Summer 24

This member of the magnolia family has orange and yellow petals, attracting bees and birds with its fragrant flowers. Its oil is extracted using a solvent extraction method. Our red champaca is sourced from the Indian Himalayas, where the flowers are often floated in bowls of water to scent a room.

Our fennel oil is steam distilled from fennel seeds, sourced from the rocky coast of Andalusia, Spain. Native to the Mediterranean, fennel has a rich history, and has been a staple in both culinary and medicinal practices for centuries.

Our blood orange rind comes from the sun-drenched groves of Sicily, where the island’s unique microclimate, with its volcanic soil and temperate coastal breezes, create the perfect conditions for these distinctive fruits to grow.

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 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.

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.

Ffern’s pink peppercorn oil is extracted from plants grown on the volcanic Réunion Island, 680km east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Our 100% pure oil is extracted with the CO2 extraction process.

Scentless when fresh and native to Asia, patchouli is a member of the Lamiaceae or Mint family. Our patchouli is hand-harvested on the Indonesian Island of Java. It’s then dried in the shade and briefly fermented, helping to break down the cell walls before the copper still hydrodistillation.

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’.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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’.

While hay absolute calls to mind temperate harvests, the plant from which it is extracted is in fact, Arctic. The sweetgrass Hierochloe alpina grows wild on the circumpolar tundra, particularly on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, in Svalbard.