Cosmetics entrepreneur Monique Montoya discusses her path to founding the organic, ethically sourced Alambique Skincare Company in Taos, New Mexico.
Cosmetics entrepreneur Monique Montoya, founder of The Alambique Skincare Company in Taos, New Mexico, talks about how travel, family heritage, and New Mexico’s botanical traditions shaped her path from Albuquerque athlete to international marketing work in Spain and ultimately cosmetic formulation. After studying at UNM, living in New Orleans and Austria, and working in Spain with DJs and a record label, Monique returned to Taos, joined an organic manufacturing facility, and shifted from marketing to formulating—drawing on family curandera traditions and vendor chemist support. Following a buyout and a later job loss, she used severance to fund Alambique, traveling to meet farmers and sourcing raw materials first, emphasizing traceability, supplier stories and sustainability. “Having a science brain is helpful,” she says, discussing the chemistry of hydrosols and essential oils, ethical bee-venom sourcing, and the magic of “disrupting the machine of speed and greed.”
To contact Monique and for more information:
The Alambique
Mentioned in the episode:
Josefa Baca
New Mexico Historic Women Marker Program
https://www.nmhistoricwomen.org/new-mexico-historic-women/josefa-baca/
USDA Organic INTEGRITY Database
https://organic.ams.usda.gov/integrity/Default
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction to Monique Montoya
02:36 A Giant Adventure: Traveling as a Child
05:06 Monique the Track Star
05:54 A Bit of a Troublemaker
07:45 Seeing the Magic in Everything Unfortunate
09:13 "Elevating me to be a bigger version of myself"
11:08 Journey to Spain
13:15 B.B. King Gets a Tamale
15:00 The Secret Language
15:53 The Cosmetics World
18:13 Having a Science Brain Is Always Helpful
19:26 The Kick in the Tuchus I Needed
21:00 Founding Alambique
21:36 The Farm First: Developing New Skincare Products
23:57 Alambique Customers
25:14 Serving Local Markets
25:53 Josefa Baca
26:41 Building a Network of Wholesalers and Mom-and-Pop Shops
27:51 Windfall Peaches
29:06 Scaling Up: Driving Revenue Through Soul
30:11 Disrupting the Machine of Speed and Greed
30:58 Meeting Farmers in Italy and Sardinia
31:48 Discovering New Farms
33:24 Bee Venom
37:18 For a Runner with Bad Knees...Bee Venom Salve
38:37 Alambique's Inventory of Products
39:07 Hydrosols and Essential Oils
40:12 Monique's Garden in Taos
40:49 How to Contact Monique Montoya and the Alambique
[00:00:00]
Christi: Welcome to Moving Along. I'm Christi Cassidy, and my guest today is Monique Montoya. She is the founder of The Alambique Skincare Company based in Taos, New Mexico. She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. 500 years at least, her family's been in New [00:01:00] Mexico.
Proud Hispanic who connected from a young age with the spiritual nature of the place. She also has strong family heritage and ties to the land. I wanted to talk with Monique because, as you know, Nan and I lived in Santa Fe for 15 years, and one thing I learned there was that what they do there with the research on, into, let's call it research into natural wellness products, supplements, and the herbs, and the tinctures is just so far ahead of what everybody else in this country is doing.
And no offense to everybody else, because I'm sure there are people other places that are doing advanced research as well, but it just always strikes me how far ahead they are in New Mexico with all of the natural wellness products and supplements. So [00:02:00] that's part of why I wanted to talk to Monique.
The other reason is that as a business owner and entrepreneur, one thing with The Alambique is that she travels to meet her suppliers. These are the farmers who supply the ingredients for her products, and of course, that made my curiosity go way up and I wanted to hear more. Welcome, Monique.
Monique: Hi. Thank you so much for having me. This is such a fun topic
Christi: Thank you. Thanks for being here.
Christi: So you grew up in Albuquerque. What did travel and moving mean to you as a child?
Monique: Oh my gosh, it meant everything to me. I'd never really felt myself in Albuquerque. So going on road trips, escaping into nature is really where I've found myself grow the most in my life.
[00:03:00] Because I was transported to a new place where sometimes I didn't even know the language, I didn't know anyone there, and you have to get along some way, and you have to open yourself up. And the aperture whenever you travel, it always puts my brain back online because now I see that much more, and you go to a new place and you see a little bit more.
So just travel in general has always just been a fantasful world that I'm always looking on the Google Flights for the cheap scan a cheap scan alerts. I mean, I'm like an absolute addict when it comes to finding a good deal getting out of, out of my norm.
Christi: Did you travel with your parents? Are your grandparents in northern New Mexico, farther north, or where are they?
Monique: Yeah, so my grandpa and well, he's my last living grandparent. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He's 95. And yeah, we grew up traveling. I mean, you know, we didn't grow up rich. We had [00:04:00] just enough. And we were very creative with how we would do the family travels. Sometimes it was in a car going from here all the way to Oregon and making tons of pit stops along the way, and it just seems like this giant adventure.
And they always were equipping me with watercolors and yarns to weave with and, you know, nature hikes along the way. And they really fed my curiosity to travel both of them. I mean, my mother, she's a recreation outdoor leader in New Mexico. She retired from University of New Mexico, but she would take people out to Chaco Canyon and snowshoeing and fly fishing, white water rafting.
I mean, she's really like, jack of all trades for so many different things, and super knowledgeable about our state and the wildlife here and the botanicals here. So just having that knowledge fueled under [00:05:00] me for so many years has always just, yeah, been-- It's embedded.
Christi: That's funny. And you were, you were a track star?
Monique: Yes. Growing up in high school, I was like a track star. It was like a funny thing because I was really fast, but I hated to run. So it was never something that I really wanted to do, but the track coaches were like, "Well, if you wanna throw the javelin," which was like my specialty, I just wanted to launch the spear as far as I could I had to run all these races.
I was a heptathlete, so I did like the 4 by 1, two, four, high jump, long jump, triple jump, javelin, and was kinda bing bongin' all over all of the events. And yeah, it was a, it was a really fun pocket of my life.
Christi: But you thought, you thought you were going to You did get a scholarship or you thought you were going to get a scholarship to leave
Monique: So, oh my gosh. So senior year, I was a bit of a troublemaker. I [00:06:00] had a fake ID. We're on the marine biology trip. I was gearing to go to the University of Hawaii. I had a guy that I loved there, and the... I was gonna be a marine biologist, and I was on this marine biology trip. So I was really feeling myself and we're like, have this fake ID, and we get a pint of liquor between a couple of us, and we're playing cards, and someone told the, the teacher involved, and it was, like, a huge thing, and drinking is against the NMAA rules.
So what ended up happening is like, "Oh, well, you blew it. Now you don't get to go And, you know, it was only a partial scholarship, but I wasn't gonna be able to afford it to go anyway just because it was gonna be s- an arm and a leg. So I had to make a swift change in my life of like, "Well, shoot, now I'm not going to University of Hawaii.
Oh my gosh the love of my life is over there, and I'm here stuck in Albuquerque." And I think it really just, [00:07:00] that was what I needed at the time, because when you're young, you're like a little sponge, but also you think you all have it figured out. But it really was very beneficial for me to have this unfortunate sequence of events happen, because then I got to really examine who I am, where I wanted to travel, and that was the epicenter of me branching out, working internationally, living internationally, like, having all these fanciful jobs and switching different careers five different times with five different industries, and all kind of coming to the same roadblock of you're not utilizing your talents for a greater good.
Monique: You are not in service to people. You are in service for the person that you're working for. So, it, yeah, it was just like this something that happened when y- is, that when I was young that was incredibly unfortunate, but you [00:08:00] have to see the magic in everything that is unfortunate in your life in order to expand. There's just no other option.
Christi: So what, so what did you do?
Monique: Well, I went to the University of New Mexico. In New Mexico, you have the lottery scholarship. So I had my tuition paid for and I was like ho-humming throwing a tantrum about being in Albuquerque. And then I got this bright idea because my mom, she works with the international students taking them all on trips.
And then I was like, "Oh, well, all these international students are coming to New Mexico. What if I applied to go away from New Mexico? Can they just like we swap?" So I ended up doing a national student exchange my sophomore year in New Orleans, living with my gay uncle. Time of my life, turned 21 there.
I mean, I was hamming it up. And then I decided I didn't wanna go back because I really got a taste of independence, living on my own. You know, like it was a little bit of a handhold because I was just still in my uncle's [00:09:00] house. And then I applied to go to school in the University of FH Joanneum in Graz, Austria, and was there in the winters and, snowboarding around and came back to graduate over at UNM for my final year.
Christi: Did your uncle, do you feel that he influenced you in a kind of a mentor way? Did he encourage you to go?
Monique: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think every single person in my family, like I, I'm probably gonna get emotional and when I say this, but they're all beacons to me of knowledge and of this wisdom that has been embedded in our family for so long, and everyone is so understanding and really wants you to flourish. Not just be okay with where you're at, but if you think that you're gonna be the ballerina, let's throw gas on that fire.
And every single one of my family members is like that, and they pull on that thread, and they're constantly elevating me to be a bigger version of myself. So like my uncle was, is totally in that. Like we have [00:10:00] a group text with me and my, him and my mom, and we're always kind of bantering back and forth about what our travel plans are, what are we doing, how are we going to mesh
Christi: Mm-hmm. It's interesting. And he, he escaped, would you say that, to New Orleans? Yeah.
Monique: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's pivotable that anyone that's living in Albuquerque get out of Albuquerque, or if you grew up in that town, to go out and put legs somewhere else for a short period of time to just kinda see what's over there. I mean, the grass might not be greener, but that's where you really figure yourself out
Christi: Do you have brothers and sisters?
Monique: I have a younger brother, Marcel. Mm, he's amazing, and we're like polar opposites in so many ways, but also so so much of the same. He's an accountant down over in Albuquerque and has his CPA and very successful and the more responsible one of the the two of [00:11:00] us.
Christi: Well, I think being an entrepreneur and a woman business owner and you branched out, you went to Taos, right? But
Monique: Yeah
Christi: without quite a, a journey in between Austria and Albuquerque, and you went in, oh, Spain, right. What, what hap- what did you do in Spain?
Monique: Okay. So my cousin, she was living there at the time. I was working at the Bureau of Land Management, and all
Christi: In Albuquerque.
Monique: I... Yeah, over at the Rio Puerco office, and all the people that I worked with, because I had a full-time job, I would go into work at 6:00 AM, get off at 2:30, and then had a full course load at night, and then would work, you know, like a, a bar job or whatever, just to kind of earn some extra money.
And my cousin, she was living over in Ibiza at the time, and she says, "You should really come and visit for a month." And I was like, "I, I can't pay for a month to just be on vacation. That's [00:12:00] crazy. I don't even have that much PTO." Well, the people over at the BLM, they were like, "We're not able-bodied.
We can't walk up and down those stairs. We have to use or lose our PTO." So they gifted me all of this PTO in order for me to leave for a month and go and hang out with my cousin. And through that adventure, she introduced me to her whole network of friends, all of these DJs, and I was graduating with a marketing degree, and, you know, I was just ready to go and spitballing, and y- you know, you kind of fake it until you make it.
And if you're charismatic and goal-oriented I think you just kind of shove yourself in the right time and the right opportunity pops up. And I ended up writing a marketing strategy for these two DJs running a record label out of Barcelona at the time, and then it... They were like, "Well, when can you move?"
So I said, "Well, the hell with walking in the [00:13:00] line." I kicked that to the curb real quick. I sold my car and up and left and moved to Spain. And I was there for four years, and I was just there in the summers, though, because it's a seasonal thing, and I would come back in the winters and have that equal family
Christi: Oh, nice. That's interesting about the marketing because of course that's serving you now as, you know, the head of your company. And it's interesting to me too because was it, you said your dad was in the music business?
Monique: Yeah, yeah. So he would run, So he was in cahoots with some people who would inline all of these artists from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, and they had to land in Albuquerque, but there wasn't a venue in Albuquerque for them to play at, for the most part. And then he was in cahoots with the college and said, "Well, we have the student union building.
What if I outfitted this w- area to f- for him as a stage?" And, you know, he had his own [00:14:00] little side hustle of, you know, like with B.B. King "Hey, B.B., can you play a show tonight in Albuquerque for a couple of people, and then we'll take you to Santa Fe, you know, tomorrow?" So yeah, my mom was quite famous for giving B.B.
King a tamale
Christi: nice. Well,
Monique: in the family. Yeah.
Christi: that's wonderful. And he must have been really proud of you to see you working with DJs in the music business in Barcelona
Monique: Yeah, it definitely was a proud moment, and you know, it's all because of them, because they gave me this confidence instilled inside of me, and they've kept on d- dripping it into my pockets to where "Hey, well, what's wrong with me going out and going up to these guys and writing a marketing proposal and throwing my hat into the ring?"
With no expectations, obviously, but I think if you're really intentional about what you do, the universe grabs ahold of you and hones you in the right [00:15:00] direction.
Christi: Did you grow up speaking Spanish?
Monique: No, and it was like my grandparents spoke it to, in the background because it, that was the secret language that we weren't supposed to speak. They got hit in school for speaking Spanish, so then they didn't wanna teach it to, you know, really to my parents or the grandkids because they didn't want them to get hit.
So it was this trickle-down effect and, you know, when I moved to Spain, that was like a hard thing for me, and then I didn't even really learn Spanish there because everyone wanted to speak English with me. And when you're running things like globally, you know, like the Germans, they speak English, the Spanish speak English.
You're working with Italians, they speak English. So everyone kind of in the industry was speaking English with me and I never really... I should have been more forceful in wanting to learn, but now I'm on Duolingo. I have a, quite a streak.
Christi: There you go. Well, talk about getting into the cosmetics world
Monique: I guess going from [00:16:00] Spain, I think I, realized that there was a piece of my heart that was missing, and I knew that I wasn't there in Spain for the right reasons anymore. It was a great journey, but I knew deep down that I had to go. So I up and left, and I didn't know what I was gonna do at any given moment in time.
And I, decided to move to Taos to become a snowboard instructor, and I was like making good money and doing all these things, and then I quit my dream job to become a snowboard instructor in Taos, and people were like, "What are you doing?" "Are you kidding me?" Or "I would've killed for that job."
But you know, you just have to follow those pings, and then I worked at Taos Ski Valley for years, and then found that that wasn't for me. And I started a cosmetic company way back in the day called Backyard Botanicals, and I was searching for compostable sticks. There was no one on the market that had it, but there was this [00:17:00] manufacturing facility here in Taos, New Mexico, one of the first organic manufacturing facilities in the country.
And I called them up, and they said, "No, no, no, we don't do that." And I was like, "Oh, okay. Well, what do you guys do?" Kind of poking around you know. And then I figured out that they needed marketing. So I applied to be a marketer, and the chemist when I first was there, he had left kind of like the company in a lurch, and we had all these high profile clients, and everyone needs samples, and if you can't get samples out to the celebrity clients who are wanting to 100,000 piece order, your business kind of screeches to a halt.
So I was like, "Well, I'll step in. I'll do it." And they're like, "You? You're like the marketer." But growing up, I have always been a formulator. My grandparents on both sides have been making salves and tinctures and infusions you know, for years. My grandmother on both sides, you know, they were curanderas, which were like the medicine women [00:18:00] and the healers of the land, of really understanding and being in communion with the land, asking for permission when they're gonna harvest, intentionally planting and crop rotation and, you know, not churning the soil.
Monique: So it's always been around in my frequency. So yeah, I was in the cosmetic industry, and then I switched from marketing to formulating. It was like overnight, and then I got really good at it, to the point to where I was like color matching Bobbi Brown's whole lip gloss line and was doing it to this standard that no one had really even seen before without a chemistry degree.
But I passed out of chemistry in high school because I was like infatuated again with the marine biology, so the, the, just having a science brain I think is always helpful. But I realized that every single one of our raw material vendors, they all had a chemist on staff. So if I needed to talk to someone, they actually had someone on staff to say "Hey, I'm trying to get it to this viscosity. This is actually [00:19:00] turning yellow at this temperature.
What's happening here?" Or, "We wanna reverse engineer this ingredient list with no formula whatsoever. How do I make that?" And they would really help me reverse engineer, engineer a lot of these steps until you kind of realize oh, this is just kind of like baking.
Christi: I,
Monique: Yeah. But, but like with more attention to detail.
Christi: Okay, so here you are, the company you're working for in Taos gets bought out by a Florida company. They want you to come, but they want you to move, and you say, "Thanks, but no thanks." And so then what? You decide, "I can do this myself," or you get some funding, or you write out a plan, or what?
Monique: Oh gosh, okay. So then I went on a hiatus for like a year, went on some soul searching, and was trying to figure out what were my next steps. And my cousin, again, the [00:20:00] same one that was living in Spain, she was like, "Oh, well, the company I'm working for is pretty amazing. You should work for them."
And I wasn't really looking for a job at the time. And I took it, and it was in the mental health and wellness industry. And then I got quickly escalated to having five different jobs, and I found myself in that same trap that I had been in before to where it's like, "Okay, I'm competent, and I'm willing to write your SOPs.
Startup culture? No problem. We'll just create the systems on the fly. Swerve and serve, baby. Let's go." And then I ended up getting kicked in the teeth by this company at the end and let go, and it was really the kick in the tuchus that I needed to say "Monique, you, there are so many talents of yours that you're not utilizing, and you're hiding behind other people and what they've built for funds to come up with your [00:21:00] company."
Monique: So then with the severance package, whatever they had, I had kind of had the Alambique going in the background for probably a two years or a year and a half when I got let go from this company, and I took all of the severance that they had gave me and bought Royan Hawaiian sandalwood from a family farm, bought a plane ticket to go and visit them, planted trees with them, and used the rest of that seed money to buy components.
And now I'm like a little gypsy lady just hoarding bottles and oils from all around the world.
Christi: I wanted to ask you did the products come first or do you travel and find the products? What's the process of discovery?
Monique: So I guess I formulate on a very different level than what the industry would formulate to. I think mostly a company will come to you with a marketing deck, and then they have a product development manager, and that product [00:22:00] development manager is going to make the labels and make sure that marketing is happy with all of their claims and everything, you know, is marketable for their launch.
And then the way that I formulate is I find a farm first. I find a raw material first that I fall in love with, and then really let that speak to me in different volumes to say, "What do you want to become? How is there a gap in the market? And how can I tell the story of the farmer first?"
Instead of hiding them in the background of not naming my suppliers. I'm very proud to name my suppliers. I'm very proud to say that I know Wade Lee from Aloha 'Āina, and I've shook his hands and planted trees alongside him. And his family has owned this land for over 1,200 years, since before Captain Cook even came to the islands.
And they have this religious network of trees out there that they are caretaking So I've also had this swath of [00:23:00] raw materials that I was no longer able to use because companies would say, "Oh, we can't use the rosehip from the women's co-op. It's too expensive." And I'm like, "Oh, you don't want the wild harvested, handpicked w- then to support a women's co-op?
Cool. I will, and I'm gonna tell their story quite well." And we're gonna tell people "Hey, it, costs 17 cents more a unit
to have this beautiful story and to have this beautiful oil." So yeah, it's like this whole communion of finding the raw materials first, letting them speak to me, and using raw materials on a different level than I, I have done before.
I had not really even known a brand to do something like this until I started doing it. So I figured that, I was like, "There's a need for this to happen, yet we're not doing it because of this corporate greed machine that we've built."
Christi: Who are your customers?
Monique: Oh gosh, they're all [00:24:00] over the place, all over the country. But you know, I, I think they're the, the people that are sick of the shadooby and the loud noise, and they're like, "I don't need more. I need less. I want something that is beautiful, it goes back into the earth, it, they're, they're telling me the truth on so many different levels to where it's undeniable.
All of the sustainability measures that we take, I mean, we recycle old newspapers to use them as dunnage and protection rather than having, the brown corrugated paper that gets shipped, and it just kills me every single time that we do that. We waste paper. So you know, I think that my customers, they, they find that mischief and the magic right alongside me in all of these ways and they're, they I guess feel a sense of empowerment that a brand is speaking to them as if they are grown adults.
They can make [00:25:00] their own decisions. And frankly, I don't really care if anyone buys from me or not. I mean, sure, that's a nice addition, but I want people to be armed with information so that they feel comfortable to make a better choice for themselves
Christi: before you were talking about samples as being a really important element of, well, of this business, right? Do you travel with samples? Are you out there handing them out at the trade shows? I mean, how does that work?
Monique: No, I don't do any of the trade shows. I think I did so many of them back in the day to where I have PTSD, and it gets too marketing-y for me. So I, I really want to lean on to local economy. So if there is a local market that I feel really, really honed into... Like for instance I will be over at the Prickly Pear Fest down over in Albuquerque.
Monique: I that land that it sits on, that's actually from Josefa Baca, which is one of my ancestors, and [00:26:00] she was a Daughter of the Revolution, and she actually bought the land. She was the first woman to even be able to purchase land in New Mexico because she was Spanish royalty who got exiled.
And she had five or six illegitimate children and she was like, "I don't care if I don't have a man, I'm buying this land." We're making it into a trade hub. We're building a farm there, on the trade route to where we're gonna allow people to come in. So it's like there's that story and that's why I'm going to that market, and I think it's more so about growing sustainably and what is this invisible thread that's between all of them versus, like, trying to be out there and be big and just be like everyone else.
Christi: Well, I'm not necessarily suggesting that you, you know, become Estee Lauder, but I, I do wonder, you know, do you have a network of retailers that carry your stuff?
Monique: Yeah. Yeah, I have over 25 wholesale accounts. I- probably even 30-some plus. But I really [00:27:00] focus on mom-and-pop shops. You know, who are the people that are going to inject money into the local economy? I, I'm never I guess never say never, but I don't find myself to be in line with selling over at Whole Foods.
That's just not who I am, because Whole Foods is this larger organization, and they do a really beautiful job, but I would rather sell to Martha down the road over at her apothecary shop or the local spas, like my friend Santosha Skin down over in Albuquerque. She just picked up my whole line, and she's giving people customized facials with this.
So it's yeah, how can we build on a smaller scale in this, on the same ways that you would, or I guess it's harder, but it's more thoughtful.
Christi: Yeah, and I could talk to you easily another hour about that. And I, I, I mean, I really do. Well, I, let me just ask you, what does [00:28:00] sustainability mean to you?
Monique: I mean, sustainability means, I think just, gosh, so much for me. I mean, my grandmother growing up, Pr- God bless, Priscilla, she really taught us how to utilize every single part of the plant. And when I was young, she would drive us to the neighbors' houses and say "Pick up the windfall peaches over at this house.
I've already talked to the owners, and they said that it's fine." We're like, "Why do we want the windfalls ones? They're like filled with the ants, and it's like gross." So she's like, "No, no, no, this-- it's gonna be better." So she would collect all of the windfall peaches, and we would carve out all of the bad bits and reprocess it into jams and fruit leathers and pies and planting the seeds and using the scraps that were from as compost.
So it's really this circular closed system to where we are [00:29:00] not taking from the earth, we are giving back to it just as much as we receive
Christi: And y- you kind of started to address this earlier, but what does scaling up mean for you?
Monique: I love to that word and that thought, and scaling to me means driving revenue through soul, through people, through relationships, through being in service with people. My people are my greatest teachers, so why am I not being in relationship with our farmers and our local economy? And if you're supporting a local a locally based business, it's 3% more money gets injected back into that local economy.
So it's more so about how can... If I set this up right, because I don't have any kids but if I set it up correctly now, then I can set it up like Patagonia to where the earth is our stewards. Here's all of these people that are [00:30:00] rich in their farmland, and it can be preserved so that their future generations can have control over that land versus being bought up by a conglomerate.
Christi: Do you see Patagonia as a kind of model for sustainable business practice? Mm-hmm
Monique: Absolutely. I think Dr. Bronner's and Patagonia do a great job in their social responsibility, and I wish that there were more brands like them. So it's, here I am trying to say together we ascend, let's go. This, this is not really talked about in the skincare industry because there's this machine of speed and greed, as I call it, and I, I'm wanting to disrupt that on so many levels.
Because of the working class people, because of w- my family and b- where I've came from, like I... We didn't have a lot. So I want to make sure that the people who are working, they get their fair share of everything that we're doing.
Christi: What's the farthest [00:31:00] you've traveled to meet farmers? Yeah, to meet farmers
Monique: Well, I just got back from Italy.
Christi: tell about
Monique: Yeah. Yes. So my dad, he, he used to live in Gaeta and so like about an hour south of Rome, and he always wanted to show us Gaeta. And as a family, we stopped giving Christmas presents to each other, and we go on international trips instead.
So the wh- whole family all went out together, and I was prospecting some olive oil farmers out there. And not just any old farmer. It's like, well, who is gonna provide the most traceability? How many years is this going back, this farm back into your family? And if we're supporting, like let's make it profitable for everyone.
Christi: So do you just ask around or do you Google or do you start walking? What do you do?
Monique: Yeah. So I start out with the International [00:32:00] Integrity Database. So if, the USDA Organic has this little database where you can search any raw material in the world, and like some people would tell me "Oh, well, this musk oil is organic," and I'm like, "Well, musk is a, a synthetic fragrance.
It can't be certified organic. They're just saying that, I promise you." And you can actually go to an in- integrity database and search for the items, search for the brands, and all of their distributors. So like it'll say which, what's, who's the brand, who's the grower. Are they a handler? Are they a packager?
Are they a reseller? What is on their organic certificate list? And I literally I, I mean, there's thousands and thousands of lines. I mean, it's a whole passion project on itself to go line by line, like where are they sourced, click onto the website, learn more about the family, and then you kind of, you, you filter it out one by one.
Christi: Wow. So you found, you found one farm or more than one farm in Gaeta [00:33:00] or near Gaeta?
Monique: It's actually over in Sardinia, but yes, I do, I do have this of- one farm. It's family owned and operated, and they have five or seven different olive orchards. And yeah, I, I think I wanna go back and help them harvest. They invited me so we'll see what the travel docket has in store.
Christi: That sounds wonderful. Now, what's your relationship with the bee venom?
Monique: So I guess I learned about bee venom when I had knee surgery. I had two different knee surgeries. Like I'm spliced and diced all the way up, and my knees were really hurting, and I never really had a solution for them. And I used to make this muscle balm for a company that had been since sold, and then they changed the formula, and everyone was asking me, "Well, where do we get the formula?
Where do we get the formula?" And I thought, "Well, I should just make it. But what if I put [00:34:00] bee venom in it?" Because apitherapy is really ga- great for relaxing the muscles and increasing the collagen production of your skin. So it can actually help repair the muscle tissue and provide a little bit more flexibility in your joints.
And I'm like, "Well, if I don't wanna get stung by a bee, could there be this solution to heal people that's not apitherapy?" because apitherapy, you would have to pick up the bee and you, you know, you sting it, and then they unfortunately die. But the bee venom now, it was sourced over in Argentina, but now has since been moved over to New Zealand from a nature preserve, and they do it in an ethical manner to where they hook up the entrance of the hive to these little synthesizers, and there's this microcurrent that comes out of them.
And one in 5,000 of the bees who protect the hive, they go and see what's going on with this glass platelet, and they [00:35:00] realize "Oh, this isn't hurting. It's not a threat. It's just an annoyance, like, whatever." And they do these harvests in 15-minute spurts and not very often because you don't wanna trick the hives.
So they take that venom whenever they're done harvesting and they scrape it and purify it, and then you can actually use it in cosmetics for the bee venom serum and the, the muscle relaxation methods, as mentioned, and without harming the bees, which as a beekeeper, that just really tickles my heart.
Christi: Wow. So you do keep bees?
Monique: I used to. They got massacred by the bears. They got quite hungry, and my electric fence was not enough of a deterrent.
Christi: Oopsie.
You're creating this muscle relaxant with the bee venom, and you don't need a lot of it, I guess, for it to be... It must be pretty potent, And what, do you have it shipped from New Zealand?
Monique: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so [00:36:00] it's freeze-dried over in New Zealand and purified there. They have some of the best purification standards in the world. New Zealand is great for finding organic materials in general just because their shipping what are they? Not the processes, but yeah, I guess the processes. Their shipping processes to get things out of their country or to bring things in are very, very stringent.
So there's a lot of documentation that they're able to provide. And my specific vendor, which is why I chose them, they will tell you the melittin content in every specific lot that you will get from the bee venom. Which before in Argentina it was like, "Okay, well, here's this mixture, and it's about this much," and they'd give you a range which is helpful with formulating.
But if you know the exact melittin content, then you're able to change the formula a little bit on the fly in order to make sure that the melittin content is optimal for every single formulation batch.
Christi: Do you plan to go to New Zealand one day?[00:37:00]
Monique: Oh yeah, that's, that's on my list. I was actually planting the seed with my family when our, during our last vacation. I'm like, "You know, I need to go to New Zealand, and I have a friend, a friend who has a house there. Maybe we could rent out their house."
Christi: There you go
Monique: So we'll see. I'm just manifesting it. I'm throwing it out in the universe.
Christi: So somebody who started out as a runner who's got bad knees, right? So does this stuff help you?
Monique: Oh my gosh, yeah. I mean, that's the only reason I had made it because nothing else was helping me, even the old CBD balms that I used to make. I mean, that's what the old muscle balm was. It had CBD in it, which used to help. But then I added bee venom in it, and it really kicked things into gear. And I mean, I have a 80-year-old woman who's a sculptor.
She's one of our wholesale clients down over in New Orleans. I'll have to look up her shop. Annie Bard is her name, and she uses it for her arthritic hands. And she was like, "I wasn't able to sculpt anymore because my hands would ha- not have [00:38:00] mobility. And because of your bee venom muscle balm, my hands are able to sculpt again.
Like I've it's like a miracle." So like there's so many beautiful stories that people have been providing to me, and my own evidence as well. And it's not only good for muscles. Like if you have a bug bite, like I got bit by a spider I put the bee venom muscle balm on the bug bite, and the mosquito bite was like gone in 30 minutes.
It didn't itch, and the spider bite went down in swelling and you know, was, was like I was stopping to itch my leg off. So great all around.
Christi: So how many products do you have now?
Monique: I have five i- in the mix that I keep on docket at all time. It just depends because sometimes in the hydrosols there's certain things that are blooming and being distilled at different times. So part of seasonal skincare is really like what's in bloom, and how can I say that this is fresh for the summer or fresh for the [00:39:00] fall?
And then whenever it stops blooming and I can't get that stock it moves to a different type of hydrosol, for instance.
Christi: What's a hydrosol?
Monique: A hydrosol is the byproduct of making essential oils. So my, my brand name called The Alambic or The Alambique. The Alambique is the Spanish word for an alembic still, so it's a copper alembic still that it has a little nest to put all of your botanicals in.
So after I harvest my calendula, I take the calendula, put it into this nest, and then fill the bottom of the vessel with water. That water gets heated up, pushed through the organic material, and then pushed up this coil, and it starts as the condensation and the separation process. And through it naturally cooling, the essential oils will be separated from the plant water that you have been running through the plants, and the oil will rise to the top and the hydrosol [00:40:00] will be on the bottom.
So hydrosol is the natural plant water that is being used or it gets made wh- while the essential oils are made.
Christi: How big is your garden?
Monique: Well I have 1.2 acres over in Taos.
Christi: Oh, nice.
Monique: The whole thing built out, but
Christi: Do you do a lot of container gardening with herbs and stuff,
Monique: No, no, no containers really. Everything kind of just goes into the ground, and we have, you know, bee balm and peppermint and black-eyed Susans and cilantro and tomatoes and peas and sunflowers and roses and marshmallow root. Oh, oh my.
Christi: That's wonderful.
Monique: I like to keep busy in the garden. It's something that keeps me close to my grandmothers.
Christi: That's nice.
Christi: Where can people find out more about you, your products, and purchase from you if they want?
Monique: It's [00:41:00] thealambique.com, and that's T-H-E-A-L-A-M-B-I-Q-U-E.com. And it has my whole family story and the soil savants that I partner with. And yeah, all of the products that I had mentioned are there as well.
Christi: Is there anything else you want to tell me?
Monique: Oh gosh, you know, I think that it's just really important for all of us to just pursue whatever is our purest intention and pursue your pure. And as long as you're on that track, then all of these really magical forces kind of just click in along the way.
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