We have been sitting on this one for a while. We first came across Celtic Wind CBD oil a couple of years ago when they were first stocked in Lloyds Pharmacies. On the surface, there was nothing unusual about this company, and while they seemed largely unknown in the UK, the seemed to be one of the biggest CBD companies in Ireland.
From what the website details, Celtic Wind were incorporated in 2012 and are one of the biggest growers and producers of hemp-based products in Ireland. They offer a wide range of hemp oil products, alongside a wider range of CBD capsules.
While Celtic Wind products have been on our radar for a while, we weren’t really that interested in trying them out. Partly because they are a big company, and like most other big companies that are leading an industry, they should get things right. We had tried more than a few golden oils and nothing really stood out for us- until this year.
Before you even think about buying Celtic Wind’s CBD, check out our list of the best CBD oil in the UK.
In Summary
In summary, although the company has just been hit with a PR nightmare, we actually thought that the Celtic Wind CBD oil did its job. It has a nice earthy flavour, and as we would have expected. There was no ‘wow’ factor and we needed to take a significant amount to feel the benefits.
More importantly, a lot of trust has been lost in the brand since the BBC’s ‘Trust Me I Am A Dr’, found the Celtic Wind 500mg CBD oil to have basically 0% CBD content- and although the company blames the testing methods (in a suspiciously corporate manor), it just seems all very unsettling.
If you trust the word of Celtic Wind, then you’ll need to take the gamble but if you are like us you should maybe check out the list of our recommended CBD oils: you will find something you can trust for sure.
The fall from Grace
Everybody loves to go in on a big company that has either made a mistake or is down on its luck. For that reason we didn’t really want to write a Celtic Wind review with every other blog looking for blood…. but, you’re reading this now so it is fairly obvious that we changed our minds (on the review writing front).
Shall we do the big one first? Yeah, let’s do that. The BBC’s ‘Trust Me I am a Dr’ did their own Celtic Wind Review. They tested the 5% CBD oil and found that there was 0.00075% CBD in the bottle (spits tea). That’s not just a little bit out, now is it?
It isn’t unusual for the testing to be a little off, but this far off makes us think that something is amiss. What really got our attention was the fact that the company came out and blasted the methodology of lab-testing. They seem to blame the method the lab used as their oil is cold-pressed and needs to be assessed differently. Stating their own chemistry expert from the company (who will have vested interests) that already tests their products (mmmmm). Let us put this on record, this is our opinion and we are not science experts, but honestly, considering so many other companies who use similar methods and were tested and passed, there is no excuse. Surely the labs who tested for the BBC knew about this stated difference in the product production already? Who knows.
What is more upsetting is that the company is blaming industry standards, rather than taking any kind of responsibility – it casts further doubt on an already misunderstood industry and it is hurting the industry as a whole. All of us that spend time in the CBD world know the trick of the trade and know that the industry is still young and properly unregulated. Holland & Barrett/ Jacob Hooy were also caught out- it shows that there is a great industry-wide issue.
What puts our backs up more, is that since this all came out, Celtic Wind have gone ham to remove all of the negative reviews that they are getting on their Trustpilot. Mega-corporate clean up on isle 4!
All of this seems very suspect- the fact is, a lot of trust has been lost and we are sure the company are for the doors.
Look at the executive’s page: they do not seem a trusty bunch. More like a room full of wall street bankers (yes, with a b).
What does Reddit think of Celtic Wind CBD oil?
As always we like to look at Reddit to see what that community thinks of the CBD companies we include in our reviews, and Celtic Wind is no exception. On Reddit it seems that there is a mix of reviews – we found this thread pictured above which claims that Celtic Wind CBD oil is a scam, however the user seems to have deleted the submission. Depsite the deletion, many users have upvoted this thread. This Reddit thread is actually still open, so we’d love to see someone from Celtic Wind or Lloyds Pharmacy jump on there and respond to this.
Our own Celtic Wind Review
So for our own Celtic Wind Review- we picked up a bottle of the 500mg Celtic Wind CBD oil from our local Lloyds Pharmacy a while back and gave the oil a try. Honestly, it was ok and did exactly what was expected.
If the oil had been really clear or golden, it would make the lab reports easier to understand; but it wasn’t. It was a darker and hempier experience than we had expected and the flavour was seemingly quite natural. It was akin to some of the dutch CBD oils that we have tried in our time.
In all honesty, the oil is overpriced, but from our experience we quite enjoyed it.
Our gripes are small:
A while back, when we had a look there were a couple of things that just didn’t make sense and that made us feel a little uneasy with this company; they seem very, very corporate. Like a hippy convent run by a large red-faced man in a suit. All the right signals are there, but maybe not in the right order.
First of all is a petty one- the oil products are oversold. The Celtic Wind CBD oil is branded as ‘Multi-Complex’. Do you know what that means? We tried to find out and don’t know either- the website doesn’t seem to go into more details. It seems that it means that the oil contains a range of cannabinoids & hempy goodness (terpenes, amino acids and the like). In short, it just seems like regular Hemp extract with cold-pressed Hemp oil. The lab reports published on the website, show that the oil is THC free which goes to suggest that they infused a hemp oil with a distillate of some kind, rather than it being an out and out whole plant extract that has been CO2 extracted. See, kinda petty gripe.
We were told by a representative of the company (and it is published on their website) that we should take a ‘whole dropper’ of the oil per day. A whole dropper? Not a whole drop- a whole pipette. A whole dropper a day is quite a bit, even the experts say that 1-5 or so drops a day is the most effective way to take CBD. You’re likely to simply ingest the CBD where it will get bounced around your digestive system/liver and wasted. For a big company like this, they should know this. It means that you are using more CBD per day than is needed, and consuming it inefficiently. It is little but something about it tells us that they aren’t really in this business for the love any more.
