Hydrosols

Fakes and Adulteration

Over the past few years, more and more people have begun selling hydrosols. This  is wonderful news, since an ever increasing number of varieties are becoming  available. However, I am constantly amazed by what I am offered  in the way of fakes. Fake Jasmine, for instance. Jasmine is gorgeous, and I am not such a purist that I avoid solvent-extracted absolutes, as some French aromatherapists are known to do. However, there is no distillation  involved in the production of Jasmine absolute, which involves a purely chemical extraction process, and therefore there is no hydrosol. What is being sold as jasmine hydrosol is either a totally synthetic product or a mixture of water and jasmine absolute. Manufacturers in India do produce a unique product called attar of jasmine, which involves the hydro-distillation of jasmin flowers in a base of sandalwood oil.

This production method, which has not changed for centuries, does produce a jasmin water, but it is not widely available and may never be. The samples I have received are very beautiful but retain much of the sandalwood personality. Perhaps one day we will have a real jasmine hydrosol; a recent sample has given me high hopes, but for now it is mainly a myth, and a chemical one at that. This production method, which has not changed for centuries, does produce a jasmin water, but it is not widely available and may never be. The samples I have received are very beautiful but retain much of the sandalwood personality. Perhaps one day we will have a real jasmine hydrosol; a recent sample has given me high hopes, but for now it is mainly a myth, and a chemical one at that.

Other common fakes are the citrus, for example, orange, lemon, tangerine, and grapefruit. These oils are cold-expressed  from the zest of peel without distillation, and therefore no hydrosols exists for these fruits. I was shocked recently to read a paper by a well-known, highly qualified aromatherapists and M.D that repeatedly mentioned citrus-rind hydrosol. Heaven knows what products the paper is referring to because they are certainly not true hydrosols. One intrepid distiller I know has managed to produce and orange-zest hydrosol from the dried peels of the Valencia orange, which is a most extraordinary accomplishment. So who knows what the future will bring, but for now you can be sure that most flower waters are not hydrosols.

Lime oil is occasionally steam-distilled, and I have encountered lime hydrosol once or twice, but as the provenance was unknown and commercially grown citrus fruit is heavily sprayed with chemicals, I opted not to use this hydrosol for therapeutic  applications. Clementine orange, and lemon leaves  are particularly desirable and have profound appetite - stimulating properties  that are very useful in treating eating disorders and appetite loss caused  by pharmaceutical medication. 

Then there is rose, sublime rose. Rose hydrosol does exist, of course, but many of the products on the market are synthetic and produced for use in the food and flavour industry. Also remember the subject of cohabitation: there is a depth of flavour and scent to un-cohabitated rosewater that, once tried, is never mistaken, but is hard to find and you must be willing to pay more for it. If rose water is not cohobated during distillation the resulting essential oil is incomplete chemically, aromatically , and therapeutically, and the already infinitesimal yield further reduced.

For these reasons un-cohabitated rose is very rare and most of us must buy the cohobated hydrosol--which in this case is not really a hardship! Some small distillers who do not have enough roses  to produce essential oil are distilling their flowers  only for the hydrosol, which is most exquisite, and because they are not producing oil, they do not cohobate. Rose is so much in demand, however, that much of the real rosewater available is now produced from dried rose petals or flowers. It is nice, tastes good and smells sweet, but it pales in comparison to a distillate from fresh flowers. Rose petals are extremely delicate : the smell of dried roses compared  with that of fresh Rosa damascena or R.centifolia will give you an idea of the difference in the water products.

So it seems that hydrosols are a bit of a tricky business. They are still a little hard to find, especially in true therapeutic grade, but then so are therapeutic -grade essential oils. There is still much less known about them than about the oils, and their primary use up to now has been in cosmetic products and aesthetic treatments. But hydrosols offer so much more scope and benefit that they are worth pursuing, and I hope the information in these pages will broaden their appeal for all their myriad applications.

Reference: Hydrosols: Suzanne Catty