Autumn 22

Our black tea extract is made from a classic blend of teas from Sri Lanka, China and India. Extracted from tea leaves using the CO2 process, the aroma is dry and leafy - it brings a smoky depth to a fragrance, both familiar and strange.

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’.

Closely related to cardamom and turmeric, ginger root is crowned by clusters of jewel-coloured flowers and green leaves. At Ffern, we source our ginger root in Kaduna, northern Nigeria, where it is extracted using the CO2 process.

Native to the Philippines, Elemi cannot be harvested until its tree is seven years old. During the wet season, an incision is made in the tree bark and the resin is collected using palm fronds. From this, the essential oil is extracted using steam distillation.

Cardamom is a tall, reed-like shrub native to South India and Sri Lanka. The mature fruit takes the form of a capsule-like pod that holds within it small aromatic seeds. The cardamom we use is grown in Guatemala and the essential oil is extracted by steam distillating the seeds.

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.

Grown in Northeastern Madagascar, our clove trees are lush with reddish brown buds which burst into many-headed white flowers. It is from these buds that our clove oil is extracted - using a water distillation process.

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.

Ffern’s bay oil is steam distilled from the leaves of Pimenta Racemosa (also known as the Bayberry or Bay Rum tree). This species from the myrtle family (Myrtaceae) is native to the Caribbean region.

Our coriander is grown by farming cooperatives in the famously fertile soil of the Central Black Earth region of Ukraine. The entire fruit is harvested late in the summer, and distilled on site with a traditional steam-based method.

Our bitter oranges are grown in a third-generation family orchard in Bauru, Brazil, where they are hand-picked in the early summer of the Southern Hemisphere. The rind is cold pressed on site to produce a juicy, uplifting oil.

El petitgrain de Ffern se cosecha en Paraguay de un árbol híbrido, un cruce entre la dulce Citrus x sinensis y la amarga Citrus x aurantium. Lo cultiva una red de agricultores familiares: las hojas y las ramas se cortan y se destilan de inmediato en alambiques de madera construidos a mano y sellados con arcilla.

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.

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.

Jasmine grandiflorum is one of the most sought after ingredients in perfumery. To make a kilogram of the absolute takes eight million flowers - these delicate, night-flowering blooms are hand-picked at dawn between June and September in the Indian Himalayas, where the flowers are sacred.