Stewart & Claire

It's no secret that we love our cocktails. So we recently thought, wouldn't it be cool if we could infuse oils with the same aromatics used to make bitters and create a lip balm out of that? Well, we tried it using these recipes and you know what? It was an absolute failure. The scents were muted and dusty. Nothing anyone would want to put on their lips. 

So then we thought, why not try to create a lip balm that smells like bourbon? For weeks, we smelled a tumbler of bourbon alongside small bowls of aromatic oils before settling on a blend. We started with a vanilla-infused oil, since the toasted oak in bourbon gives it vanilla-like tones. We tried adding a few different essential oils of wood before settling on cedar, which has a great smoky quality. Bitter orange essential oil gives it bright high tones and a dash, really, just a smidgen of cinnamon and black pepper, warms it all up. 

In the end, does it smell exactly like bourbon? Well, no. It was impossible to replicate that alcoholic burn and all of bourbon's nuance. But it does almost smell like an old-fashioned, one made with orange bitters. And maybe a little like your grandfather's old tweed coat that's been long infused with pipe smoke. Which is an old-fashioned smell, don't you say? -S&C