Citrus Petitgrain Essential Oil

We love Cyprus citrus, which is famous for a reason! Cyprus has been cultivating and exporting citrus fruits since the 16th century, and up until the 1960s Cyprus was famous for its lemons and oranges, and also was a major producer of citrus peel essential oils, rivaling California in quantities. Sadly, the market for these fruits has waned and many families have abandoned their orchards or ripped them out. They require a lot of water, and Cyprus is suffering from a multi-year drought. 

These trees have so much to give, and we try not to let anything go to waste. Of course they are prized for their fruits and juice, which we've been enjoying in the past few months and serving in our workshop cafe, and selling for gelato, bakeries, bars and restaurants. We extract the essential oils from the peels, which are great for flavoring, perfumery/aromatherapy, and in blends for skin. When processing the fruits we also wash and dry the seeds, which we press for a seed oil that is great for massage blends. 

It's that time of year when the citrus harvest is waning and the trees start to renew themselves by putting out new buds for the coming year's fruits. Which is also the season for pruning the branches to ensure the shape of the tree maximizes its energy for the new fruits. 

We are in love with the essential oil that comes from distilling these prunings. It is a "fully-spectrum" oil, in that it has floral notes like Neroli, from the flowers and buds, a strong and fresh herbal note from leaves, and woody undertones from the small branches. 

Last year we had a lot of fun working with friends and partners to help prune their trees or gather their prunings, and distill the material in exchange for some of the oil back. For one friend we made a perfume roll-on from her lemon tree prunings so she could smell her all year round! We tended to combine the pruning from different trees together, so our current citrus petitgrain oil has hints of mandarin, bitter orange, lemon and pomelo. This year we will try to do some separate batches, but let's see how it goes. It takes a lot of prunings for a very small amount of oil (40 kilos is about 40ml of essential oil).

Do you have any citrus trees that need pruning! Get in touch! We'll gladly prune them and remove the material in exchange for some oil.