Infused Oil vs Essential Oil: What's the Difference? | InVine Botanicals, Tallahassee FL

Infused oil, essential oil. A lot of people use those two terms as if they mean the same thing, but they are completely different. And since we make infused oils every day here at InVine Botanicals, in Tallahassee, Florida, let me clear it up for good.

Both of them start the same way, with plants from a garden like ours. But how you get the oil out of the plant, and what you end up with, could not be more different. Let's start with essential oils.

An essential oil is the concentrated, aromatic essence of a plant. It's the intense scent and volatile compounds, distilled out with steam, or pressed out, into a pure, powerful liquid. You already know what an essential oil smells like.

That sharp burst of scent when you crush a mint leaf or zest a lemon, that is essentially the plant's essential oil. And it is incredibly concentrated. It can take many pounds of a plant, like rosemary or mint, to fill one small bottle.

That's why essential oils are so strong, and why you only ever use them a drop or two at a time, always diluted into something else first. An infused oil takes almost the opposite approach. Instead of extracting one concentrated part, you take the whole dried herb and simply steep it in a carrier oil, like olive or sunflower oil.

Then you wait. Over several weeks, the oil slowly draws in the herb's color, its aroma, and its character. There's no heat and no distilling involved.

Just time. What you're left with is a mild, whole-plant oil. The herb's character is carried gently into the oil, at a strength that's safe to use directly on the skin, no dilution needed.

So that's the heart of it. An essential oil is made by distilling or pressing, so it's concentrated and potent. An infused oil is made by slow steeping, so it's mild and whole-plant.

One you measure in drops. The other you can use as the base itself. Neither is better, they're just different tools.

Now, at InVine, the infused oil is our craft. It's the base of every balm and cream we make, so here's exactly how we do ours. It starts in our Tallahassee garden.

We grow the herbs, harvest them by hand at their peak, and then dry them slowly. Then we pour organic carrier oil right over the whole dried herbs, until every leaf and flower is covered. The jars sit and steep in cool, dark conditions for six to eight weeks, never in the sun.

Then we strain the herbs out. What's left is a clear, golden, herb-infused oil. That oil is the mild, plant-rich base of everything we make.

And here's where essential oils come back into the story. After the infused oil is blended with beeswax, we add just a few drops of pure essential oils as finishing notes, purely for their aroma. So we actually use both.

The infused oil is the gentle base, and the essential oil is a touch of natural scent on top. They're partners, not rivals, each doing the job it's best at. So which should you reach for at home?

If it's an essential oil, remember it's a concentrated aromatic. Always dilute it into a carrier first, and a little goes a very long way. An infused oil, on the other hand, is mild and whole-plant, gentle enough to be the carrier and the base itself, which is exactly why we build our balms on it.

At the end of the day, both come from plants grown in a garden. The only real difference is how you capture what's inside them: concentrated and distilled, or whole and slowly steeped. And ours start as plants we grow ourselves, then slow-infuse by hand, right here in Tallahassee.

So now you know the difference between an infused oil and an essential oil. If you'd like to try what our garden-grown infused oils become, you can find all of our balms and creams at invinebotanicals dot com. Thanks for spending a little time in the garden with us.