Last November, I was invited by my friend and fellow aromatherapist, Lou Caballero, to visit their 10-hectare farm in Nueva Ecija. It’s a small town that is about 3 hours north of the Philippine capital.
This sprawling land is proudly family-owned and lovingly managed by the third-generation Aves siblings, alongside their devoted matriarch. Their focus is to fill their estate with Filipino native medicinal and aromatic plants.
Since they have an abundance of Cuban oregano (Coleus amboinicus) or Mexican mint, Lou and I decided to dedicate one of our days for distillation. First, we had to harvest the best looking leaves, wash them in running water, and let them dry overnight.
We also prepped her brand-new 5L copper still with an acid rinse the day before the distillation to ensure it was clean and ready for its first use. Here are the specifics of this batch of distillation:
- 860g of air-dried oregano leaves
- 4L of water
The distillation ran for about 4 hours, with constant monitoring and a lot of note-taking. Our first batch yielded 200ml of hydrosol and a negligible amount of essential oils.
We also tried doing another batch using freshly picked leaves. Here are the specifics for our second batch of distillation:
- 420g of fresh oregano leaves
- 3L of water
For the second batch, we had a yield of 200ml on its 3.5-hour mark.
Four months down the line, our oregano hydrosol remained stable and without blooming. Comparing the two distillations, I like the aroma of the second batch better. It has more of the herbaceous floral aromatic scent than the first batch, which had more of the sharp, spicy, and pungent thymol scent.
Have you tried distilling oregano? What were your observations? How did you like the aroma of its hydrosol?
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