Fresh Ginger Root Essential Oil

If ever there was a spice island in a bottle, this fresh root distilled Ginger would be it. Fresh root distillation is an exciting offering that we couldn’t wait to venture into and we have been greedily using it for a couple of years now. We carry Ginger CO2 from India which works well in our Gingerbread Solid Perfume we make for Christmas giveaway, but the fresh root distillation is literally like breathing in a ginger chew candy that can be found at Sprouts or in Asian markets. It also reminds me of the big barrels of ginger beer my mom would make using fresh root ginger, yeast and plenty of time back in the 1970s. As kids, we would mimic being drunk from that delicious tasting ginger beer (odd form of entertainment, but again, it was the 70s). I’ve yet to find a ginger beer like my mother’s barrel ginger beer. Back then in rural Alberta, ginger was an exotic ingredient so it was quite a revelation in my very young mind to smell something other than the dried powder that likely gave its last odiferous breath while shipping from overseas. I grew ginger as a young herbalist in West Coast Canada (a more forgiving part of the country for growing ginger) and while the plant didn’t get near the sun and heat needed for it to bloom, the rhizome grew well and I was able to harvest some fresh root. Here in the California heat, it bursts with buds waiting to expand in soil. We used to carry a heavenly ginger hydrosol and I have a notion to distill ginger myself if only for the hydrosol.

I find this fresh ginger profile extremely exciting and one that has a multitude of uses that includes perfumery, but is a real hero of the oil lies in muscle rub blends. It can even accelerate healing time with skin blemish after the initial gingery fire calms down. I have tested it many times and I find the heat is not bad at all. Ginger comes from a big family that includes turmeric, cardamom and galangal and just tempt the essential oil goddesses, I have been known to make a blend or two with all four essential oils that turned out to be pretty helpful in muscle rub or massage formulas. It has that country health food store smell that I find incredibly comforting.

Suggested uses: Use in massage blends or muscle rub formulas to apply gentle heat to inflamed areas of the body. Blends well with Vanilla Oleoresin, Peru Basalm and many citrus oils – lime is particularly recommended.