She learned it from her mother and passed it on to her daughters.

Tunisian woman drips rose water in a way inherited from grandparents

Daouda Ben Salem: The traditional distillation method produces high-quality perfumes. Reuters

Every year, Tunisian Daouda Ben Salem eagerly awaits spring for her flowers to bloom, the season in which she begins producing rose water or blossom water, using traditional ancestral distillation techniques.

During March, April and May, the 63-year-old Tunisian begins her days by picking roses, orange blossoms, jasmine and more, then setting fire to firewood.

Daouda bin Salem says: "The method of distillation on wood is a traditional method that I inherited from my grandparents, and I preserved it because this type of distillation has a special taste and smell."

She began to explain the traditional distillation process in which she uses a pot made of copper: "We put in the copper pot the rose or perfume, then we put water on it, put the lid on it and close it, and when it boils, the steam rises to the lid and then moves in the tube until it reaches the bottle that collects rose water."

After the rose water cools, she begins to bottle it in her garden.

Daouda bin Salem learned how to make rose water from her mother and grandmother, a method passed down from generation to generation in her family. She in turn passed on her experience to her daughters in order to preserve this unique tradition. She points out that the traditional distillation method produces high-quality perfumes, although it takes more time and effort.

Her daughter Suhaila Ben Ali agreed: «My mother started this work as a passion and transferred it to us, and taught it to us in all its details, we wanted to switch a little in the distillation process to keep pace with the times and become faster and use the new method that uses gas, but we did not find the same flavor nor the same taste nor the same quality that comes from distillation in this Andalusian way on firewood, so we completed using its method, and now we teach it to our children to preserve it».

On her love for this work, Daouda bin Salem adds: "This work is a passion, I am very passionate about it, I love the original thing and I learned it when I grew up and got married and continued to distill in this way, because it is more beneficial to me and less expensive than gas and other things."