Rose Otto Shortage ** Butch

[Guest guest]

Hey Melissa,

 

Sorta old this one .. but I got to it.

 

> So in fact rose absolute may smell more " rosey " than rose otto? So I'm

> curious (and appologise for my naivete) .. why is rose otto in such high

> demand?

 

Number of reasons .. a silly drop goes a lot further .. there are proven

therapeutic properties to hydrodistilled Rosa damascena but we are only

guessing at the therapeutic properties of the solvent extracted Rose

Absolute. Availability (supply) vs demand (regardless of how we got to

that demand) makes it more valuable .. yield (FAR less than the yield of

Rose Absolute) adds to the value .. and perhaps more importantly .. Rose

Otto has a long history of use .. like thousands of years. Though there

was a form of crude distillation known to the ancients .. it was more of

a cottage industry at that time .. and still is in some places.

 

I've described before how some of the villagers here in Turkey prepare a

crude Rose Otto and other oils and hydrosols using simple iron cookware.

They place the aromatic material in a pot of water .. then place a small

container in the center of the pot .. then they place a concave (or we

can say reversed) lid on it .. as it boils the steam rises .. circulates

along the top of the convex lid .. and a small portion of the EO will

drop into the container in the center of the pot .. and it is a small

portion. The lion's share of the oil will be concentrated in the boiled

water .. a VERY highly concentrated hydrosol.

 

There are other village preparation styles .. some using a form of Imbex

(meaning a large copper pot) suspended over a wooden fire .. they put

the rose blossoms in the pot and cook it .. the steam rises and passes

through a tube and then through a trough of water (which acts as a

condenser) and then into glass gallon jugs. The Rose Otto will float on

the highly concentrated hydrosol and they take it off with a spoon. Of

course, there is a lot of waste but the Hydrosol is full of EO. The

cost of such an operation is maybe 3%-5% of the cost of a sophisticated

and efficient hydrodistillation and cohobation unit .. but I am talking

about a peasant who produces maybe 2-3 kilos of Rose Otto and sells it

for $6,000-$6,500 a kilo to Arab traders for their perfumes and for sale

outside mosques. That money is the most cash he and his family will see

in a year .. and it is more than they need to live because he is a

subsistence farmer .. he has most of his needs within his grasp and

those needs are not all that great to begin with.

 

In addition .. Rose Otto has LONG been under priced. When it was $4,000

a kilo some of the producers went broke. The distillers RARELY are the

farmers .. there are thousands of farmers in the Isparta region growing

Damask Roses .. some might produce 500 kilos in a year .. some but 40-50

kilos. They must harvest the Rose Blossoms and transport them to a

central pick up point .. they do NOT get rich from this .. but they

charge enough to generate a nice supply of cash .. and that is something

special in most villages. Inflation and increased desire for nicer

things for their families by the villagers .. coupled with collective

bargaining by the co-ops .. resulted in stills having to pay far more

for the Rose Blossoms than they paid in the past so it was definitely

time for the prices to go up.

 

Also .. in the Isparta area .. home of ex-president Suleyman Demirel ..

they built a university .. named after him. This created a need for

housing and Isparta is an old town with little room to build .. so they

built hundreds and hundreds of homes on the outskirts of town .. buying

land from the farmers. The farmers are mostly ignorant but rarely

stupid so they saw a chance to make more from the sale of land for

construction than from growing roses .. plus they didn't need to labor

in the fields to get the cash. Its likely that 10% or so of the land

that was devoted to Roses now has newly built homes on it.

 

Finally .. I mentioned in a different post the reasons for the run on

Turkish Rose Otto .. based on some problems noted in Bulgaria .. the

problems are not with the quality of a good Bulgarian Rose Otto .. but

with the integrity of some of the Bulgarians who have been in the

business of selling it for a long time.

 

> Thanks, Butch ... you are educating me!

 

Welcome fer'shur .. writing and collecting my thoughts educates me too.

 

> Melissa

> Rose addict :-)

 

Y'all keep smiling. :-) Butch http://www.AV-AT.com

 

> I'll comment on his last sentence .. in fact, the odor of an Absolute

> will more closely resemble the aromatic source it was extracted from

> than will an Essential Oil.