Every oil I work with is really a piece of somewhere - a particular soil, a particular climate, a particular season. Part of the pleasure of this craft is that a shelf of small bottles is also a small atlas. Here is a rough tour of where the materials in the range actually grow.
The rose: Bulgaria and Turkey
Damask rose has a modern heartland in the Rose Valley of Bulgaria, around Kazanlak, and in the fields of Isparta in Turkey. Cool nights, morning mist and the right ground give these regions a rose the perfume world measures everything else against. There is a whole separate note on this flower in Ingredient History.
The natives: Australia, close to home
Some of what I love most grows right here. Brown boronia is native to the south-west of Western Australia, which is where mine comes from, and it is also grown as a fragrance crop in Tasmania - between the two, that is essentially the world's entire supply. Kunzea, the tick bush, is at its best from north-eastern Tasmania and Flinders Island. Eucalyptus is Australian to its core. These are the materials I feel proudest to build a botanical range around, because they belong to this country.
The citruses: from Calabria to Brazil
Citrus is the one part of the range that refuses to sit on a single map pin. Each fruit has drifted to wherever it grows best, and the result is a section of the shelf that spans three continents.
Bergamot is the exception that proves the rule - it is tied almost entirely to the Calabrian coast at the toe of Italy, and has been for centuries. Almost nothing else stayed put. Sweet orange comes overwhelmingly from Brazil, where the state of Sao Paulo grows citrus on a scale nowhere else matches, and the oil is pressed from the peel as a by-product of the juice industry. Lemon leans on Argentina, the world's great lemon producer, with Spain, Italy and Mexico all in the mix. Lime is largely a Mexican story, with Peru and Brazil alongside it. Pink grapefruit points north to Florida, and also to Mexico and Spain. Mandarin hedges its bets, coming from Italy, Brazil and Argentina depending on the season.
Most citrus oils are cold pressed from the rind rather than distilled, which is why they smell so immediately like the fruit in your hand - and why they are the most fragile oils on the shelf. Distilled lime is the odd one out, steam distilled rather than pressed, which is why it smells sharper and more confected than a fresh lime does.
The exotics: India and beyond
India sits behind several treasures in the range. Davana, that strange and gorgeous fruity-wine note, is grown mainly in southern India and is prized for smelling subtly different on each person's skin. Jasmine, picked by hand at night, comes largely from India and Egypt. And Himalayan cedarwood is exactly what its name says - the deodar cedar of the Himalayan foothills, a soft, dry, grounding wood.
A shelf of small bottles is also a small atlas - Bulgaria, Calabria, Tasmania, the Himalayan foothills, all in one drawer.
How I choose who to buy from
Knowing where a plant grows is only half of sourcing. The other half is who you buy it from.
I buy through established wholesale suppliers here in Australia rather than importing directly or distilling anything myself. That is a deliberate choice for a business my size. It keeps the chain short, it means I am dealing with people I can actually call, and it means the material has already come through a supplier who deals in this full time.
What I look for is straightforward: consistency between batches, suppliers who can tell me where a material is grown, and a willingness to answer questions rather than deflect them. If I cannot get a clear answer about what something is or where it came from, I would rather leave it off the shelf than guess.
If you ever want documentation on a specific oil - a certificate of analysis, or a compositional report for a particular batch - ask me and I will chase it up with the supplier for you. I would rather do that than have you take my word for it.
What I can promise plainly is this: nothing goes into the range that I would not be glad to explain the origin of. That is the point of writing these notes at all.