Turmeric Essential Oil - Organic - CO2 Extracted (Curcuma Longa)

Turmeric essential oil is a CO2 extract of the rhizome of Curcuma longa, and ours comes from Vietnam. Its scent comes from the turmerones, the aromatic compounds that make up the oil. Those are ar-turmerone and the alpha- and beta-turmerones, and they are what you smell when you open the bottle. Curcumin is a separate compound, the bright pigment of the ground spice rather than part of that aromatic oil. Because this is a CO2 total extract, it carries some of that pigment across with the aroma, which is why the oil runs yellow-orange rather than pale.

Turmeric belongs to the ginger family, Zingiberaceae, and the rhizome has a long life as a dye, a spice and a ritual paste. Its color made it a dye for monks' robes and for saris, and Medieval Europe called it Indian saffron and used it where saffron was too dear. Cooks work it into curry powders, where it doubles as the food color E100, and it turns up as the haldi paste smoothed onto a bride and groom before a wedding across the Indian subcontinent. Our oil is the fresh, spicy side of that rhizome, not the dusty smell of the ground spice.

Because it is CO2 extracted rather than steam distilled, this turmeric oil sits closer to the fresh rhizome, and carries more of its aroma than a steam-distilled turmeric oil leaves behind. We work with small-batch producers who harvest carefully, and every oil we sell goes through third-party testing for synthetics, pesticides and adulteration. It sits alongside the hard-to-find oils in our range, a turmeric for the diffuser and the blending bench rather than the spice rack.