Bergamot essential oil

Bergamot essential oil (pronounced ), is a cold-pressed essential oil produced by cells inside the rind of a bergamot orange fruit. It is a common flavouring and top note in perfumes. The scent of bergamot essential oil is similar to a sweet light orange peel oil with a floral note.

Production

With regard to extracting Bergamot oil from the fruit, the sfumatura or slow-folding process was the traditional technique for manually extracting the bergamot oil.

In the 1840s the macchina calabrese (see image) was invented by Nicola Barillà. A few bergamots of similar size were placed between two metal cups. The lower cup was covered in spikes to hold the fruit still and the upper one was armed with sharp blades. The cups were rotated and the combination of pressure and movement of the upper cup caused oil and water to spray out of the fruit to be collected in a tin-lined copper bowl. The mixture of grated peel and oil would then be strained through woollen sacks.

By more modern methods, the oil is extracted mechanically with machines called peelers, which scrape the outside of the fruit under running water to get an emulsion channeled into centrifuges for separating the essence from the water.