Petitgrain Bigarade ( Paraguay )

📂 CAS N° — 8014-17-3

📝 Odor type — Woody green \ Floral

📈 Odor Strength — High

👃🏼 Odor Profile — Petitgrain Bigarade Oil presents as a pale yellow or amber-colored liquid, emitting a delightful, fresh-floral aroma. Its scent evokes the essence of orange flowers, with subtle woody-herbaceous undertones and a faint yet sweet-floral dryout. Notably, the initial impression includes a "bitter" top note, reminiscent of the oil's slightly bitter flavor profile. However, this bitterness adds a dry, refreshing quality, complemented by rich and sweet undertones. The terpenes within the oil contribute to this characteristic bitterness, enhancing its overall freshness. This freshness plays a crucial role in balancing the oil's high content of linalyl acetate, preventing an overpowering sweetness. Even with 75% of its components removed, the oil retains its distinct petitgrain aroma, illustrating its unique olfactive profile reminiscent of petitgrain.

⚗️ Uses — Used primarily as fixatives in citrus colognes, Oriental perfumes, chypres, floral bases, etc. Along with Peru balsam products, they are among the most interesting modifiers for “exotic” floral fragrances.

Petitgrain is the natural extract obtained from the steam distillation of the leaves, branches, and unripe fruits of the bitter orange tree (Citrus Aurantium, var. Amara). Generally, about 70% of the product used in the perfume and cosmetics industry comes from Paraguay, where the raw material has developed a remarkable adaptability to the Paraguayan environment.

The essence distilled from Paraguay was born with the brainstorming of Benjamin Balansa (1825- 1892), a French botanist whose scientific activities took him to Indochina and the western hemisphere (Chevalier, 1942; Astre, 1947)

When Balansa arrived in Paraguay in 1875 to collect plants, he found much land east of the Paraguay River covered by naturalized citrus forests. Balansa, recognizing the potential for essential oil production even in this remote corner of South America, began distilling the oily parts of the bitter orange in 1876. At first, the flowers were processed to make neroli oil, while leaves and twigs produced petitgrain oil. Encouraged by these results, Balansa built a still of his own creation in Buenos Aires and brought it to Paraguay in 1877. In 1885, others also established 30 petitgrain operations in the country in an attempt to emulate Balansa's success (Bourgade, 1889).

Labor problems and negligible worldwide demand for the more expensive Neroli oil focused commercial attention on distilling the leaves rather than the flowers.

Until the 1930s, essential oil production in Paraguay was dominated by several large producers, including a descendant of Balansa. Gradually, however, petitgrain production became largely a peasant activity, characterized by many small operations using crude equipment. Bitter orange cultivation and/or distilling of petitgrain are now in the hands of about 15,000 Paraguayan villagers and only a few large producers (Daniel W. Gade 1979).

Most of the farmers who grow bitter orange do not have their own distillation equipment and rent it from neighbors or sell the raw material to still-owners who are also farmers. Most of the farms where bitter orange plants are grown cover less than five acres, with a quarter between five and ten acres. Although small, these farm units are diversified (Daniel W. Gade 1979).