Grown in an area in the South of Bulgaria known as the valley of the roses, this family run farm and distillery specialise in the delicate and labour intensive crop of Rose Otto. The roses only flower for 2-3 months of the year, and each bloom will only last a day before dropping.

 

The petals are collected by hand and need to be picked before the sun gets too hot as the oil in the petals evaporates the hotter it gets, by the end of the day leaving any remaining blooms with almost no oil content. The collected petals are checked for their aroma before going into the still. 

 

The best pickers can collect around 50kg of petals a day and it requires 8000kg of petals to extract 1kg of oil.

 

So a whole days work will only produce around 6ml of oil.