The Napa Valley in California may be best known for its wine, but it also has a profusion of olive trees, originally planted by monks who brought them from their native Italy. When Napa resident Susan Costner-Kenward decided to produce a range of natural body products, she decided to use locally produced olive oil as a main ingredient. The result is the Olivina range.
Costner-Kenward, formerly a food writer and chef in New York, traded east coast for west when she married Tor, a wine producer. Grapeseed oil, a by-product of the wine making, is also used in the products, along with other all-natural ingredients such as chamomile, sea algae, kelp, shea butter, honey, avocado oil and aloe vera.
This nourishing bath and bodycare range is suitable for the whole family and comes in three scents – lavender (with bitter orange rind); olive (with a grassy note from the leaves and branches of the trees) and fig (again with notes of both fruit and leaves). The fig body butter (€39 for 200ml) is pricey but delicious, and its warm, spicy aroma lingers on the skin. No parabens or lauryl-sulfate are used, and packaging is minimal. The sturdy, recycled plastic bottles are based on a design from a 19th-century apothecary glass bottle Costner-Kenward found in a market in France. And in case you are wondering about the wisdom of buying natural products when they originate halfway across the world, the products are transported by ship, not air. Available from Avoca, 11-13 Suffolk Street, Dublin and Kilmacanogue, Bray, Co Wicklow.