Rose absolute, produced from rose petals, lends a spicy-floral fragrance to soaps, personal care products, perfumes and colognes. Because it is mass-produced for the fragrance industry it costs less than rose otto, which is steam distilled.
There are more than 250 species of rose and thousands of cultivars, but only two varieties are used to produce rose absolute. Ours comes from the cabbage rose (Rosa centifolia), which is cultivated in France, especially in the city of Grasse, also known as the perfume capital of the world.
Because the blossoms only contain a trace amount of essential oil, it takes approximately 60,000 roses to produce a single ounce of rose absolute.