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Enfleurage is an ancient, slow, delicate, deeply fascinating cold process in which flowers -gently picked when they’re most fragrant, most of which at night- are delicately laid on a thin layer of fat (organic shea butter, in this instance) making new recharges every day for on average a month or until the butter is saturated with the scent. Then this fat, the so-called “pommade” is repeatedly washed in alcohol until all of its scent has been captured. Finally it gets chilled and repeatedly filtered leaving us with so-called “extrait” from enfleurage.

It goes without saying that enfleurage is a labour intensive and time consuming technique, to date almost extinct, yet the results still today are priceless, as it is the technique that really enables to capture the actual smell of a living flower, far more than any other method possibly can.
So despite being less powerful and overall less tenacious than their corresponding solvent-extracted absolutes (if existent), enfleurage extraits with their unique aromatic profile add new natural materials to the amateur perfumers palette along with making an interesting studying and reference material for naturals enthusiasts and connoisseurs.

Tinctures are defined as extractions in ethanol – generally made by taking a natural material, grinding it down and soaking for a long period in ethanol, often with regular agitation and sometimes gentle warmth. The strength is the weight of original material compared to the weight of ethanol it is tinctured in. Tinctures are generally less powerful in scent than essential oils and are often added to perfume in larger quantities at the end of the blending process.

Please note: Despite their quality, all of our products are of a highly concentrated nature and are therefore to be strictly intended for perfumery and aromatherapy use only. Hermitage Oils strongly discourages internal consumption of the products, which are not intended to be used as foods in any capacity. All photos and images on this website have the sole purpose to evoke the raw materials from which the products offered are obtained, their place of origin or their scent.