It takes up to 5,000 kilograms of these flowers to make just one kilo of Bulgarian rose oil. It's worth it because luxury brands will pay top dollar to put the oil in their perfumes. A single kilogram of oil can sell for $15,000.
It adds a little je ne sais quoi and it's true, it's so complex to describe this. citrusy, it is fruity, it is green. It's quite magical.
And though demand is high, there's still a problem. Harvesters have only a few weeks all year to gather about 450 tonnes of roses to satisfy the luxury perfume industry's demand. So why do brands like Tom Ford and Louis Vuitton clamour for their share of Bulgarian rose oil?
And why is it so expensive? The sun rises over this farm in Bulgaria's Rose Valley. But in this serene landscape, harvesters like Figan have been rushing since 5am to collect as many roses as they can. They only have a few weeks until the roses wilt and become unusable.
And a limited supply means a higher price tag. I'll show you the egg. It's a vanilla. The more flowers harvested in the morning hours, the better, because that's when the petals have the highest oil concentration.
Bulgarian roses, also known as damask roses, have a particularly low oil content compared to other rose varieties. so it's vital to extract as much oil as possible. Once there are enough bags of roses to fill a truckload, they're delivered to the distillery.
To extract the highest concentration of rose oil, the petals must be distilled immediately. immediately after harvesting. The distillation is not only the same day.
It can't be two or three hours. So that the oil is of high quality, the randamana is good, the smell is good, it is aromatic and so on. The longer producers wait, the less potent and therefore less valuable their oil becomes. Agro-Product employs about 120 people during the brief harvesting season and it says it spends an average of thousand dollars per kilo of oil on labor but that kilo can be sold for more than 1.5 times that amount see it's only very few here because as soon as they have a little truckload we have the truck just behind us there they are taken to the factory right away so this is very important especially in Bulgaria they are very good at that that's Christophe Lodamiel he's a master perfumer who's created sense for brands like Ralph Lauren and Tom Ford He's at the distillery today on a consulting visit. They take those bags and we can see that little truck going to the factory and they're going to be extracted right away because it does make a difference if you wait one or two days etc.
Once the roses arrive at the distillery, workers must move quickly. They weigh the petals and pour them into the distillation vat. Thousands of soft pink petals are mixed with water and boiled down to this colorless sludge. To make pink oil more expensive, we work harder.
We need more people to pick up the oil in smaller quantities. We have to wait hours for more light to come in the distillery to be able to boil. Agro Products says these measurements optimise the quality of its rose oil and the consistency makes its product more reliable.
The mixture flows through several distillation apparatuses before the oil can finally be separated from the water. For a single kilogram of rose oil, producers need to harvest and process as much as 5,000 kilograms of Bulgarian rose petals. You see this bottle right here? This is what you get if you harvest this during the whole season from three roses. You get just this bottle.
One kilo is this. So four of those goes in here. Voilà. Bulgarian rose oil is sought after by established luxury fragrance houses. ...such as Tom Ford and Louis Vuitton, as well as newer shops like Gloss Madeleine.
The rose is a rose is a rose, unless of course it's a Bulgarian rose. So we've smelled a lot of different roses and I actually wasn't a fan of too many different rose fragrances before. I felt like they smelled like my grandmother. And so when we smelled this, it actually smelled like as if you had a bouquet of roses.
And it smelled like a fresh rose. Fresh Rose. So, here we are.
So this is the production that just happened. It's straight from the factory in this raw bottle. This is so potent.
This is our final magical when it's really fresh. So some of it is a bit offensive, like stringent, or almost aggressive because it's so fresh. And then in the older one, the aged one, it's like a nice wine. Tremendous difference. Yeah?
Well, hopefully, because that's what we tell everybody. After the oil has been aged for at least three months, it can finally be incorporated into perfumes. Kuen says the unique scent profile of Bulgarian rose oil makes it worthy of its high price point. We pay between $10,000 to $15,000 for a kilo. For Bulgarian rose oil.
And that's the pure Bulgarian rose oil, undiluted. I feel it's definitely worth the price. It's extremely unique.
Studies have found more than 300 compounds in Damask rose oil, making it more complex than other varieties. The Damask rose, or Rosa damascena, originated in the Middle East, where its oil has been extracted since the 7th century. Around 400 years ago, The farmers began cultivating these roses in what's now known as Bulgaria's Rose Valley.
And this is one particular thing about this valley, is that it's cold and wet. If you look at other rose regions in the world, some are cold but dry, some are not as high as here. So this is very particular of this terroir here in Bulgaria and gives this richness of the oil.
The cooler spring temperatures. prevent the rose petals from forming a protective wax, and the humidity allows higher oil saturation in the rose. This year, the season was delayed a couple of weeks because of unexpected rainfall and colder than usual temperatures. Ironically, humidity and cool temperatures are two of the factors that make Bulgarian roses stand out from others.
Then there's the soil. Here, the soil is poor, rocky. This makes the smell and aroma of the rose more specific.
That's why it's called the liquid gold of Bulgaria. Plus, the Damascene rose has all these spicy and fruity notes. So they are very well preserved around here. And this is one reason why we like this Bulgarian rose. There is no sign of Bulgarian rose oil's global demand slowing down.
The rose oil market is estimated to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 6.8% between 2019 and 2025. Organic rose oil, like that produced by Agro-Product, is the fastest growing segment. Secondly, the trend is to produce organic products. It's harmless, there's no chemicals, no pesticides, etc.
And then we made a big distillery, which is currently... It works 100% only with organic oils and water. But the scent is what will keep perfumers like Christophe coming back for more. I don't know, I said already, it's one of those notes, you put it in almost anything, it makes it nicer. We had a joke with some other perfumers, we know we have one or two rose qualities, we know, well, just put that, just put a little bit, just a little bit, and clack, it gives a...
Either sparkle or body to a fragrance. So it's really nice.