About Enfleurage essential oils
We strive to bring you only the highest quality essential oils for your aromatherapy, culinary, vibrational or perfumery needs. Most of our oils are directly sourced from the farms and stills. We buy organic whenever feasible and otherwise rely mainly on small family farms, local gatherers, and small cottage industries. Our emphasis is on quality and terroir. Certain places are known for a particular plant--some plants are happiest growing in certain places, due to climatic conditions, soil composition, elevation and the like. It's a term usually used with wine. For more on terroir, check the wiki page. You can see that terroir is usually an integral part of the quality, as where a plants loves growing and this in turn brings out the strongest, happiest components of that plant.
Many of our costlier oils are GC tested for purity and we grade our oils based on smell, taste, colour, and vibrancy as well. We travel through the world as much as possible to see growing practices and distillations for ourselves. Nothing is added to our essential oils and hydrosols. No preservatives, no isolates, no “enhancers”, no alcohol. What you get is the aromatic soul of the plant. Purely.
Are all our oils organic?
Not all oils are available with an organic certification. The reasons are two-fold. One, some places simply don't have the infrastructure. The second reason is the cost. Many small producers cannot afford the high annual fee for certification. This has no bearing on whether pesticides were used or the state of the ground water. It's just not affordable. In some developed countries such as France land is certified organic for wild gathering. This is really great, but it doesn't diminish other wild harvests, which may occur in equally pristine areas but without the certification. Also, sometimes organic certification means less that it should, due to human nature and the high premium (and more money) put on organic certification.
Where do the wild crafted oils come from?
These botanicals are generally harvested from remote areas such as the Laurentian forest of Quebec, the Omani desert, the Himalayan foothills and the Lao jungle. In all cases the harvesters are local people with a direct interest in the harvest and their future. Every effort is made to insure that these harvests are legal and ethical, including any plants listed as endangered species. Please bear in mind that as with organic certification, all is sometimes not what it seems. Some essential oils, such as frankincense, and agarwood, were never in danger of extinction--and any question of over-harvesting would need to be understood on a case per case basis, and is sometimes the actual result of moves to control a wild species by insinuating the botanical is soon to be tradable only with certificates that a few (mostly large of course,) companies get.
What type of farms do we deal with?
In most cases, we deal only with small, family farms, and co-ops. Some of these cannot offer organic certification, although organic certification is becoming the norm now. The distilleries we buy from grow without pesticides or inorganic fertilizers. In most instances we have personally visited.
Do we offer "Therapeutic grade"?
Yes, of course. But this is a meaningless statement as there is no standard explaining what that is. It's an MLM term--Multi-level Marketing. Nowadays we see this term everywhere, but, again, it's a corporate sales slogan, and not really a thing. There are generally accepted terms of "food grade," and "commercial grade," and "pharmaceutical grade" but not "therapeutic grade." Pharmaceutical grade is grown specifically for the pharmaceutical industry, and requires essential oils to be treated as medical products, with exact levels of constituents, and not much variation. This is at odds with the spirit of aromatherapy, and the wild and variable nature of the oils we deal with. Food grade should mean more than it does. Commercial grade is a very low standard (as far as natural therapies are concerned,) and allowances are made for adulteration and "nature identical." We offer the best oils we can find; our standards are extremely high and all of our oils are pure, fresh, and possessing their aromatic and therapeutic properties, as well as being suitable for culinary use where applicable.
Absolutes, Essential Oils and Enfleurage?
Technically, essential oils are water or steam distilled. Although we have a tendency to call all of the oils "essential oils" for convenience, essential oils, absolutes and enfleurages are three different things. The distillation process requires boiling, and water boils at 212º, (100C.) Some flowers won't put up with this and their fragrance breaks down. The solution (put very simply) is to use a medium with a lower boiling temperature than water. This is usually hexane. The end product is called an absolute, and the scent is often bigger, richer and more complex than an essential oil. Absolutes are great for perfumery. Some people use them in aromatherapy, and some don't. The argument against is usually that absolutes retain some hint of hexane, which is not physically the case, but vibrationally it's possible. Sometimes, you will find a hexane smell when you open the bottle of an absolute - this usually evaporates off quickly and is mostly found with absolutes from developing countries where the hexane quality standard is not so high, or the extraction is newer and not so experienced. It's up to you to decide for yourself if you want to include absolutes in your aromatherapy practice, but you won't find a jasmine or carnation essential oil, just the absolutes. Enfleurage is our new extraction process and we are happy to offer oils made by a modern version of this process. It involves a gentle coaxing of aromatic molecules into palm oil, which is allowed to saturate over time and then is washed with alcohol, which is then distilled to separate out the oil.
About our Incense?
Our incense and exotics change frequently. Our incense is natural and in raw bulk form. Frankincense, Myrrh, and agarwood are our incenses. These incenses need to be burned on charcoal.
The sandalwood situation
A sad situation but one we need to look at with clear eyes. There is a tiny amount of sandalwood oil from India, Santalum album. But this is not available. It is strictly controlled. If you are curious about the annual export allowance of legal Indian sandalwood, then please go and negotiate the Indian government websites. Basically, you will not find Santalum album from India anywhere. There is none coming from Mysore, none from Tamil Nadu, and none from any "recently opened forests in Kerala." What I suspect (but admittedly have no concrete proof of,) is that this sandalwood oil comes from Africa, from Tanzania perhaps, and comes up by sea through the port of Cochin and that would technically make it "from Kerala" if you stretch it. Africa is still an easy place to steal natural resources from, as long as you have the transportation solutions. Minerals, gems, timber, whatever, it's all there, and most countries don't have a lot of luck safeguarding these, or they succumb to corporate lures of money and help, most of which come with significant strings.
Most of the world's Santalum album now comes out of Australia! Ours comes from Sri Lankan plantations. Sandalwood is a slow growing, parasitic tree, and it was not managed well in India. I am aware that many western essential oil companies offer attars these days and personally I'm skeptical, but I honestly don't know for sure if they are real or not.
When I investigated these attar distilleries in UP in Jan-Feb 2008, I found plenty of plasticizers and phthlates in the attar distilleries in Kannauj. Naturally, every distiller had an excuse about how attars were available both with sandalwood and chemically..... I tried to set up a situation where I would personally buy sandalwood logs at the auction, escort them up to the distilleries of Uttar Pradesh and stay for the entire distillation. At any price. Despite assurances to the contrary, this proved to be impossible. I get exhausted just thinking about it now.
We also see sandalwood coming from different species, other than album, and from different countries. That's all I can say on the world sandalwood situation.
The agarwood situation
Agarwood was our specialty from our start until 2011, when we opened our frankincense distillery in Salalah, Oman. It was relatively unknown, a hidden aromatic, until the movement to declare it over-harvested and on the road to being endangered. It's doubtful to me this was ever the case, as agarwood is a fast growing tree and plantations are easy to start and maintain. The difficulty came with infecting the tree with pathogens, kicking off the aromatic resin, which was a defensive response to the infection. In those days, agarwood became a very hot commodity, with plantations springing up everywhere, often hosting guest houses, or fishing resorts, to pay costs until the trees started to pay their estimated value. It was a gold rush, in a way, a massive scramble with many people seeing quite a financial opportunity. Honestly, the agarwood plantations were not my cup of tea, as I am more drawn to the Terroir, and the natural rhythms of the plants. While I am very pro-plantation in most cases, in agarwood it was a bit different, as the trees had to be infected and stood mutely rooted into the ground, while holes were drilled up and down the trunks, and poison injected into them. All the people fighting over which poison to use, and the stoic trees forced to put up with abuse, was disgusting. In Laos, where most of our agarwood came from, the CITES certificates were obtained by two large companies, neither of which were Lao, but both of which probably paid quite well for them. I have no proof but this is my feeling as I was there and although I was initially on board with the endangered species talk and the need for regulations, as anyone would be, I saw how exactly how and what it became.
The frankincense situation
We have our own distillery in Oman and have been making our own frankincense oil since 2011. The Company is Enfleurage Middle East, LLC, and its website is here.
We buy fresh frankincense from the mountains in Dhofar and have it sent up to us in Muscat while it's still fresh and gooey. We hydro-distill in multiple copper alembics, and reuse/recycle our cooling water and everything else; we generate very little waste. Our entire production is gravity fed and by hand. We make frankincense and a frankincense/myrrh co-distillation, and we have the essential oils and hydrosols available from New York, and wholesale in bulk from Oman. If you are interested in kilos of frankincense oil or 20-30 kilo containers of hydrosol, please send an email to trygve@enfleurage.com
There is a huge mobilization now to get frankincense under CITES as there are claims it's overharvested. The Omanis manage their frankincense trees very well, and most of the trees are not tapped. Additionally, there are plantations and greenhouses and this magnificent tree is embraced with true love and respect, especially in Dhofar. The story will differ according to the country, but it's not as simple as those crying endangered would have you believe.
Real, non-adulterated agarwood oil?
Yes, agarwood has been my obsession and specialty for 14 years. I have traveled all over the world for it, and have personally witnessed the entire chain, from raw material gathered through the bottling of the oil. But the main test, once again, is smelling, and how long the fragrance lasts.
Animal products
We don't usually have these, due the way these are "harvested." As far as I know, all extractions of musk, castorum, and civet are cruel and not something we will support. We do not believe in the stories of "ethically harvested" musk or "cruelty free" civet. However, when animal products can be gathered, then we are delighted to have them. Ambergris is usually found on beaches, although I think perhaps the whaling industry, especially in Japan, may also seek ambergris. But our ambergris is Arabian. The other animal product we carry is African Stone which is the concentrated fecal matter of Africa's Rock Hyrax.