general thoughts

strawberries but no roses

Today, I am talking about one aspect that is a constant menace when working with naturals: Their availability. Today’s picture shows you a strawberry, scanned. I actually scanned it in 10500×10000 pixels and reduced the size later. Thus, you can see a lot of details when looking at the original picture and one of my insights: Strawberries consist of a lot of nothing. Like us: Most of us is empty space between atoms and molecules. The strawberry is a Swiss one, from the region, not because Swiss do it better, but just because strawberries are the better the fresher and the less transported.

If rainy and cold weather destroys our harvest here, there is not really a strawberry problem. You can get them from half the globe.

Unfortunately, this is not true for Bulgarian rose absolute, R. damascena absolue. Over the year, I guess I use about 2-3 kg in my mixes as you find a bit of rose absolute  in almost every tauer scent, and a lot in some like Incense rosé or ZETA- a linden blossom theme, and others. There are alternatives to my preferred quality, Bulgarian absolute, such as Moroccan, or Turkish rose absolute. However, for most applications I prefer the rose from Bulgaria. I get it from my Swiss lab, where I source most of my raw materials: They do the quality control, check conformity with EU laws and make sure that what I get is the best.

They told me that the next harvest is delayed and we expect the next batch of rose absolute from Bulgaria not before September. I have enough rose to mix the Lonestar Memories, and then I am down to nothing. And will have to wait. But I think, I have enough stock of all scents to keep me going until November. And if not and if you have to wait for a month or two: The rose is to blame.