Two things are pressed into my hands before I've gone ten steps. The first is a lavender parasol. The second is a glass of Veuve Clicquot.
So far, so glamorous. Parasol up, glass steady, I pick my way across pebbles, past ēthos, the Estate's restaurant, and into the terraced gardens. It's a perfect spring afternoon in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, the sort that makes Sydney feel like a rumour. The garden is filled with sweetly twittering ladies in floral dresses, like extras in a Merchant Ivory film.
Alsahwa Estate is a 30-acre regenerative farm in Palmwoods, a short drive inland from the Sunshine Coast. Founder Jo Walker opened it just over a year ago, built on a philosophy she sums up in three words: Mind. Body. Planet. There are kitchen gardens, farm tours and ēthos, an award-winning farm-to-table restaurant. Today the Estate is launching its first product, a candle called Botanica, and I've flown up from Sydney for the party.
I spot Alex Zabotto-Bentley across the lawn and the parasols suddenly make sense. Alex and I go back a long way. He's the Design Director of Alsahwa Estate, and he tells me he chose these parasols himself, down to the exact shade of lavender, then had them made for today. Of course he did. Alex doesn't do off-the-shelf.
But the thing I'm still turning over a week later isn't the parasols. It's a candle, and a confession about what's inside almost every one of them.
I'm seated next to Lee Sutherland, the herbalist behind Little Wilding Co and one of today's sponsors. We've known each other for years, so as we layer jam and cream onto scones we enjoy a proper catch-up. Then Jo and Alex stand to talk about where Botanica came from and share some truths that most of us won't be able to ignore.
What's really in your candle
What I didn't expect was Jo's candour. She spends most of her speech not selling Botanica but admitting how hard it was to make.
The brief was a candle as low-tox as possible. That's almost impossible, she says. Nearly every fragrance in the world relies on a binding agent to hold the oils together, and the suppliers guard its formula closely. "They will not tell us what it is," she says. So the team searched for the kindest synthetic binder they could find, because a scent you breathe in at home every night deserves that scrutiny.
(Having spent years trying to get fragrance houses to tell me what's in a bottle, I can confirm this. The formula is a state secret. The marketing is not.)
"It was also important to us to create a scent that would appeal to everyone, while keeping it as low-toxicity as possible, in keeping with our Mind. Body. Planet. philosophy," Jo says.
She has opinions on farmers' markets too. Most of us assume everything there is organic. Jo reckons a large share of it isn't even spray-free. Her advice is simple: ask. It's the most practical thing I hear all week.
None of this, she's quick to add, is about being precious or expensive. It's about being responsible to the farmers and the makers and keeping things affordable. No smoke and mirrors. Just something that came out of the soil.
The Botanica candle
As for Botanica itself, it's the Estate's signature scent and the first product in what Jo hopes will become a whole collection, a way for guests to take a little of Alsahwa home with them.
It's been more than two years in the making. Jo created it with Alex, her friend and long-time creative collaborator, who worked on the creative process and the development of the scent itself. That work took him to Bali, exploring how a fragrance could become another expression of the Estate's design.
The notes are lavender, bergamot and sandalwood. Lavender is the one I'm hardest on. I've smelled a lot of launches in 25 years and, done badly, lavender is a grandmother's linen drawer. Here the bergamot lifts it and the sandalwood gives it somewhere warm to land, so it reads as a garden rather than a sachet. Alex describes a fourth thread too.
"The softness of lavender, the brightness of bergamot, the warmth of sandalwood and freshly cut grass," he says. "Something natural, sophisticated and deeply connected to this place."
The wick is natural bamboo. The vessel is custom-glazed and embossed, finished in the deep forest green that runs through everything at Alsahwa. It's the kind of jar you keep long after the candle's gone.
Inside Alsahwa Estate
The heart of the Alsahwa is ēthos, the Estate's award-winning farm-to-table restaurant. The kitchen cooks with spray-free produce from Alsahwa's own gardens and buys from spray-free local growers wherever it can. There are farm tours. There are peas in the ground right now, doing a job for the soil as much as for the menu.
The Spring Garden High Tea is an English countryside garden party with an Alsahwa twist. It's also, Jo tells us, the first event ever held on this terrace. Rather than sit us along one long table, the team wanted to gather everyone in close. It works. Nobody is shouting across a centrepiece. Everybody is talking.
The spoiling started the night before. Waiting in my room at the brand-new Avani Mooloolaba Beach Hotel was a bag from the Estate. Inside, a Save the Bees T-shirt that's far cooler than merch has any right to be, a jar of honey from the Alsahwa shop, Loco Love chocolate from Byron Bay and Little Wilding Co tea. Consider me converted.
What's next for Alsahwa Estate
Jo has plans. The Spring Garden High Tea will become an annual event, opening to the public in future years. In 2027 the Estate will add a dedicated events space and a wellbeing hub, with more wellbeing experiences to come. A small retail space is already selling Alsahwa products, and Jo wants guests to be able to fill a basket from the gardens to take home. Accommodation will come eventually. She's realistic about the timeline.
Where to buy the Botanica candle
The Botanica candle is available now at ēthos at Alsahwa Estate and online at alsahwa.com.
By half past four the parasols are coming down one by one, and Alex tells us to take them with us, a memento of the most stylish garden party I've ever attended. That's the picture I'll keep. The other thing I'll keep is the smell of cut grass on a warm afternoon in Palmwoods, which, it turns out, is in the candle too.
Sigourney Cantelo travelled to the Sunshine Coast as a guest of Alsahwa Estate.
