PURE ESSENCE (ESSENTIAL OIL) OF BERGAMOT FROM REGGIO CALABRIA

Essential oil is obtained from the pressing of the peel of bergamot, whose vesicles break, releasing the precious and fragrant essence. The first known method of extraction of the essence dates back to the second half of the 1700s in Italy on the Calabrian coast: the peels were pressed manually, and the essence was absorbed by natural sea sponges; this method is attributed to its creator, Nicola Parisi. The category of "sfumatori" or "spiritàri" was also very common for the extraction of essences from other citrus fruits. About a century later, in 1844, the first patent for the extraction of essential oil from the peels using a machine called "macchina calabrese" was filed in Italy, which pressed and peeled the fruits more efficiently and in less time, obtaining the essence from the peels and improving its quality compared to the sponge method. Its inventor, Nicola Barillà, can be defined as the greatest architect of the spread of this artisanal practice in the Reggio region, making it the most important (and practically only) production site of this essential oil. Today, the processing of bergamot is done cold with water-peeling machines equipped with automatic systems for loading and unloading the fruits. During extraction, a rain of water sprayed from the top of the processing chamber separates the solid part from the liquid part, which thanks to disk centrifuges separates the essence from the water. The pure essence obtained, after being subjected to chemical analysis, is stored in special steel containers and then distributed in sealed and labeled barrels or bottled. From the pure essence, both conventional and organic and DOP, the following products can also be obtained: – Distilled bergamot essential oil; – Decolorized bergamot essential oil; – Deterpenated bergamot essential oil; – Bergamot essential oil without furocoumarins (to avoid damaging the skin with direct use in cosmetics)