LAVANDULA X. INTERMEDIA ‘TIGER ALLEY’ – ‘FARM LEGEND’
The farm’s entrance is hedges of alternately planted Grosso and Margaret lavandins. At the height of summer, when these plants are in full flower, the deep purple of Grosso against the silvery mauve of Margaret creates a striped effect of dark and light purple tones which has entered the farm’s folklore as ‘tiger alley’. When we were hand harvesting, these plants were taken off separately to be distilled as single cultivars, however since we have largely mechanized our harvest, these hedges are taken off together and distilled as a dual cultivar blend.
ESSENTIAL OIL
From the GC/MS analysis of the ‘tiger alley’ blend, it is obvious this combination of plants has produced a lavandin essential oil very balanced in all the key compounds, with also an interesting equality of presence of the minor level compounds. In other words, all these compounds are there at fairly significant levels but none dominate. The Grosso influence has softened the fresh green camphor and cineole aroma typical in most lavandin essential oils except its own and Margaret has added her own special floral refinement. We are very happy with the quality of this distilled blend. Supply is limited.
HYDROSOL
The hydrosol derived from the Tiger Alley distillation is fresh and herbaceous in the front notes with hints of floral honey on the skin in its finishing notes. As with all our lavandin hydrosols Tiger Alley comes off the still with a pH level well below 4.5
