A Note Before We Begin
Not every product starts in a lab. Some start on a cobblestone street, beside a harbour, in front of a gelateria with a queue snaking out the door. This one started there.
Lerici, the Italian Riviera, and a Ferry Worth Taking
Last year I accompanied a friend to visit her sister in Lerici, a seaside gem on the Italian Riviera on the coast of La Spezia. Lerici sits in the Gulf of Poets, the stretch of coastline associated with Percy Bysshe Shelley, where the water sparkles and the villages are painted in layers of terracotta, gold, and rust.
From Lerici, you can catch a short ferry across to Porto Venere. I would recommend it without hesitation. Walk up from the colourful harbour front and you reach Chiesa di San Pietro, a Roman Catholic church of Gothic architecture dating back to the 12th century, built from the kind of striped stone that makes you stop and stare. It sits on a rocky headland with panoramic views out to sea. If you go, light a candle. Sit for a moment in silence. On a hot day, press your hands against the cool stone walls and feel the temperature drop through your palms.
From Porto Venere you can hop on another boat to the Cinque Terre, the five fishing villages that became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 and a national park in 1999. Manarola, Vernazza, Monterosso, Riomaggiore, and Corniglia. Each one colourful. Each one completely its own. You need to see them for yourself.
The Gelateria That Changed Everything
On the steps of Castello San Giorgio in Lerici sits Papavera Calata Mazzini, a gelateria owned by Alessandro Viani. It is not just any ice cream shop. The gelato is made by hand, with carefully sourced ingredients, and Alessandro will tell you the story behind every flavour if you let him.
That resonated with me deeply. Everything I do is about ingredients. Where they come from. How they are grown. Who harvests them. The stories that live inside raw materials before they ever reach a product.
My favourite that day was mint. Soft, delicate, precise. It tasted like fresh mint cut straight from the garden, squeezed and folded into the gelato rather than flavoured from a bottle. There was nothing artificial about it. It was mint as mint actually smells.
What One Taste Started
Standing there, tasting that gelato, I started thinking about mint in formulation. Mint can be overpowering. Most people who have worked with it know that. But blended correctly, with the right supporting ingredients, it does something remarkable. It shifts the synergy of everything around it. It brings out properties in other ingredients that would otherwise sit quiet.
That thought was the seed of what became the Vanilla and Mint Crisp Lip Balm for Men.
The Hero Ingredients
I use the term hero ingredients for what I consider the core of a formulation. Stand-alone ingredients or combinations chosen to maximise what a blend can do.
The vanilla in this balm is sourced directly from Nguna, a remote, inhabited volcanic island in the Shefa Province of Vanuatu, located just off the north-east coast of Efate in Undine Bay. Vanilla vines on Nguna grow like green beans. Harvested and left to cure in the Vanuatu sun, the pods slowly turn brown and sticky. That curing process is where the depth of flavour and scent develops.
These vanilla beans are grown by local farmers and indigenous mothers working small strips of land. Nguna is remote and exposed. Cyclones and hurricanes are not unusual. Climate change has made those extremes worse. When I source ingredients from communities like this, I try to do more than buy. I work to connect with the people growing them, particularly the women and children, and where possible to support the building of sustainable income structures. Something as simple as a shared shelter can give local mothers a place to meet, to organise, to sell their vanilla pods alongside woven handicrafts and other crops they grow. That is the kind of sourcing relationship that matters to me.
Vanilla to soften and soothe. Mint to refresh and sharpen. Together, they work.
Why a Lip Balm for Men?
Because why not.
It came from a journey. A ferry across the Ligurian Sea, a church on a headland, a scoop of mint gelato, and the thought that followed me home. The adventure and the exploration are what inspire me to create with purpose. The product is just where the story lands.
Grab a lip balm here.
