I’m really into cold-pressed juices—like, really into them. Once I met a guy at a bar who was a juicer, and he thought I was joking about my rampant levels of enthusiasm, and I am pretty sure it pissed his girlfriend off. I really just wanted to talk about juicing.

Juice nerds know: If you juice or press fruit or vegetables above a certain temperature (often, rotating blades in juicers heat up whatever you are blending together) then ingredients are oxidized or degraded, minimizing their nutritional impact and making the result more sugar-heavy. The same principles of cold press apply in a roundabout way to skincare—many producers heat, bleach, or refine their ingredients, which takes away a lot of the goodness found in plant extracts and natural wonders.

Ambre Botanicals is one of the few producers who apply a “cold process' to their entire range, thus maximizing whatever benefits you can get from their natural ingredients. They also use don’t use water as a bulking agent, unlike many skincare manufacturers. Although water is never problematic as an inclusion, it often means that additional thickeners, emulsifiers and stabilizers are required to keep the product viable and give it a decent shelf-life. That stuff doesn’t need to go into Ambre products.

But ultimately, nobody cares about this stuff unless it is effective, right? Luckily, Ambre makes the most beautifully packaged and wonderful bath products (and other things, too, but I really love the bath stuff). Their Rosemary, Thyme and Mint Bath Oil looks like a fancy salad dressing but smells dreamy, and with a castor and macadamia base blend, it is also incredibly soothing and softening. Their Herbal Garden Body Scrub incorporates everything from sugar cane to eucalyptus and sage and it not only exfoliates but also makes you smell like an British garden. Trust me, I live here. So, just in time for the season when my skin turns miraculously lizardlike, I am hoarding it. Sometimes, it’s okay to be painfully trendy. Cold press for life.

–Olivia J. Singer

Photos by Olivia J. Singer