Material guide: sandalwood — the wood whose oil output fell to roughly a third

Sandalwood oil is concentrated in mature heartwood, so felling one tree cannot be made good by the next growing season. Demand continued while production declined; the catalogue row of Australian sandalwoods and synthetic substitutes records the shape of that supply gap.

What matters

• Real Indian sandalwood oil production has fallen hard: from roughly 180–200 tonnes across six decades to about 70 tonnes in the 2004 records (wood consumption, counted separately, runs around 4,000 tonnes a year). That catalogue row of replacers, specialties and Australian sandalwood is the industry's answer to the gap.
• The smell is carried by α- and β-santalol: creamy wood that barely ever leaves, with substantivity at the top of the scale.
• A scientific easter egg: your skin's keratinocytes carry an olfactory receptor (OR2AT4), and a synthetic sandalwood molecule is its agonist. A cell-culture-level finding; do not read it as "sandalwood perfume heals skin".

The record

Main item	sandalwood oil (heartwood distillation)
CAS	8006-87-9
Odour	sweet, woody, balsamic, cashew, terpenic, herbal, spicy, sandalwood
Strength	medium
Substantivity	recorded as 400 hours (neat)
Specific gravity	0.970–0.978 (25 °C)
Shelf life	24 months or longer (cool, dark, sealed)
Registers	GRAS, JECFA, FEMA GRAS, IFRA

Plain reading: CAS is the material's ID number, and "400 hours" is the usual top-of-scale convention of this database's substantivity field (the storage article explains), same class as patchouli: a base that essentially never leaves. "Cashew" in the descriptors is there on purpose. Good sandalwood carries a nutty cream, and that cream is exactly what separates it from every other wood.

A tree whose oil output fell to roughly a third

The cost article quoted Yan and colleagues' 2024 review in Biomolecules; here the numbers come home to the material's own page:

Records show that the annual consumption of Indian sandalwood is approximately 4,000 tonnes. According to 2004 records, oil production has decreased drastically to around 70 tonnes compared to the last six decades, when output was roughly 180 to 200 tonnes.

The same review names the smell's carriers: (Z)-α-santalol and (Z)-β-santalol are the most vital ingredients contributing to sandalwood oil's bioactivities and unique woody odour characteristics. The review's own subject, meanwhile, is engineering yeast and bacteria into cell factories for santalene and santalol. Same pattern the patchouli guide showed: when a natural molecule matters enough, the industry builds it a route that does not depend on farmland.

That is why the catalogue looks the way it does. 14 supplied items carry sandalwood in the name, and the structure is the supply story itself:

Item	What it is
sandalwood oil (81 suppliers)	the oil itself
sandalwood specialty / replacer (35 / 27)	synthetic reconstructions — the direct answer to the supply gap
Australian sandalwood, S. spicatum (24 + 11)	a different species of the genus — another origin system's answer
santalol (10)	the isolated/synthesised core, when only the heart of the smell is wanted
CO2 extract (6)	the supercritical version

(Also: the famous synthetic sandalwood trade names, Sandalore, Javanol and friends, are absent from our database. Same lesson as the Hedione guide: trade-name worlds must be mapped back through chemical names and CAS.)

The olfactory receptor in your skin

A 2014 study found that the olfactory receptor OR2AT4 in human keratinocytes responds to the synthetic sandalwood odorant Sandalore, with proliferation- and migration-related changes in cell and organ culture. The material was not natural sandalwood oil, and the result does not show that wearing sandalwood heals skin.

For the missing steps between a dish experiment and a human efficacy claim, see What did that fragrance study actually prove?.

Smelling it

• Dilute to 10% before you judge it. The first time I smelled it neat I filed it under turpentine and nearly moved on; the cream only shows up in dilution.
• Practise the phrase "creamy wood". Line it up against patchouli (earthy wood) and the cedars (pencil wood), and the wood family comes apart in your hands.
• Top-of-scale substantivity makes it one of the fixation article's "last ones standing". What your formula smells like after hour eight, it has a large vote in.
• The price spread is enormous. East Indian oil, Australian oil and replacers can sit orders of magnitude apart, so starting on Australian oil or a replacer and graduating to Indian oil once you can hear the difference is an entirely honourable route.

Regulatory

Listed on GRAS, JECFA, FEMA GRAS, IFRA. As always: registers carry no limit values. Sandalwood is regulatorily uncomplicated; what deserves attention instead is source legality and species. True Indian sandalwood is regulated in its origin countries, so read the botanical name and the santalol content on the specification.

Buying it

1. Decide which layer you want: the East Indian article, the Australian species, a replacer, or isolated santalol. Four price tiers, four different needs.
2. Read the santalol percentage on the specification; it is the core grade indicator for sandalwood oil.
3. It keeps. Woody bases spare you the freshness race (contrast the oxidation trilogy family).

→ Sandalwood oil in the database: full properties, supplier list, suggested pairings. → Australian sandalwood | Santalol | Search by odour: try "woody creamy" for its neighbours.

References

X. Yan et al., Biological properties of sandalwood oil and microbial synthesis of its major sesquiterpenoids, Biomolecules, 14(8), 971 (2024). PMID 39199359

D. Busse et al., A synthetic sandalwood odorant induces wound-healing processes in human keratinocytes via the olfactory receptor OR2AT4, Journal of Investigative Dermatology, 134(11), 2823–2832 (2014). PMID 24999593