Most people read the label on essential oils bottles and see the words “100% PURE” and think that is a high quality oil. There is so much more involved in producing truly authentic premium grade oils.

The key to producing an genuine authentic grade essential oil is to preserve as many of the delicate aromatic compounds within the essential oil as possible. Most of these elements are very fragile and are destroyed by high temperature and high pressure.

Nutritionists tell us not to boil our vegetables because the hot water removes the vitamins and nutrients. Similarly, “boiling” plants to extract their essence destroys many of a plant’s fragile constituents, which gives essential oils their beneficial properties. So keeping the distiller’s temperature low is a must.




Similarly, lavender does not produce all its beneficial properties unless it is distilled for one hour and 30 minutes; but most lavender is distilled for only 15 minutes!


Another trick some distillers will do to produce more oil, is to redistill the plant material over and over as many as 5 or 6 times. It’s like using a tea bag over & over again. When the plant material is redistilled, all the batches after the first distillation are no longer authentic premium grade.

The oil distiller will then save the first batch to be sold as authentic premium grade oils. Then the rest of the distillations are sold to the unsuspecting public as so called “pure” oils.


A few examples:



    Was the soil fertilized with chemical fertilizers or organic fertilizers?

    Were any chemicals added to the distillation water?

Note: Many distillers add chemicals to the water as they are distilling to produce greater volume in the distillation process. They can say they don’t use adulterants in the oil since they only used it in the water. The chemical still gets into the oil and it is stretching the truth to say an oil distilled this way is pure.
