Crème de Lavande - The start of it all

Since childhood, I have been regularly for to the South of France for Family reasons. In the early 2000's, I met on a market a lady, who was selling all lavender stuff she made: soaps, dried lavender of different qualities and subspecies, floral water, and ... the best lavender essential oil I had ever experienced: bright, sweet, creamy, buttery, sweet, round, like it was made of good sandalwood and lavender, but no... it was just all natural lavender, some wild, some cultivated aka left to grow wild in a terrain, all distilled extremely slow, at low pressure with love and skill. She was a true raw material preparation and distillation master.

Dozens of people I knew in Switzerland were using lavender essential oil, yet no one had ever experienced anything of such quality. Anyways, to cut a long story short, I started to buy some to resell here, genuinely proud of the service I was offering, and receiving many tokens of gratitude for it. It become the start of my practice of sourcing, first all over Europe, then India where I was working regularly at that time, and then beyond as I expanded my practice and networks over the years

This lady decided to retire in 2019. My last bottles of her oils have been sold early in 2021, the year the idea of this online shop emerged, so this is more a tribute than anything else (it was never  offered in the online shop, so shouldn't be technically in the archive collection)

I still have one bottle left, in the olfactotheque, that is remarkable despite its old age (2011), proving once more than it is the quality of the raw material, of the distillation that is crucial for the good aging of an oil.

As this last bottle transforms, the traces of the work of this lady magician will then only be alive in a few... happy few's memories.