Distilling an island: Turunj petit grain

We are back to North Cyprus and the flowers of the Turunj bitter orange trees that we have distilled a month ago have now become small green fruits. We shall distil them together with the leaves to obtain the precious “Petit Grain” essential oil.

Adam the goat keeper of Maulana and Ibrahim, who is a schoolboy, are my new students of distillation.

We get the material to distil from Sheikh Bahauddin’s garden.

Distilling is beautiful, everybody likes it, it is alchemy, a kind of very primordial good magic. Extracting the living spirit from aromatic plants.
What nobody knows is that it is so easy to do it, you just have to stick to the protocols and everything goes smooth.
You just need 3 qualities, scrupulosity, attention and discipline. Ibrahim is the first kid to whom I teach distillation.

Hajji Uthman from Belgium is our sweets dealer, he brings us the apple pie from the Greek side. He is so huge that everything near him becomes small. I think that he could eat the pie all by himself but I give him only a bigger piece than to other guests.

In 2 and half hours, our 50 litres distiller has produced only 35 ml of essential oil, it is little but it was worth it, the fragrance is so good that we don’t have to let the essence mature even for a day, the Italian ladies liked it so much that I had to prepare straight away 3 bottles of our “turunj petit Grain” Eau de Parfum for them.