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Rose
Delicate and subtle
Appreciated for its beauty and fragrance, the rose has been celebrated since antiquity by poets, writers and painters for its colours and scent.
The rose is one of the most widely cultivated plants in the world, and is the leading flower on the market.
Rose essence is obtained either by distillation of the petals, a process which enables the residue to be used in the form of rose water, or by solvent extraction, which evaporates to produce a paste known as "concrete". This paste, washed with alcohol and filtered, gives another paste called "absolute". The two species most commonly grown for this purpose are Rosa damascena (in Bulgaria and Turkey) for the essential oil, or Damask rose, and Rosa centifolia (in France and Morocco) for the concrete and the absolute. The latter is grown in Grasse under the name of "rose de mai".
The rose harvest lasts around 40 days, from mid-May to mid-June. The flowers are hand-picked at sunrise, when their yield of essential oil is at its highest. Harvesting must be completed before 10am so that the dew is still present on the flowers and they do not wilt.
A picker can collect 10 to 20 kg of flowers a day. 400 fresh flowers = 1kg of fresh flowers.
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