Andrea Pagliantini explains how to making lavender essential oil on his blog. Andrea is a true, strong Chiantigiano, capable of introducing us to the most unusual and curious aspects of Chianti through his writing. His blog features pages of curiosities and daily life, controversies about misgovernment, and also entertaining stories of Chianti Storico. A professional […]
VLC16 is a television channel featuring programs for a modern audience and covering essential oil production. The Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations), recommended our organization to VLC16, which was looking for an example of the evolution of peasant work to share with the people […]
New cosmetics are functional in nature, requiring active ingredients that are appropriately combined with other excipients to enhance their efficacy. This entails optimally extracting the right active ingredients from selected botanicals. It also means measuring the product’s effectiveness using scientific methods. Realizing this vision has occupied us for nearly ten years. Let’s see how we […]
We are beginning to modernize medicinal plant cultivation by mechanical harvesting of lavender. Every production activity must be properly organized. We need a nursery to supply the business with aromatic plants and a system for the mechanical harvesting of lavender. Distillation must be carried out using stills of appropriate capacity, located in suitable premises dedicated […]
We began to distill lavender in the 60s, but this coincided with a much more romantic story. Liguria, a honeymoon on the Col di Nava, an advertising song on the scent of lavender … and in Casalvento it was immediately blue. It was unthinkable in the 1960s to come across specialized crops of medicinal plants, […]
And so it was that on a hot June afternoon in 2013, Matteo Pucci, a professional journalist and founder and editor of the Gazzettino del Chianti e delle Colline Fiorentine, arrived ti the man who scents Chianti. Traveling along provincial road No. 76, which leads from Castellina in Chianti to San Donato in Poggio, he […]
Small billhooks (roncolini) were used on every farm for processing Iris Pallida, at least four per family. They were used only for one month a year and were used to work the iris. Crafted by the local blacksmith from the finest steel available, they had a handle of chestnut or beech wood. They were used […]
From 1962 onwards, scientific rigor was applied to production, giving rise to Casalvento Laboratories. Giovanni Domini, a professor at the University of Siena, published an experimental study using gas chromatographic analysis of essential oils, correlating distillation with the balsamic properties of Lavandula Angustifolia grown in Casalvento. This milestone marked the beginning of our scientific evolution. […]
In our Hystoric Chianti, harvesting juniper berries has always been a seasonal activity. Every year, from mid-August until the beginning of the harvest, every farming family took part in the harvest. On every farm, the elders taught the young how to harvest juniper berries. It was a true art. No branch was to be damaged, […]
Old Castellina was an Etruscan town situated at an altitude of 635 meters, halfway between Siena and Florence. It was once known as Salingolpe. <When I was taken to visit the property before purchasing it, I saw, along with a nearly dilapidated farmhouse, a meager plot of land on the top of a hill 630 […]
