Sweet fennel. Not bitter.

Our Story

Which fennel is in the bottle changes both how it smells and how carefully it should be used. Ours is sweet fennel, cracked on site and distilled here.

Sweet Not Bitter Fennel

Whole Seed Milled Before Charging

Estragole Quantified Each Lot

3 yr Origin and Year On Lot

Two Fennels, Sold As One

Foeniculum vulgare comes in a sweet variety and a bitter one, and a label saying only fennel leaves you guessing which you have.

Sweet fennel is the milder, more fragrant material and the one we bottle. Bitter fennel is sharper, carries a different constituent balance and comes with more pointed cautions attached. Both are legitimately fennel. They are not interchangeable, and the difference matters more here than in almost any other spice oil.

Naming the variety is the least a seller can do. Beyond that we buy the seed whole, keep it whole, and crack it in the hour before it meets steam, because a cracked seed starts giving up its best the moment its coat is broken.

Fennel Needs a Careful Hand

No medical claims are made here, and the cautions sit high on this page deliberately.

Fennel oil is anethole-rich and contains estragole, which European regulators have restricted. It should be avoided entirely in pregnancy and while breastfeeding, and it is not appropriate for children. If you have an oestrogen-sensitive condition or epilepsy, leave this one alone. Keep dilutions low and well under what you would use for a citrus.

Bitter fennel oil carries stronger cautions still. We sell sweet fennel, and if you have been given advice about fennel oil without being told which variety it referred to, consider that advice incomplete.

Dilute before skin contact and patch a small area first. When a lot does not meet the numbers, we go out of stock rather than fill bottles from it.

Coarse-cracked fennel seed in an open still with steam beginning to rise

Cracked Coarse, Then Steamed

The mill runs to a coarse crack rather than a powder. Powder is a trap: it beds down so densely that steam finds a channel round the outside of the charge, and what you get is a patchy distillation with scorching where the heat sits.

From mill to still is a walk across the room. Steam is passed through the cracked seed until it is spent, and the anethole-led sweetness comes over with earthier, peppery layers behind it.

Nothing is timed. The charge is done when it is done, and the lot goes out for analysis before a single bottle is filled.

Bought To a Screen Size

Fennel grows wild along Mediterranean coasts, feathery and tall, and the seed we want is the ripe, plump, evenly coloured kind.

Every material has a screen size we buy to, along with a ceiling on moisture. Split, damaged, immature or off-colour seed is rejected rather than waved through. Screen size is really a proxy for maturity, and immature seed both yields less oil and gives a thinner profile.

The alternative, which is what most commodity distillation runs on, is whatever failed to reach a better market: undersized, broken, or swept off the floor of a cleaning line. We would rather buy seed good enough to sow.

Whole fennel seed with a screen sieve and a moisture meter on a workbench

Both Numbers, Every Lot

An independent laboratory analyses each lot, and for fennel the safety figure is as important as the quality one.

Anethole

The constituent behind the sweet licorice character, and the marker that separates sweet fennel from bitter.

Estragole

Quantified for every lot, because the cautions on this page are only meaningful if the number behind them is known.

Variety confirmation

Establishes sweet rather than bitter fennel, which a label alone cannot demonstrate.

We will send both figures for whichever lot you have. The contact page works if email does not.

Six Rules We Keep

Applied to every fennel lot without exception.

✿

Variety Named

Sweet fennel stated plainly, because the two varieties are not equivalent.

☘

Spec, Not Adjectives

Screen size and moisture ceiling, with immature and split seed refused.

⚙

Milled On Site

Cracked here, minutes from the still rather than weeks from a supplier.

⚖

Estragole Published

Independently measured and given out on request, not buried.

✓

Nothing Boosted

No synthetic anethole to lift a weak or tired lot.

▢

Any Quantity

Retail sizes and bulk containers off a single run.

◇

Amber, Every Size

Bottled in amber glass throughout the range, because an anethole-led oil dulls in clear glass.

∅

Undiluted Sweet Fennel

One variety at full strength, with no bitter fennel and no synthetic anethole making up the volume.

Named, Sized, and Measured

Sweet Mediterranean fennel seed bought to spec, cracked coarse on site, stilled here, with anethole and estragole both on the certificate.

Ask which variety. Always.

Shop Fennel Oil