Essential oils in Perfume

Using Rose Essential Oils in Perfume

As you would guess, there are many organic essential oils that are used in making perfume. Rose (or actually, Rose absolute) is probably the most well known essential oil used in the perfume industry. Many roses are necessary to produce a small amount of essential oil, as there are literally pounds of rose petals needed to distill just one ounce of essential oil. Rose oil may be diluted with Geranium essential oil so that the essential oil will not be so costly to produce. In fact, the ratio of roses to geraniums in such dilutions may sometimes be as much as one drop of rose to ten drops of geranium! This process is known as “extending the rose fragrance”. (In fact, it seems it is extending the rose fragrance dramatically.) However, since roses and geraniums are complementary fragrances, the process of mixing the two pure essential oils together does not dilute the smell of a rose fragrance too much to affect a buyer’s decision. In almost all cases, a buyer doesn’t even notice.

Rose oil may also be altered with synthetic chemicals such as phenylethanol, which is a natural element of rose oil. The purpose of this process may be to adjust for chemotype such as Bulgarian distilled rose oil, which is naturally low in phenylethanol, or Ukrainian Rose absolute which is naturally high in phenylethanol. Bulgaria and Morocco are the countries in which most of the rose oil is produced. In recent years, however, the rose oil cultivation industry has seen a surge in China.

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Essential Oils Information