannot settle. Decision 1651 offers a useful test for this paper’s argument because unlike other parts of the interview, the stakeholders are now discussing the same object. For clarification, the decision certified the body of knowledge around oud rather than its authenticity. The same disagreement would occur. Smith (2006) calls this an authorized heritage discourse where an authority inherits the power to define said tradition as well as give people something to further argue about. This pattern isn’t unique to oud though. For Darjeeling tea, a valuable black tea from India, the label formed disagreement between the state, the market, and producers (Besky, 2014). Of course, it’s not exactly the same since India’s Darjeeling tea label certified a place of origin while Khánh Hòa’s verified a body of knowledge. Still, it still applies that an “official” label of authenticity only creates more disagreement.
Limitations and future research. This study was based on five conversations with men. Thus, this study has left out many perspectives from the trade, specifically those that are often marginalized: namely, Cham and ethnic-minority harvesters who catalyzed the trade and women who organizes sorting and small-scale distillation. A comprehensive study could include them. Additionally, two questions are open. First, whether the connoisseur’s claim that wild oud differs cultivated oud is true under blind testing. Secondly, whether the Khanh Hoá decision creates a price premium (which is the business owner’s question). These questions would test oud’s authenticity outside of interviews.
Conclusion
In short, the five Vietnamese interviewees cannot agree exactly on what attribute of this “liquid gold” makes oud real. Each person bases oud’s authenticity on their different positions within the trade. Thus, real oud is not a property of the material but a verdict delivered from a standpoint. This interpretation aligns with Tsing (2015), who tracing matsutake mushrooms across the industry, found that the value of a rare forest product like the mushrooms are derived at the intersection of perspectives rather than a material property of the object itself.
There one thing not a verdict though, is that oud is a resin produced when Aquilaria trees are wounded (Tan et al., 2019). This unanimous disagreement extends to that all five interviewees reject synthetic oud because it doesn’t go through the same process. This also makes it hard to differentiate wild oud from farmed because while some instruments can differ the two, it cannot assign the “real” to one — one of the noted disagreements between the five stakeholders. With increasing endangerment and restrictions, the forest struck by lightning this paper opened with is now mostly memory, one that’s only “real” to who made it.