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Why We Prefer Birch over Wintergreen Essential Oil

Hopewell Essential Oils' Sweet Birch is grown and distilled in the Adirondack region of Canada, while much of the Wintergreen on the market is from China. It is our understanding that true, steam-distilled Birch essential oil is no longer produced commercially on a large scale because it is not economically feasible to compete with other products such as Wintergreen oil which, in terms of chemistry, is practically identical.

Recently though, we located some amazing quality Adirondack Birch essential oil that is produced by a family distillery on a very small scale, and, to our knowledge, it is the only authentic Birch oil known to be on the market today.

The quality of this oil is amazing. True Birch essential oil is expensive because the bark has to be macerated and soaked in warm water for 10-12 hours minimum before it can be distilled. The yield is very low, and the oil is technically more difficult to collect from the distillation because it's more dense than water, so the oil layer sinks to the bottom of the collection apparatus instead of floating on top like most essential oils.

When we tested Wintergreen and our Adirondack Birch essential oils side-by-side, we preferred Birch 100% of the time over Wintergreen. We asked others to test the two, and again, Birch was the winner by a 100% margin. It is an excellent choice for joint stiffness and pain, inflammation, gout, skin issues and much more. For more information about using Birch essential oil, click here.