Now this is something that was, if not altogether commonplace, it was commonplace as far as I was concerned and I always had a bottle or two in the cabinet. For me, frankly, it's not that I could no longer get the stuff - just that the shops in the city where I would normally buy it, all closed down as the nature of shopping in your average capital city changed over the last ten or more years.
I've never not been able to get my hands on a bottle. The story is, however, basically from every single 'expert' worldwide -, that the stuff is no longer produced because Mysore sandalwood (Santalum album) is endangered.
Everything is endangered - or toxic and carcinogenic. That is why, the European IFRA 'LAW' says you cannot make or buy actual real Chanel No 5 anymore... I mean, you can, it's just that you can't in Europe from any main-street 'business.' You can, however, buy any number of bottles of colored fluid manufactured in laboratories in Europe - all at more or less the same prices as any authentic natural brewed, distilled, liquid. And sometimes, they have the sheer audacity to offer stuff at INCREDIBLY INCREDIBLY higher prices still!
...Takes fifteen years to get a Santalum album plant to grow to maturity. Takes fifteen minutes for the Bank of Beijing to buy up all the output from the farms in the Western Ghats (where Mysore sandalwood is grown) for the next ten years.
Yumthang Valley, in Sikkim - not even going to tell you what's in there... |
Yeah yeah... So, E & C's Mysore Sandalwood aftershave is 600 bucks, see.
Absolute waste of time 'arguing' with anyone over these kinds of things - be it whether or not you can really get a 'Class A gun licence' in Australia, or whether or not there are plastic Hublot watches worth fifty grand(!), or whether or not oak moss is an allergen or whether the Sandalwood they grow in Australia is actually Mysore sandalwood.
One, just one of, the Santalum Album plantations in north Western Australia. Some of the companies went broke too. But then they were quickly bought over... lol |
They grow two kinds of sandalwood tree in far north Western Australia, and Australian artisans make the finest sandalwood colognes and perfumes. Fact.
Is there a shortage...?
Don't care. The good stuff is bloody good. And I don't shop where everyone else shops so I don't care what they do in those other places (that I wouldn't go near anyway).