Our mission
Where it all begins.
One farm, worked by the people whose name is on the bottle. Everything Alepu knows about plants, it learned here first.
The land does the work. We try not to get in the way.
The farm is not a backdrop for photographs. It is where the plants are grown, cut and dried, and where every decision about the range starts — what the ground can carry this year, what needs a season off, what is ready.
We work it organically and regeneratively, which mostly means doing less to it and waiting longer. The soil is the asset. Everything else is a consequence of how it was treated.
What a year here actually looks like.
Winter is soil and repairs. Spring is planting and the first cuts. Summer is the harvest window, which is short and does not move for anyone's launch calendar. Autumn is cover crops going back in and the ground being put away properly.
Distilling happens close to the cut, because the gap between the two is where quality goes missing. What comes out is what that field gave that year — not a target we set in advance.
Soil first. Everything else is downstream of it.
On the ground
Three things we spend the money on.
Soil
Cover crops, rotation and animals back on the land. We measure the season by what the ground looks like at the end of it.
Water and shade
Hedges, trees and ground cover left in place. They cost us planting area and they hold the water where it fell.
Hands
Cut, sorted and dried by people who have done it before. Most of the work that matters here is still done slowly.
And when it will not grow here.
Cinnamon, cardamom, vetiver and black pepper will never come off a Bulgarian field. For those we go to the people who have grown them their whole lives, and we film the visit so you can see it for yourself.
Be first to know about new oils.
We send a note when an expedition turns into something you can buy. Nothing else, and not often.
