trygve harris
Aroma Innovator
DAY 2
17/2/24
My name is Trygve and I started my essential oil company, Enfleurage, in New York, in 1997. Our focus has been and still is, on beautiful sparkling essential oils from the terroir they are happiest growing in, most of which we source ourselves, and have, since well before the internet.
We make our own small product range of roll-ons, perfumes and related items. But our emphasis has always been on the quality and life of our oils. How the plants grow and who they prefer to grow with, and even their inner lives, are all important features to our essential oil range.
Enfleurage New York has been open for 26 years and is run by Tom, our aromatherapist/massage therapist/esthetician GM, and Joe, our compounder.
In 2011 I opened our all-copper frankincense distillery in Salalah, Oman. This was entirely owned by Tom and I, and run by me. With no local partners, I learned quite a bit about how sourcing actually works when the botanicals are wild and possibilities for exploitation are huge. I discovered how large companies use CITES and other regulations, under the guise of sustainability, to corner markets, cutting out independent local producers, or steal the commercial rights to an entire species, with the help of chemistry.
From 2011 to 2016, I started using frankincense as a flavor, most notable for gelato. This was a new way of enjoying frankincense and our little distillery and local gelato has been featured on CNN’s Inside the Middle East, Envoyé Special (France 2), Asahi Shimbun (Japan), Condé Nast Traveler, and various regional media.
In 2016 I went back to the US for breast cancer treatment and in 2017 we moved the distillery to Muscat and made it more of an atelier, experimenting with other ways of extracting frankincense constituents. There’s more than just essential oil and hydrosol in there. We spent much of the pandemic getting to know the different Boswellic Acids.
The comparative safety and ease of the capital allowed us breathing space and we became the only Omani company to export frankincense oil and hydrosol to China, where we are legally registered as such and supply a few exclusive niche brands in the Chinese luxury skin care market.
I have spent all of 2023 as a resident of Dubai, where I’ve had endometrial cancer treatment and mitral heart valve replacement, due to a complications from a yet another childhood cancer. (Probably one of the reasons I have so many aromatherapy and cancer opinions.)
I studied gelato and chocolate making in Italy and I adore discovering new ways to enjoy frankincense, and other essential oils. I also love making strange new things, and I hope 2024 means some new mind blowing new aromatics from Dubai.
I’m an enthusiastic practitioner of Taekwondo, and hope to get back to the interesting and delightful active life I had before, once all the huge health issues are done.
ENFLEURAGE WEBSITE
ENFLEURAGE MIDDLE EAST WEBSITE (DISTILLERY)
