RoseAbsoluteOil.com

Two roses behind the absolute

A 2025 analytical study names the roses the perfume trade extracts, "most notably Rosa damascena and Rosa centifolia".1 The second is the rose de mai. Linnaeus published Rosa centifolia in Species Plantarum in 1753;2 World Flora Online reports it as an accepted name, with Rosa muscosa Aiton and Rosa gallica var. centifolia among its synonyms,3 and the GBIF backbone writes it Rosa × centifolia, the multiplication sign of a hybrid.4 The other is the damask, Rosa damascena Mill., 1768.5 Both reach the perfumer’s shelf as absolute; the difference is how much oil each gives the still.

Too little oil to distil

The rose de mai is a poor still rose. A 2021 review notes that "the content of essential oil in its flowers is very low (three times less than that of R. damascena)", so R. centifolia "is used mainly for the production of concrete and absolute", in France, Morocco and Italy.6 A second 2021 paper lists R. damascena, R. gallica, R. centifolia and R. alba as the species used in commercial rose-oil manufacture.7 The quantities stay small: a 2009 study in the Pakistan Journal of Botany, extracting R. centifolia petals with petroleum ether, reported 0.225 per cent concrete and 0.128 per cent absolute.8

Petal, concrete, absolute

Fresh flowers are agitated with a non-polar solvent such as n-hexane, which draws out the aromatic compounds "as well as other soluble substances like wax and pigments"; vacuum removes the solvent and leaves a waxy mass, the concrete. The concrete is stirred with ethyl alcohol at −15 to −20 °C, which dissolves the aromatic part and leaves the wax and paraffinic matter behind; evaporating the alcohol at low pressure gives the absolute.9 The same paper cites 300 to 400 kg of fresh flowers per kilogram of concrete and about 0.6 kg of absolute per kilogram of concrete, against about 3.5 tonnes of flowers per kilogram of distilled oil, and gives that as the reason concrete and absolute cost less than the oil.9

Why the absolute keeps the petal’s alcohol

2-Phenylethanol dissolves in water, and the still loses it. In a 2016 study from Isparta it made up 43.2 per cent of the fresh flower’s headspace but 1.3 per cent of the hydrodistilled oil, ending instead in the rose water (35.6 per cent) and the residue water (98.2 per cent). The solvent absolutes ran 35.2 to 38.4 per cent phenylethyl alcohol, with geraniol and citronellol far below their levels in the oil; nonacosane, the main compound of the concretes, was not detected in the absolutes, probably staying in the solid residue.9 Another group gives an average of 46.56 per cent in R. damascena absolute,7 and a commercial absolute analysed in 2025 read 51 per cent.1

Grasse and the rose de mai

In 2018 UNESCO inscribed the skills related to perfume in Pays de Grasse on its Representative List: the cultivation of perfume plants, "the knowledge and processing of natural raw materials" and the art of perfume composition, developed there "since at least the sixteenth century", with techniques that include "extraction and hydraulic distillation methods".10 The rose belongs to that landscape: the gardens of Grasse’s Musée International de la Parfumerie at Mouans-Sartoux, listed by the French Ministry of Culture among its remarkable gardens, give terraces to field crops of the region’s emblematic perfume flowers, "rose centifolia ou rose de mai" among them.11 RoseAbsoluteOil.com has no affiliation with UNESCO, the museum, INPI, ISO or any grower or producer.

A protected absolute, a standard for the oil

On 6 November 2020 France’s industrial-property office, INPI, homologated the geographical indication absolue Pays de Grasse. Picking, production and transformation must take place in the Alpes-Maritimes, Var and Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, and the process has two steps: extraction to a floral "pommade" called concrète, then conversion to absolute by alcohol washing, chilling, filtration and vacuum concentration. INPI ties the growth of Grasse’s perfume factories, from the mid-nineteenth century, to advances in extraction, hexane above all.12 Standards are thinner: ISO 9842:2024 specifies the essential oil of Rosa × damascena cultivated in Turkey, Morocco and Bulgaria,13 and the catalogue of ISO/TC 54, the essential-oils committee, lists rose standards for essential oils and none for rose concrete or absolute.14

“Absolute oil”, origin and authenticity

Strictly, an absolute is not a distilled oil: rose concrete comes from hexane extraction "and its alcohol soluble fraction is referred to as rose absolute".1 Usage is looser, and journals themselves write of "concrete oil" and "absolute oil".8 Turkey is a large source: the Isparta team wrote in 2016 that it meets "over 50 %" of world rose oil, concrete and absolute production.9 Natural rose extracts "are frequently subject to adulteration", so laboratories quantify the key rose alcohols by GC-MS, and premium material is "both undiluted and unadulterated".1 A Bulgarian profile of absolute identified 132 compounds and a country-of-origin fingerprint, applied to Egyptian and Moroccan samples, for authenticity control.15

What the solvent also concentrates

Extraction concentrates whatever dissolves, not just scent. Researchers in Grasse and Nice followed 54 pesticides from spiked rose petals through concrete to absolute: all but three were extracted and concentrated in the absolute, typically "by a factor of 100-300". In flowers from conventionally treated fields, chlorpyrifos at about 0.01 to 0.05 mg/kg reached 0.65 to 27.25 mg/kg in the corresponding absolutes, and residues in roses from Turkey likewise ended up concentrated in the absolute.16 Field practice travels, multiplied, into the bottle.

Who builds on a name like RoseAbsoluteOil.com

• Fine fragrance houses. Damask and rose de mai, both extracted for perfume.16
• Grasse growers and extractors. A craft on UNESCO’s list, an absolute with its own indication.1012
• Naturals traders and brokers. Where origin fingerprints and adulteration checks matter.151
• Analytical laboratories. Rose alcohols by GC-MS, pesticide residues by GC-MS/MS.116
• Extraction technologists. Hexane against other solvents, subcritical extracts beside absolutes.97
• Botanical and heritage publishers. Two roses, one hybrid sign, a garden of perfume plants.411

1. Hupp AM. Rose alcohol composition in extracts and flowers.ACS Meas Sci Au, 2025
2. Rosa centifolia L. (1753).IPNI, Kew
3. Rosa centifolia L.World Flora Online
4. Rosa ×centifolia L., backbone record.GBIF
5. Rosa damascena Mill. (1768).IPNI, Kew
6. Mileva M et al. Rose flowers: a review.Biomolecules, 2021
7. Dobreva A et al. Subcritical extracts from oil-bearing roses.Molecules, 2021
8. Shabbir MK et al. Essential oil of Rosa centifolia.Pak J Bot, 2009
9. Erbaş S, Baydar H. Scent compounds of oil-bearing rose.Rec Nat Prod, 2016
10. The skills related to perfume in Pays de Grasse.UNESCO, 2018
11. Jardins du Musée International de la Parfumerie.Ministère de la Culture, DRAC PACA
12. L’INPI homologue l’IG « absolue Pays de Grasse ».INPI, 2020
13. ISO 9842:2024, Essential oil of rose.ISO, 2024
14. ISO/TC 54 Essential oils, standards catalogue.ISO
15. Nedeltcheva-Antonova D et al. Profiling of Bulgarian rose absolute.Ind Crops Prod, 2017
16. Tascone O et al. Pesticides from rose petals to rose absolute.J Agric Food Chem, 2015