Art and science, in essence

An appreciation of the farms where we source our essential oils 

What’s your favourite botanical scent? 

Would it be the medicinal crispness of tea tree? The spicy, cooling aroma of Eucalyptus? Rosemary’s woody seductiveness? Or a light, playful spritz from the peel of a pink grapefruit? 

If you’ve ever run your hands through a rosemary plant, walked a park or bushland after rain, or released the juice from the skin of a plump, ripe mandarin, you’ll have been in thrall to the wild through your sense of smell, connected directly to the oldest and most primitive part of your brain. 

Essential oils. It’s their ability to harmonise our moods as well as their extraordinary antibacterial properties that make these aromatic champions so ‘essential’ to our products. 

Apparently, while they are indeed the essence of the plant, strictly speaking they’re not oils, but tiny volatile molecules found in tiny sacs or globules within its leaves, peel, stems, flowers or bark. 

Which makes the processes to capture and preserve commercial quantities of these hero ingredients, as naturally as possible, a true art as well as a science.