Saturday, October 15, 2016

Our Peppermint & Lavender Essential Oil

For the longest time we've been trying to find the best source of Lavender and Peppermint Essential Oils in the Philippines. Really, we didn't want the ones available locally 8 years ago. They're affordable, they smell good, but those are not the ones we're looking for. Almost every Lavender and Peppermint we've taken a whiff at smells narcotic, seems to have a little too much of some fragrance notes, and generally, feels "incomplete."

Back then, who cares about real essential oils? Who would really know what real Lavender Essential Oil or real Peppermint Oil smell like and what difference does it make? Well, we did and we still care enough to keep talking about how different the real ones are.

In the supermarket aisles at the home section or at body care section, there's a lot of products using lavender. There's car freshener, home spray, fabric softener, body wash...the list is seemingly endless. Is it possible they use lavender essential oil? Possibly not. The cost of real lavender essential oil is too expensive to be in mass-produced and mass-priced consumables. So they use fragrance oils, composed by perfumers, "inspired" by real essential oils. This is the reason why not a lot of Filipinos don't know what real lavender smells like. All we're familiar with are the lavender fragrances from fragrance factories. Most of us have never even smelled fresh or dried lavender plants at all.

So what's the motive behind selling fragrance oils as essential oils? Maybe ignorance or choosing not to know. Maybe there's no real supply and demand. Maybe no one would bother questioning why. And for the longest time, the above-mentioned are probable truths.

So we searched. We've tried a lot. We sniffed, we compared, we studied, and learned so many things along the way. The fact is, in our market today, there are 4 things you can find as essential oils: pure synthetic fragrance oils, fragrance oils mixed with essential oils, modified essential oils, and real essential oils. The synthetic fragrance oils are made by perfumers by mixing fragrant compounds resulting in an essential oil inspired scent. The fragrance oils mixed with essential oils are synthetic fragrances added with true essential oils to "bring the fragrance closer to the real thing." The modified essential oils are true essential oils but diluted with synthetic aromatic compounds so price gets lower. And finally the real essential oils, which came from plant materials with no additives or dilution done.

The best guide to the real essential oils is mother nature herself. Curious to know what real Lavender Essential Oil smells like? Get a leaf from the Lavender plant and crush it with your fingers. Smell it. How about Peppermint? Do the same thing. The scent you smelled in your hands or fingers after crushing the leaves should be the smell of essential oil, although essential oils are more concentrated.

We were lucky to be able to get Lavender and Peppermint plants locally, and none of the so called Lavender and Peppermint Essential Oils in the Philippines passed the test. So instead of relying with the current supply, we set highly specialized arrangements to get the real essential oils. We also know for a fact that these essential oils are quite expensively priced in the world market, so if you're getting Peppermint and Lavender Essential Oils dirt cheap, you're probably getting not the real thing.

Our Lavender and Peppermint Essential Oils are pure plant extracts. Our Lavender Essential Oil is extracted from the flowering tops and leaves of Lavandula officinalis or English Lavender, while our Peppermint Essential Oil comes from the whole plant of Mentha piperita. Find out why our essential oils are different by ordering our Essential Oil Trial Sizes.