Summer 23

This perfumer’s ingredient is literally worth its weight in gold. Native to the eastern Himalayas, the osmanthus tree is a small shrub with pale spring flowers from which the oil is extracted. Its scent is beloved in China, where legend has it that a huge osmanthus tree grows on the moon.

Our damask roses are grown in the Rose Valley in Bulgaria. They are hand-picked in the early mornings and must be quickly distilled - some pickers even take their copper stills to the fields, heating the roses over wood fires to extract the precious drops that each bloom yields.

Ffern’s geranium, Pelargonium graveolens, is also known as the rose geranium. Legend has it that this flower was created when the prophet Mohammed, after bathing in a river, laid his shirt upon a mallow branch to dry. The mallow was so honoured that it transformed into the beautiful rose geranium.

Our nutmeg grows on the Banda islands of eastern Indonesia. The fruit is harvested with handheld telescopic pickers and left to dry in the shade - the seed oil is then steam distilled at source.

Distilled from the leaves and branches of the camphor tree, ho wood oil is a light, very pleasant woody note with floral and citrus facets. Rosewood sadly being endangered, ho wood is often used as a sustainable alternative in perfumery.

Our Egyptian basil grand vert is renowned for its high linalool composition and its distinctive aniseed notes. The leaves are cut and immediately distilled - if they are allowed to dry, the scent is largely lost.

Grown on Calabrian hills overlooking the Ionian Sea, the fruit is harvested by hand and the oil extracted at source. The La Face family planted their first bergamot in the 1930s and have been mastering the craft of producing citrus oils ever since.

Benzoin Siam is a balsamic resin taken from the bark of the styrax tree, growing wild in the Annamite mountains of Laos. In September, a v-shaped cut is made in the tree bark, and brittle white ‘tears’ of benzoin resin accumulate over three-weeks. This process is known as ‘tapping’.

Grapefruit oil is cold pressed from the fruit’s golden rind. Native to the Caribbean, grapefruit is thought to have been born from an accidental union of pomelo, the largest citrus fruit, and sweet orange. An eighteenth-century Welsh sailor described it as one of the ‘seven wonders of Barbados’.

Our hay absolute derives from the sun-dried grasses Lolium perenne. Cut at the height of summer, these grasses are left to dry in the sun as hay - a process that releases coumarin from the green shoots as they turn.

Once cured, the hay undergoes solvent extraction, yielding a dark and viscous liquid with a herbal, honeyed base.

Our rock rose grows wild on the plains of Almaden de la Plata outside Seville, Spain. In late summer, the leafy stems of the plant are sickle harvested and plunged into hot carbonated water. This mixture is distilled to obtain a honeyed, amber resin - labdanum.

Olibanum (also known as frankincense) is a resin taken from the bark of the Boswellia tree. At Ffern we use Boswellia carterii. The trees grow wild along the Gulf of Aden in northern Somalia, and the resin ‘tears’ are harvested by local collectors over a period of weeks.⁠ ⁠

Our key lime rind comes from Mexico, one of the world's primary growing regions for key lime. We have two types of pure key lime rind oil in the Ffern palette - the distilled oil is sparkling, green and zesty, while the cold pressed oil is has a terpenic edge, giving it the true scent of just cut limes.

Ffern mandarins are harvested in the months before ripening. Whilst still green, they are cold pressed on site to preserve their delicate top notes. The scent is notably sharper and more floral than their ripe counterparts.

Our neroli oil is extracted from the blossom of bitter Seville Orange trees on Cape Bon in northern Tunisia. The blossoms are hand-picked in the spring at daybreak, once dew has formed. The flowers are immediately pressed and distilled.

We chose Haitian vetiver over Javan competitors for its fresh, sparkling notes, and because the root provides sustainable employment for south Haitian communities. One year after planting, the roots are excavated, washed, cut, and sun-dried before they can be steam distilled at source.

Our red cedar wood (also known as red juniper) is grown and harvested in its native Virginia, USA. The oil is steam distilled directly from a cabinet maker’s offcuts. It shares the classic woody notes of atlas cedar, but introduces a distinctive ‘pencil’ facet.

The La Faces are a third-generation citrus farming family, growing our lemons on the northeastern tip of Sicily - just across the 3km straight of Messina and in sight of our bergamot on the Calabrian shores. The fruit is picked by hand, and the rinds cold pressed on site.