Brand: Bath and Body Works

Products: American Grown Hand Soaps and Body Wash

Fragrances: Napa Grape, Siesta Key Lemon, Washington Apple

Cost: $7.50 - $12.50

Introduction to my Bath & Body Works "American Grown" Review:

Bath and Body Works is a popular company for all things related to fragrance and affordable luxury. From body washes, splashes, lotions and butters, even home fragrance, Bath and Body Works has got it all. In shopping malls all across America and online, Bath and Body Works has been a reliable source for luxurious products at reasonable prices.

What can I possibly tell you about Bath and Body Works that you don't already know? We've all been in their stores... some of us... ahem... more than others. ‘Nuff said... so, let's get down to it. Bath and Body Works is always adding new products and scents to their line-up, so I decided to try a few soaps from their new American Grown collection.

I chose the Napa Grape and the Siesta Key Lemon scents in the hand soap. For the Washington Apple scent I decided to try the body wash.

The body wash was a whopping 24 fl oz! I ordered this online and didn't realize exactly how big this bottle would be. The hand soaps were a generous 16 fl oz, but the huge body wash /shower gel bottle towered over the other bottles.

This may seem strange, but my favorite characteristics of these liquid soaps were the actual bottles. Why? Because the bottles were translucent but colored in the same but deeper hue as the soap color. Genius, I tell you. I wish all of my soap bottles were like this. See, I keep my hand soaps out next to my sinks, and I like my sinks to look neat and pretty. When a soap bottle gets about half empty, it starts looking untidy to me... downright unsightly.

At a glance, these American Grown collection bottles still looked full even when they were almost empty. They kept the appearance of newness the entire time I used them. At the same time they were translucent enough for me to always tell how much soap I had left in the bottle. With all of the different hand soaps on the market, sometimes the decision to buy comes down to details this small, and if it came down to getting this one or that one, I would choose this product because of the bottle.

The soaps and bottles were colored in vibrant colors associated with each scent... Napa Grape was purple, Siesta Key Lemon was yellow, and... you guessed it... Washington Apple was indeed red. The actual soap only had the tiniest tint of color. The bright colors of these products came from the bottles. The labels were clear with white printing, and each bottle had a standard, sort of boring white pump on the top.

I ordered these soaps online and they arrived well packaged and none leaked. I think that's worth noting. Over the years Bath and Body Works has mastered the delicate art of shipping liquids. I'm always relieved when my package arrives clean and dry.

Napa Grape

Bath and Body Works knows how to entice a girl with a scent description. Here is their take on Napa Grape:

"In the beautiful rolling hills of Napa Valley's rich wine country, the alluring scent of ripe grapes wafts through the air. Breathe in this irresistible fragrance and experience the intoxicating aroma that has inspired generations of romance."

As good as this scent sounded, I initially chose it because it was purple. What can I say? I liked the color... plus I had never had a grape scented hand soap so this one went into my cart.

This scent smelled like grape juice to me. It smelled fresh and fruity and juicy, but not overly sweet. It was a nice surprise. I really had no idea how a grape scented hand soap would smell, and as luck would have it, this one was a winner!

Siesta Key Lemon

Another great scent description from Bath and Body Works:

"Nothing says summer like fresh-cut Meyer lemons from Florida. Sweeter than other lemons, they are plump, smooth-skinned and an unmistakable dark yellow. Experience this sparkling citrus fragrance, a scent that has refreshed the air of Siesta Key for over a hundred years."

Once again, despite this enticing promise of citrusy goodness, I had my own reasons for choosing this scent. I chose this scent because of its name and the reference to Siesta Key, Florida. Even though Meyer lemons are grown in a few different southern regions of the United States, Siesta Key is close to home for me, and I just plain got a kick out of smelling a soap that models itself after a fruit indigenous to such a beautiful local area. I also thought it was interesting that they bypassed the more distinctly regional Key Lime in favor of the lesser known Siesta Key Meyer lemon connection.

The scent itself is certainly lemony and bright. It wasn't much different from any other lemon scented soap product I've tried, but it did smell more realistic than most. There is actual lemon oil in this soap which, I'm sure, helped boost the authentic nature of this lemon scent.

Siesta Key Lemon smelled nice and fresh, and I enjoyed this scent. Even though I couldn't tell the difference between this variety of lemon and any other lemon scented soap, I did appreciate the idea behind the American Grown collection, and the nod to a beautiful, often overlooked area on the West coast of Florida.

This description from Bath and Body Works totally hooked me.

"In the fertile valleys of Washington State in America's far west, growers tend orchards that produce the world's most beautiful and delicious apples. Experience this juicy fragrance and remember your first bite of a shiny red apple, an unmistakably crisp flavor."

Who wouldn't want to smell beautiful and delicious apples on their hands or in the shower for that matter? I fell hard for this scent and chose the much larger body wash over the hand soap in Washington Apple.

Washington Apple smells fantastic! I am loving this scent for Autumn and this was such a natural smelling fresh burst of apples. It's a simple fragrance, so there is not much detail I can give you except to say that it's an apple scent that smells like real apples and my shower smelled unbelievably good when I used this body wash.

Trying the American Grown collection from Bath and Body Works in two different products side by side was interesting. These products - hand soap vs. body wash - seemed the same to me, but in two different sizes. The smaller size bottle for hand soap and the larger size for a body wash.

I don't know if the products are identical or not because I had each one in a different scent so the ingredients list was not the same on any of them. I tried each product as a body wash and then as a hand soap. Personally, I found no difference in the performance of one over the other. The hand soaps worked just fine as a body wash in the shower, and the body wash worked equally well as a hand soap.

Because I like to change up my bath scent often, and since I like to have my hand soap bottles out on display, I will pass on the giant sized body wash in the future and stick with the smaller, lower priced hand soaps. The 16 fl ounce hand soaps were plenty big enough to use as a body wash. The 24 fl ounce body wash bottle was just too bulky to be in my regular shower rotation, and would look ridiculous next to my sink.

All three of these soaps lathered up well and rinsed clean. Each soap scented my skin during a shower as well as the whole bathroom. I mean my bathroom smelled good! A little went a long way too so I found these soaps to be a good value.

I found it interesting that each one of the scents in Bath and Body Works American Grown collection has a natural ingredient added to it that had a variety of beneficial claims.

The Napa Grape hand soap was infused with a grape seed oil. This is supposed to help protect and condition the skin. Siesta Key Lemon had lemon oil added to refresh the skin. Finally, the Washington Apple was infused with apple extract that would help nourish the skin.

These are some pretty general claims if you ask me... help refresh, condition or nourish? They sound good and are obviously benefits I would want in any of my body products, but I didn't feel like my skin had reaped anything exceptional from these added natural oils and extracts. However, I would hope that more natural ingredients would be in my body products anyway, and not just as a selling point.

I do, however, think that the natural fruit extracts and oils made the scents better than most...more authentic and truer to the real fruit scents. For that reason alone, I'll put up with the somewhat hokey benefit claims.

After using each of these three scents as body washes and as hand soaps, my skin felt clean with no soapy residue. If anything, my skin felt a bit tight and I needed to moisturize after washing with these. Even when I used these products as a simple hand soap, I felt like I needed lotion more often than not.

The scents stayed on my skin for about an hour after washing, which is just what I was looking for.