So simple... Yet so Sophisticated
Our newest release had us out looking around the globe (digitally of course), for some pretty rare ingredients. The Top Shelf Collection was made with the highest quality ingredients possible that we could get sourced to us. We broke down how fine Cognac, Cuban Cigars and the most premium Red Wine was made, and replicated it in our soaps.
Cubans & Cognac
The Cubans & Cognac bar was made with the idea of when you shower with this soap, you'll be engulfed with the feeling of status, fame and riches. We all heard of Remy Martin Cognac before, and as crazy as it may seem, those bottles can fetch a dollar amount as high as $30,000+. Take that and combine it with some premium grade tobacco leaves used to make legit cuban cigars, what we had was one of the most masculine bars we've ever created, yet the women loved using it as well.
Cognac is a specific type of Brandy produced from distilled white wine. It must be distilled twice, using copper pot stills, and aged in French oak barrels for a minimum of two years. While we didn't have two years to make this soap, we were however able to source the grapes used to specifically make the most expensive Cognac, the Ugni Blanc grape. Unfortunately, we couldn't just crush up these grapes and stir them into our soaps as they would go rancid rather quickly, but we did do something no other soap company has been able to do before. We sourced grape seed oil made from Ugni Blanc grapes.
Typically, grape seed oil is made from the usual cheap grapes. Finding a source who could get us Ugni Blanc grape seed oil was a HUGE challenge. Since they didn't already produce it, we had to pay an arm and a leg to get a few ounces of it (okay more like 16 ounces). We may have been the first to even have someone make grape seed oil from Ugni Blanc grapes!
Next we were able to source the most premium shade tobacco wrappers around, and they smelled INCREDIBLE. We took those leaves, and infused them in the Ugni Blanc oil for 12 hours before straining it through a cheese cloth. The result was a spicy, tobacco scented oil that just smelled like a million dollars. That was our key ingredient to making the scent, and feel of this soap.
SMELL LIKE STATUS
Hagwood Vineyards
While the Cubans & Cognac soap was a little more intense on getting the ingredients, the Hagwood Vineyards Red Wine soap was no walk in the park either. While going into the production of this soap, we thought we could just pour a bottle of red wine straight into the blend and be good to go... that's not the case. The alcohol content in the Red Wine wouldn't allow us to go straight from bottle to soap, instead we had to take a few detours.
First off, we had to boil the alcohol out of the red wine. While it's almost impossible to get 100% of the alcohol out of the red wine, we were able to get about 95% out (based on a boiling time period). The result was a thicker, more potent batch of Red Wine. Once cooled, we were able to add it into our soap blend. At first we thought we were going to get a deep red color from the red wine, but it went from red, to a purple-ish grey once curing. It did however provide an AMAZING amount of lather due to the sugar in the red wine.