FW: Rose Otto - and Turkish Citrus Oils

[Guest guest]

off another list. from my favorite supplier, butch.

*smile*

chris

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Rose Otto - and Turkish Citrus Oils

 

Hi folks,

 

This was in response to a post on Bergamot - then I got carried away

and

took it a bit farther.

 

Turkey is a major producer and exporter of citrus fruits ... the

entire

Southeastern Med Region has one big citrus grove after another. Many

of

the villages and some cities in that region have some form of citrus

as

a part of their names. The Turks have long been citrus suppliers to

the

Eastern countries - the Arabs, Russians, and Eastern Europe. Europe

has

relations with the countries that were once their colonies - Turkey

has

never been " colonized " by an European or any other country. Though

it's

trivia, this has caused some trade problems betwixt Europe and the

USA -

that leaning toward dealing with ex-colonies, i.e., showing

questionable

preferential treatment. International trade has almost turned into a

legislated and/or adjudicated affair.

 

(Then somebody asked if we had Bergamot here and someone else said the

best was from Italy - and I responded:)

 

Italy does have great Bergamot ... they developed an industry long

ago.

I've never offered Bergamot on my site but odds are that if I do,

it'll

be Italian instead of Turkish.

 

Turks never tried to develop a citrus essential oil industry here -

but

there are many citrus oils cooked to order when contracted. Almost

all

these oils are prepared for existing contracts and the Turks weren't

so

good at developing new contracts. Many years ago, there was a

thriving

Jasmine Absolute industry in Antalya - fields and extraction

facilities

existed ONLY for that purpose, but it was created to support a long-

term

contract with a large French perfumery. It has been closed for

better

than 15 years now.

 

Except for Rose Otto, which the Ottoman Empire began marketing

centuries

ago, Turkey has not tried to market essential oils on the

international

scene ... that's why the distillers like to contract with me ... ;-)

 

The Bulgarian rose industry in the Kazanlik Valley was once an Ottoman

industry - Bulgaria was a province of the Ottoman Empire. The word

Otto

as in Rose Otto comes from Ottoman as in Ottoman Empire which was the

old name for what is now the Republic of Turkey.

 

The word Kazanluk is also an Ottoman Turkish compound word. It means

the place of the kazans. A kazan is the container that holds the

water

and roses. In Turkish, a suffix is used to change the meanings of

nouns

and verbs. The vowel in that suffix will change from a soft to a hard

vowell depending on the vowels in the word being transformed - this is

called vowel harmony and is the basis for pronunciation and spelling

in

Turkish.

 

A hat is a " sapka " and a book is a 'kitap. " To use the same noun to

create another word we add luk or luk, lik or lik with one of those

" liks " being an undotted " i " and one of the " luks " have two dots over

it, indicating that they are hard vowels. So, to build a new noun

that

shows itself as being something that is used to serve something else,

we

add these suffixes. A hat rack becomes a sapkaluk and a bookcase is

a

now a kitaplik, and so on. The valley used for placement of the

stills

(kazans) was therefore called the Kazanlik Vadi. " the valley that

serves

as a location for the kazans. "

 

Today, the two major producers of Rose Otto, the hydro-steam produced

product made from Rosa damascena (Damask Rose) are Turkey in the

Isparta

Valley and Bulgaria in the Kazanlik Valley.

 

While I'm into trivia, I'll clear up something else that was put out

on

the list a few months ago. Regardless of what some folks erronously

call Rose Otto - Rose Attar is not an acceptable alternative. Even

the

AT Practitioner Reference Manual mentions this mistake. Rose Otto is

a

product obtained by hydro-steam distillation of Rose Blossoms -

nothing

more. Rose Attar is a co-distillation of Rose Blossoms and

Sandalwood!

 

Back to citrus - I'm having some citrus oils cooked this year.

Whether

I'll accept them is unknown. If they pass Professor Baser's smell and

lab testing, I'll accept them. The producers accept the

requirements -

don't necessarily like'em but they accept'em. If I refuse an oil,

they

don't pour it out on the ground. Somebody somewhere buys it.

Normally,

it's the EO brokers in New York or those in Frankfurt and Paris. Big

companies like Berje and many others use these brokers for ALL their

purchases and those purchases for all type oils combined, per company,

can be metric tons per month. The French brokers, for example, buy

lavender oil from Bulgaria and Turkey - but the French don't sell any

Bulgarian or Turkish lavender - huh? Doesn't take a rocket scientist

to

figure out how France exports more lavender than they produce.

 

This is true with Italian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil and with any other

natural product, to include essential oils, that are supplied by these

brokers. (A note here: The Italians import far more Extra-Virgin

than

they produce and they export it as Origin Italy - this is not illegal

under EU rules but it will change soon. This is not a big secret -

it's

common knowledge and I have much data on it, some from Italian

producers

who admit they use Greek, Turkish and Spanish olive oils to produce

the

bottles of Italian olive oil folks buy in the US supermarkets.)

 

The natural products brokerage industry is one of the oldest in the

world. The Romans were great at this and built a road through the

southeast of Turkey called the " Spice Road, " just to get at these

valuable commodities. Brokers are slick - they can get rich or poor

in

24 hours based on a few cents change in international prices, thus the

many terms and sayings that survive which are demeaning to folks in

the

spice/aromatics trade. Like " Slick as a spice merchant, " or " Better

to

be the mother of a bastard than the wife of a spice merchant. " ...

;-)

Y'all keep smiling, Butch

 

GC Tested EOs, Rose Otto, Hydrosols, Early-Harvest Extra-Virgin Olive

Oil and lots of other goodies, none of which are sourced from brokers.

[Guest guest]

This post is amazing... this guy knows about everything! )))

 

the_oil_co-op , " Ziggy " <chrisziggy@i...> wrote:

> off another list. from my favorite supplier, butch.

> *smile*

> chris

[Guest guest]

i sure love forwarding what i can from him. he reminds me of both my

dad and my oldest friend jessica's dad i'd love to see the three

of those guys head to head in a trivial pursuit game (maybe in

another lifetime for my dad

*smile*

chris

 

 

the_oil_co-op , " Lena " <black__cat@i...> wrote:

> This post is amazing... this guy knows about everything! )))

>

> the_oil_co-op , " Ziggy " <chrisziggy@i...> wrote:

> > off another list. from my favorite supplier, butch.

> > *smile*

> > chris