Meet the Herb: Rose (Rose Water vs Rose Essential Oil vs Rose Infused Oil)

What does rose actually do in skincare, and what are you really buying when a label says rose? There are three completely different things sold under that one word, and they are not interchangeable. We are InVine Botanicals in Tallahassee, Florida, and we grow our own roses.

So let's walk one from the bush to the bottle, and sort out the difference along the way. First, the plant. The roses we grow are garden roses, Rosa hybrida, the sort you would put in a border, and we choose them for scent rather than for how long they last in a vase.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A florist's rose is bred to travel and to hold its shape. A rose bred for fragrance is often plainer to look at and carries far more aroma in the petal, which is the part we actually want.

We cut them at their peak, when the bloom has opened but before the petals begin to loosen and drop. Past that point, the scent is already leaving. The petals come straight indoors and onto screens to dry, in the dark, at around seventy six degrees, with air moving over them continuously.

Roses hold a lot of water, so drying is not optional. Any moisture left in a petal will spoil an oil infusion weeks later, and you will not find out until the whole batch smells wrong. They are ready when they are papery and brittle rather than leathery.

Now, that word on the label. When a product says rose, it almost always means one of three things, and they are made in completely different ways. The first is rose water.

Rose water is a hydrosol: the water left behind after rose petals are steam distilled. It is mostly water, it smells lovely, and it is the least concentrated of the three. The second is rose essential oil.

Steam distilled, it is called rose otto; pulled out with a solvent, it is rose absolute. Either way it is a concentrate, used a drop at a time, and it is one of the most expensive materials in perfumery, because it takes thousands of roses to make a very small amount. The third is a rose infused oil, and that is what we make.

It is the whole dried petal, steeped in oil for weeks, until the oil itself carries the petal's colour and character. There is no best one. They are three different tools.

Rose water is water. Rose essential oil is a concentrate, used for aroma. And an infused oil is a base, something you can build a whole formula on.

We build on the infusion, and that follows from another choice: our crèmes contain no water at all. So a hydrosol has nowhere to go in one of our formulas, and we do not use one. So the dried petals go into a jar and are covered with organic oil.

For the crèmes that is apricot kernel and grapeseed, both light on the skin, rather than the heavier olive and coconut we infuse for the balms. Then it sits. Six to eight weeks, in cool and dark conditions, never in sunlight.

We stir it, we check it, and mostly we leave it alone. That is the part that cannot be hurried, and it is why a shelf like this one is really a calendar. Every jar on it is a different week of the summer.

Slowly the oil takes on the petals. It picks up a soft golden colour, and it begins to smell faintly, unmistakably, of the garden it came from. It is a quiet process.

No heat, no pressure, no solvent, and nothing at all to speed it up. Petals, oil, and time. And it is worth saying plainly that this is the oldest way to do it.

Long before anyone distilled anything, people put flowers into fat and waited. We are not being clever here. We are being patient.

When it is ready, the oil is strained off the spent petals, and what is left is the base of a crème. The spent petals go to the compost, and back into the beds that grew them, which is a tidy sort of ending. Rose is the flower our Rose Renewal Crème is built around, alongside rosemary and spearmint, all three grown in the same garden and infused the same way.

Into that infused oil we blend velvety mango butter and a precious oil pressed from prickly pear seeds, a little Vitamin E, and a soft finishing note of ylang ylang. There is no water in it, and no beeswax either. Beeswax belongs in a balm, where firmness is the point.

On the face, the plant butters and the oils carry the texture, and the crème stays silky rather than waxy. So what a rose brings to this is its aroma and its character, carried into an oil over weeks. Not a concentrate.

Not a hydrosol. The flower itself. If you want to grow roses for this yourself, a few things matter more than the rest.

Grow for scent, not for looks. A great many modern roses have had the perfume bred out of them in favour of shape and shelf life, so read the description and pick one called strongly fragrant. Cut in the morning, once the dew has gone and before the heat of the day pulls the aroma out of the petal.

Here in Florida that window is early, and it is short. And never spray anything on a rose you mean to put into oil. Whatever goes on the petal goes into the infusion, and stays there.

Petals dry faster than leaves and they bruise more easily, so handle them lightly and give them room. A crowded screen is how you get mould instead of rose. Dry them in the dark, out of the sun, and keep them in a sealed jar somewhere cool until you are ready to use them.

So the next time you see rose on a label, you know the question to ask. Is it the water, is it the concentrate, or is it the flower itself? In ours it is the flower, grown in our garden, dried on our screens, and steeped whole for six to eight weeks.

com. Thanks for spending a little time with us.