Winter 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.

Also known as musk mallow, ambrette seed oil is a wonderful plant-based alternative to musk. Native to India, the kidney bean-shaped seeds are dried before undergoing steam distillation. Our growers are in San Martín, Peru, a region dominated by biodiverse forest ecosystems.

We press our sweet orange oil from the rind of cold-pressed Hamlin oranges grown in the mineral-rich state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. Hamlin orange trees are among the most tolerant of cold and their fruit comes early, the season beginning in October.

Believed to come from the Latin ros marinus, which means ‘dew of the sea’, rosemary grows wild in abundance on Mediterranean coastlines. At Ffern, we work with a local firm to bid on wild harvesting rights, and extract the oil at source.

Our balsam fir absolute is extracted from wild-grown needles east of Calgary, in Canada. The scent is often compared to that of jam: intense, very long lasting, sweet, fresh and foresty all at once.

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.

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.

Peppermint is a cross between watermint and spearmint, a familiar sparkly note with a slight peppery edge. We partner with farmers in India's northerly Mint Regions to grow and steam distill our high grade peppermint oil.

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’s tarragon is grown in the South of France. The plants do not produce fertile seeds - instead the roots are hand-split in early spring. In June, the leaves are trimmed and the oil distilled. Our variety has a distinctive aniseed facet, with an earthy undertone.⁠

Hand-picked at night to preserve intensity, our jasmine sambac is native to the Eastern Himalayas. Also known as Arabian jasmine, jasmine sambac has a long history of connection with Persia and the Middle East. The oil is extracted at source using Joseph Robert’ solvent extraction process.

Our lavender is grown by a network of family farms in the hills of Provence, 600-1500m above sea level. This much-loved herb is particularly beloved of Provençals, who have been growing it for centuries. It is often called the soul of the region.

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.

Found in temperate, mountainous forests in the northern hemisphere, oakmoss is a branching lichen that grows on the branches and trunks of the oak tree. Ours is foraged from wild oaks in Samokov, Macedonia, before being transported to Grasse, where the oil is extracted by a family-run distillery.