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.
