Onward!

Many of you have asked what's up with our distillery and when are we restarting production and where are we moving to and other questions in this vein. I know I keep saying one thing and then another but we do actually now have a plan. Here's the deal:

At the beginning of 2023, as we were visiting Dubai, thinking perhaps we should move the distillery there from Muscat as Oman had become very difficult due to circumstances after HM Qaboos passed away and then covid.

But I had a serious medical situation, which the doctors in Dubai found. I had open heart surgery to replace my mitral valve, in March 2023, in Abu Dhabi. At the same time, we discovered I had another cancer (my third, I am geneticially predisposed.) So rather than start working, I started chemo and radiation. Due perhaps to the chemo, the heart immedicaly recalcified, and I had another valve replacement open heart surgery in New York in October 2024. This one was far more thorough, and the past year has been spent healing from all of it. 

In the meantime, the UAE proved to not be the right place for us to distill frankincense, although it's a very good place to live, and an excellent atmosphere for rest and recuperation. Why all this information? 

To explain so that people understand why I took a long distillation hiatus. 

And more importantly, I want to explain why we are now in process to relocate our frankincense distillery to Cyprus, where we will be joining our friends and wild crafters/steam distillers/seed pressers/ at Liven Cyprus https://livencyprus.com/

Liven specializes in local wild Cypriot harvesting, small distillations of herbs, including many of our labiatae friends like rosemary, lavender, sage, marjoram, and wild thyme; also cold pressing for oils such as wild castor bean, jojoba, almond kernel, citrus seeds, moringa, and the like. It's fabulous and exactly where we belong.

We hope to be water-distilling our beautiful Oman frankincense, as before, in copper, slowly and sweetly, by January, 2026. Perhaps we will also try our hand at some other resins. There will be plenty of updates, and there will be some interesting new items all around. 

There's a lot going on. Don't worry, our cats are all coming and so is my assistant, who is now an expert in frankincense distillation.