After harvest we process small batches of the lavender blossoms. Our process uses steam to strip the oil from the flowers and then the steam is cooled and it returns to a liquid state. We capture the liquid in a separation vessel where the essential lavender oil floats on top of the lavender hydrosol (floral water). We get about 20 ounces of hydrosol to 1 ounce of essential oil and we only get about 5 ounces of essential oil with each run of lavender.
We process the white lavender the same way but we keep but distill them separately because it has a very different aroma.