An Essential Story
EssènciesCat is a project of passion with plants as the protagonists. It’s an essential oil distillery and a Healing Arts Centre, ‘Rizoma’, set in the picturesque Empordà region of north eastern Catalonia where the foothills of the Pyranese mountains pour into the sea.
EssènciesCat was founded in 2014 by Oriol Blanch and Frances Bartlett, a partnership who met in 2008 while living in Barcelona. Oriol was a practicing psycologist, specialising in group therapy techniques based on spontaneous theatre and psicodrama with adults and young people at risk of social exclusion. Frances was playing the cello in the Opera House and internationally with contemporary dance companies. Frances began working alongside Oriol as soon as they met, bringing her passion for art to be used as a healing tool in communities and groups to his cultural association of spontaneous theatre.
It was while Oriol was studying a Masters in Psycodrama in Buenos Aires, 2001 where the door of treating psycological imbalance with natural plant based products rather than prescribed drugs was opened to him. He continued to dedicate the next twenty years to study and use plant infusions, tinctures, macerations and mediterranean flower essences in his personal life and with his patients.
The distillery of EssènciesCat was built in 2016 in a two hectare site on the edge of Pontós, Àlt Empordà.
Rizoma, Healing Arts Centre was constructed in the same space as the distillery in 2022.
Essential Products
EssènciesCat is passionate about our community, health and culture: We believe that a profound sustainable working relationship with our environment and community creates better physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health.
It’s here, in the Alt Empordà region, a unique spot in the Mediterranean basin full of forests, scrubby hillsides, flowering verges and windy clifftops where we source such a wealth of aromatic plants.
Our proucts are 100% natural, 100% local, 100% organic and 100% hand crafted, containing all the plant’s properties that we need to treat our mental and physical health, balance and wellbeing.
Each step of the process is gently moulded by our hands. We plant the seeds, transplant them, water and harvest our crops by hand. We harvest wild flowers by hand and when friends from neighbouring farms clear their forests, we distill the leaves and branches from trees such as red and white pine. We carefully create our synergies, design our own labels, bottle our products and send them off direct from the distillery to you.
Meet our team
Our workers, producers of raw material and services are all contracted within our village of Pontós or neighbouring area.
Ms. Frances Bartlett
General Manager, Sales and Admin
Mr. Oriol Blanch
Destillery Manager and Psycho-aromatherapist (Psychologist and Group Therapist)
