If you are familiar with Vintner’s Daughter Active Botanical Serum and the amazing woman behind it, April Gargiulo (whom I’ve interviewed before), you need no introduction. For those newbies, know this: Vintner’s Daughter is a next-level organic face serum/oil that is the result of years of research and a unique process. It is expensive, but everyone who tries it gets the hype. It’s a skin-enhancing game-changer.
Today (hopefully, sign up for the email alert), April is launching her second product, Active Treatment Essence, which is the water-based accompaniment to be used in tandem with the serum. April is very serious about skincare (which is why she only has two products to date). And for those of you who get overwhelmed by the idea of trying out and understanding new beauty products (and some of us have had these conversations), I suggest you spend five minutes and read what April has to say below. Also, if you have to choose between a Vintner’s product and say, that pair of jeans you had your eye on, my advice is love your skin first. The reward will be greater.
This is the second product you’ve launched in five years. What is it? What does it do? Why did it take so long?
With Vintner’s Daughter, we have this commitment to produce category-defining products, products that deliver transformational results for all skin types. That is not something that you can just kind of replicate every six months. It takes a lot of time. We’re happy with that. For us, it’s really just about creating those products that can really change people’s skin.
So, certainly, with Active Botanical Serum, it was the very first product that’s up to these kind of extreme standards around efficacy and quality that we have. With serums, how we were able to do that is by starting with whole plants, some of the most nutrient-rich plants in the world. We take them through a three-week long infusion process that is practically unheard of in our industry–a temperature controlled, very gentle process that honors the nutritional integrity of these plants. We’re able to capture 60-plus nutrients, some of the most skin beautifying minerals and vitamins and antioxidants and omegas and all of these incredible things for your skin. Our only limiting factor is that in nature some things are oil soluble and some things are water-soluble nutrients.
What we also wanted to take advantage of is in the five years since we introduced serum there has been incredible advancements in plant science. And we really believe that the answers lie in nature.
For the serum, we are able to capture the full spectrum of oil soluble nutrients, like E and A, K, minerals like magnesium and calcium phosphorous and fatty acids, all four omegas, 3, 6, 7, –an incredible array of skin beautifying nutrients that are oil soluble. But there’s also some important ones that are water soluble, like the full family of B vitamins, vitamin C, other important skin nutrients. So that was really the genesis of Active Treatment Essence. How do we create the water-soluble companion to Active Botanical Serum?
With the essence, we source plants from around the world. They are amongst the most nutrient-dense plants you can find. They have, in many cases, been used medicinally for centuries, things like dandelion, alfalfa, nettle, astragalus, moringa, helichrysum, acerola. It has micro-exfoliators from lactic and fruit enzymes, and then another form of stabilized vitamin C, and I should say it’s a natural vitamin C. There is this new pioneering extraction technique that takes the vitamin C from this plum, called the kakadu plum. It has more vitamin C percentage than almost anything. Then we add a fermented component. What the fermented component does is add pre and probiotics, it elevates the nutritional capacity of that solution.
That’s kind of the heart of active treatment essence, this incredible nutritional powerhouse that is elevated through a fermented component, and then provides this incredible multilevel hydration.
Do you use the products together? What do you do?
Great question. They both absolutely can stand on their own. These are both incredible products that will offer incredible performance to the skin, but when you think about this kind of yin yang idea that’s going on between the two products, oil and water, hydration/moisture, cool/warm, they really start to come together. For instance, the way I use it, and if you were using both products, the way you would use it is, you’d cleanse. I don’t have any skin in the game with a cleanser, so whatever you like to cleanse with, and then apply After Treatment Essence, and then Active Botanical Serum.
In the morning?
Morning and night.. They just complement each other so well. What you end up with is two simple steps, but powerful steps, with this complete spectrum of skin nutrition, beautiful nourishing botanical oils, and all of the next gen plant active in two steps. It’s like a minimal routine with maximum results.
Okay. So I have a question for you. I did a clean beauty swap with Jean Godfrey June at Goop.
Aw, I love Jean.
I love her, too. We used to work at Lucky together years ago.
Oh, my gosh. You were like OG. I love that. You guys are like the Lucky mafia.
Love that thought. Now we’re all spread out all over the place. Anyway, she was saying she uses Active Botanical Serum, but if it’s cold outside, she uses a moisturizer over it. She doesn’t count the serum as a face oil, and I was like, really? I just wanted to know your take on that, because I treat it as a face oil, but she says, “It’s not. It’s a serum.”
It’s a little of both. It is a face oil with the penetration and the activity of a high-powered serum. What that means is that it was formulated to have a very small particle size, to have a low molecular weight so that it penetrates the skin fast. It was formulated to be a face oil that basically we chocked full of as many skin nutrients and kind of powerhouse active as we could. It’s a bit of like a Trojan Horse in terms of it’s a face oil, but then it just brings in all of this other incredible actives for your skin.
For me, unless I’m traveling, or if I was in some incredibly dry environment, I wouldn’t put a moisturizer on after, but some people do. I mean, obviously, Jean does.
I guess when it’s really cold, or something like that.
Yes. It really depends on, less, I think on your skin, and more to do with environmental conditions.
If somebody could only buy one of these two products….
That’s a really hard question, because literally, it’s like choosing between your children. I don’t think I can. I don’t want to live without either of them.
How do you like being a small, two-product brand?
Right, we doubled in size. We’re huge! You know, I’ve been working on the Essence for so long, almost four years now, that I am just so ready for it to be out in the world. Regardless, I don’t think we need to have 10 products to change people’s skin. I think we need to have a very tightly edited group of performance-driven highest quality ingredient products that actually deliver. We’re not revenue driven. We’re product driven. I know it’s very strange in our world today. That’s not to say that we don’t need to be profitable. We do, but it’s not driven by just being bigger for bigger’s sake.
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