La Vie en Rose

It's just after dawn on a summer's day when Konfekt arrives at a field filled with thousands of pink Rosa damascena just outside the village of Harmanlı in the province of Burdur, in Turkey's inner Mediterranean region. Dozens of workers are already in the field, handpicking pink rose petals and loading them into sacks to be taken to the nearby distillery just a short walk away. The first hours of sunlight are the most prized working period of the day as the roses are in their utmost oil-yielding state, still moist and heavy with dew from the night before.

This facility and 25 hectares of rose plantations are owned by the natural oil distillery Polyetta, the retirement project of chemical engineer Tulay Attaroglu and economist Serife Derin. After spending decades in corporate life, the duo followed their passion into agripreneurship. “I have always known I would somehow come to work with aromatic medicinal plants again,” says Attaroglu, who wrote her doctoral dissertation on oil-extraction methods and yields of jasmine. When Derin approached her to revive ancestral land untouched for decades, Attaroglu rose to the challenge. The brand is named after an ancient Pisidian city that reigned over the region and is thought to have shared the company's vision of prioritising farming over commerce.

Burdur and its neighbouring province of Isparta are home to an extremely special microclimate formed by the six lakes in the area, which provide perfect conditions for this particular scented rose to bloom. “The soil is equally as important,” says Attaroglu, elaborating on the three-year feasibility report the company did before investing.

Due to the hardships of farming, much of the land in Burdur had been left uncultivated but Polyetta's presence has changed that. Since planting its first crop in 2017, rose cultivation in the region has increased by 72 per cent to meet the company's demand. “That is how we measure success,” says Attaroglu. “It is about how we contribute to the larger society we are part of.” Polyetta is fully committed to giving back to the community, providing cost-free education in rose cultivation and maintenance support. It additionally assures farmers that it will buy their product at harvest time. Nearly all of this premium rose oil – 95 per cent – is sold to perfumeries in Europe, mainly in France and the UK, where it is used as the primary base for fragrances. “There are three layers to perfumes. Rose oil is the primary one: without it you cannot blend other fragrances. The better the quality, the longer the perfume lasts. If a perfume starts to sour in the bottle, it means that it was manufactured artificially,” says Attaroglu.

These two women agripreneurs have sparked change in the male-dominated rose-oil business but not without facing down challenges. “In 2019 our first harvest was the hardest,” says Attaroglu. “Our workers did not show up for three days because rumour had it that two women were not capable of running a business. This was a catastrophe since the roses needed to be picked on the day. Then we received a call from our buyers, haggling for the price of the roses, after hearing that we were in a tight spot.” This played an important role when making the risky decision to build their very own distillery. As it stands, they are Burdur's only rose-oil distillery; the only one in Turkey founded and run by women; and, more importantly, the only distillery that is 100 per cent sustainably run.

“There are so many things we can make chemically, such as the smell of roses, but we cannot make water, so conservation is a top priority for us,” says Attaroglu. Polyetta has a strict zero-waste policy and repurposes all of its residue. Efficient irrigation systems that use almost 50 per cent less water have been installed in the fields. The wellbeing of future generations is a key concern for the company. It is also why Attaroglu asked her daughter Pinar to join the team. “I would have never been involved in this project if there was nobody to carry it into the future,” says Attaroglu. Pinar is responsible for the brand's retail department and heads every process, from its branding to its sale.

By lunchtime the fragrance arising from the fields is overwhelming. There are two shifts for workers: early morning and late afternoon. When the sun is at its highest point, the field is empty. Pinar invites us to take shelter in the distillery and offers us some chamomile tea made from wild flowers growing among the roses. “Working in a field was never my dream,” says Pinar, who studied design at Milan's Nuova Accademia delle Belle Arti. “But working with my mother has taught me a lot. Polyetta is far beyond my expectations. I have been hooked since experiencing my first harvest.”

Inside the distillery five massive copper boilers are constantly being loaded and fired up. Up to 500kg of rose petals are topped off with 1.5 tonnes of water to produce oil. Rose water is the byproduct of this process. About 5,000kg of rose petals produce just one litre of rose oil.

In the lab, Attaroglu measures the consistency and quality of every batch from every boiler; the metal table is covered with test tubes and notebooks. The rose oil is stored in a vault in the adjacent room. There's a reason why it's referred to locally as liquid gold.