A moment of zen for your afternoon: Watch this video on making rose essence in Bulgaria, home to most of the world’s rose oil production.

Why share a video on rose essence production? Well, it’s lovely, for one. But for another, we like to show you where the ingredients that go into our teas come from! Rose products – rose otto, rose absolute, and rosewater – go into several of our teas, including (naturally) Citizen Kane rose tea and Turkish Delight.

We find it kind of fascinating to watch how these distillations of flowers are made, and to know that it takes around 60 roses to make one drop of rose otto. Yes, you read that right. 60 roses for one drop. 10,000 pounds of roses to make a pound of rose oil. And, of course, the labour of a whole lot of little old Bulgarian ladies in the rose fields, as the video shows. No wonder it’s so expensive!