In Part 2 of her interview, Enfleurage owner Trygve Harris discusses the ethics of sourcing agarwood, the challenges of pleasures of living in Oman, and her modern enfleurage project in Colombia. You can find Part 1 here.

In your FAQ and articles on the Enfleurage website, you make it clear that the aromatics trade is politically and ethically complex. It’s sometimes difficult to tell where exactly something is coming from, and you often deal with regions that are rife with conflict. Can you talk about a difficulty you’ve faced?

Yeah, I’ve gotten pretty cynical over the years, whether it’s finding what “organic” might mean in Nepal, or just being in New York. You might find that everyone is screaming “endangered species” just because everyone else is, or that we all accept a line of BS just because we want to. Sometimes you have to keep looking and follow your hunch.

I am probably best known for agarwood. It was (and still is) on all the lists, as endangered and overharvested etc. Believe me it was weird to be on the other side of the environmental argument. It was not comfortable at all. I don’t know that we all resolved it to mutual satisfaction as I still hear all about this “sustainable harvest” oil, but it’s very complex.

My argument was basically that we are losing the forests of SE Asia despite, not because of agarwood, although the wild supply in Laos is pretty well finished…

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