Eastern Red Cedarwood Oil aka Blood Cedarwood Oil

Another offering from EOApothecare (expect a lot of words about this company to be written here) in the form of beautiful Blood Cedarwood essential oil (Juniperus virginiana) offers some unexpected attributes. First of all, blood cedarwood? Could someone have come up with a more fabulous name? Over the years I've sampled dozens of Juniperus virginiana essential oils, none rang the bell, so to speak, but this one does, most likely because of the memory trip it inspires. It's crisp, really, really green, and quite pushy. Tenacious. Bold. I am immediately transported back in time to Yorktown, Texas, summer 1974, visiting my grandmother in her little white clapboard house with the quilting frame hanging from the ceiling in the guest bedroom and the enormous pale red cedar chest at the foot of the bed that held all of the beautiful handmade quilts she made. I remember thinking as a child that cedarwood, then an unidentified scent, was the way that quilts naturally smelled. I can smell the air here, humid and muggy, and the excursions through town on the giant granny tricycle with the grocery basket on the back, bumping over the railroad tracks where we discovered dozens of old glass medicine bottles buried in the grass. This all floods in as I smell this amazing example of Eastern red cedarwood oil . . . a bit of momentary time travel in a bottle. 

I've read some describe the scent of Juniperus cedarwood oil as balsamic, but I'm not getting this here. This is like an exhalation of scent, a big, open breath of green leafiness, and (how else to describe it?) cedarwood. It's really nice.