Agraria is a San Francisco-based company founded over 30 years ago. Its most famous fragrance is Bitter Orange (a best-selling potpourri, and now available in many home fragrance and body products). Bitter Orange is a favorite of mine: a nose-tickling, slightly powdery fragrance containing clove, bitter orange and cypress.
I thought it was time to sample another Agraria scent.
Most home fragrance fiends have probably succumbed by now and tried a perfume-oil-with-diffuser-reeds product. Agraria’s Balsam AirEssence comes in a beautiful, hand-blown heavy crystal perfume bottle with glass stopper. The bottle (almost six inches tall) contains 9.4 ounces of scented oil into which one places 20 nine-inch diffuser reeds. The reeds absorb the fragrant oil and diffuse it into the air; when you want more concentrated scent — flip the reeds.
The Balsam fragrance (as described on the Agraria website) contains: sweet balsam (no particular plant/tree is specified), California redwood, French sage, and white flowers (again, no specifics). Diffuser perfume oils are blended in a way that provides a steady stream of unvarying fragrance…