Distilling an island: Pink Pepper

The perfumes of Maulana’s gardens

My house in lefke has the most beautiful pepper tree of the village. The pepper tree has long falling branches that dance in the wind as if they were long hairs. From this I imagined that it would be a good remedy for falling hair.

The perfume of the leaves, flowers and fruits is the same and we decided to distil all of them at once.

This time we are using Abdul Halim’s  more rudimentary installation and the smaller distiller of 40 liters.

The distiller is filled, we select only the leaves, flowers and fruits cutting them from the sticks. This is the longest part of the work.

Abdur Ra’uf American is visiting us and checks the result of this first distillation of pepper tree.

He smiles at our small machine because he uses only the 200 liters distiller and he looks at us like one who drives a big Range Rover looks down at the driver of a Morris Mini by the traffic light.

When the essence starts to get out we are delighted by its limpid transparency and by the quantity pouring out.

The essence is fantastic, it is peppery and balsamic. Everybody likes it and we already prepare the bottles for our shop.

Lefke 15 04 2014