The lilac flower weaves itself deeper into my mythology than any other flower that has been part of my life. Even before siblings arrived which began at the age of three, my mother had already planted a large row of lilacs surrounding our little house that were full and blooming by the time my brother arrived in the spring of 1970. No Canadian April passed where my mother wouldn’t stuff my arms with lilacs she had harvested and I would ritually bury my face in them in unknowing reverence and wonder how I could capture their elusive aroma. Just as I would apply rose petals to lard, not quite understanding the french modality of enfleurage, I did so with lilacs. Extracting the aroma of lilacs went well into my adult years, where I would tincture and macerate and lay blossoms in fats only to fall from grace, ghosted by it scent almost in condescension.
Lilacs are a cold-weather plant and as such, grow very well in Canada. They don’t like long hot summers with short winters Sacramento offers. For the first six years here in my new city and country, I had given up the idea of finding lilacs. This spring after an unusually cooler winter, I found flowering bushes that had somehow survived Sacramento, almost despite themselves. I collected flowers in cool air under spring moons and distilled using every skill acquired from my 200 plus distillations in the year prior. I made parma scented wild violets wait.
The lilac challenged me in ways no other flower has. It wants nothing more than to disappear into vapors and wipe away any memory I have of it but I have captured it and for the first time in a distillation I’m told. This is an important extraction, a marker of my skill in this work, the reclamation of an aroma that ghosted me every spring ever since I can remember.
Shelf life: approximately 6 months. Refrigerate to prolong freshness.
Packaged in 6 oz/60 ml tamper proof refillable glass bottles.
Our hydrosols are kept in dedicated refrigeration until shipped.
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