Products · Personal care · Vintage Tradition
Vintage Tradition Totally Unscented Tallow Balm
Reader ratings
A two-ingredient balm (grass-fed beef tallow, organic olive oil) with no fragrance. We found no independent screening or lab test, and the maker uses drug-like words such as “healing”. We are asking for sourcing records and a lab report.
Best for Someone who wants a plain tallow-and-olive-oil balm with a short ingredient list and accepts that nothing about it is independently tested.
- Our quality rating
- Fair (3 of 5)
- Price range
- Premium
- Size
- 2 fl oz (59 mL) glass jar (a 9 fl oz jar is $80.35)
- Made in
- Handcrafted in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
approx. $22.95 for a 2 fl oz (59 mL) jar
See it on Vintage Tradition’s site →We are not affiliated with Vintage Tradition. This link goes to the maker’s own page, with no tracking code. How we're funded.
Reader ratings & reviews
– out of 5
Loading ratings…
Rating breakdown
- 5 stars 0
- 4 stars 0
- 3 stars 0
- 2 stars 0
- 1 star 0
Have this product? Please rate it.
Check your email
We sent a sign-in link to . Click it and you’ll come straight back here, signed in. It expires in 15 minutes; check your spam folder if it doesn’t show up. Thank you for helping the community!
Your review
Reviews are personal experiences, not research, and they never change our quality ratings. Every review is read by our team before it appears.
How we evaluated it
Why we chose it What put it on our list
- Two ingredients, named on the page: tallow from 100% grass-fed cows, and certified organic cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil. The “Totally Unscented” version has no essential oils, so it is fragrance-free in the strict sense. It smells of tallow.
- Vintage Tradition says it renders the tallow itself from beef suet at low heat, gets the suet from James Ranch in Colorado “and other ranches”, and takes suet only from USDA-inspected processors, keeping the inspection certificate for each batch.
- The page says the olive oil comes from Olea Estates in Sparta, Greece, and is certified organic.
- There is no water or preservative. It is packed in a glass jar with a BPA-free plastic lid that the maker says does not touch the balm.
Trade-offs What to weigh before you buy
- Nothing is independently verified. There is no EWG Verified or MADE SAFE listing and no lab report, and the maker says the balm itself is not certified organic. The grass-fed and USDA-inspection statements are the maker’s own, and no farm certificates are shown.
- The wording reaches into drug claims, and it is the maker’s. The product page says “For all manner of skin conditions”, and the FAQ says no plant-based product can compare with tallow in its power to “nourish and heal the skin” and calls olive oil and animal oils “healing” salves. We have seen no evidence for these claims. Under FDA rules a product that claims to treat a condition is a drug, not a cosmetic.
- It is expensive. The 2 fl oz jar is about $11.48 a fl oz, and the 9 fl oz jar about $8.93. A 16 oz pump of Vanicream Moisturizing Cream is about $0.85 an ounce.
- Our tallow guide says no trial compares tallow with other moisturizers. The brand’s FAQ also argues against all sunscreen, including non-nano zinc oxide, which it calls “extremely damaging to health”, and says sunscreen use “actually promotes skin cancer”. That conflicts with our sunscreen guide.
What to know Details worth knowing first
This balm is the simplest kind of tallow skin care: rendered beef fat and olive oil, with no water, preservative or scent. The Totally Unscented version is genuinely fragrance-free, which our fragrance guide says to look for. Our tallow guide explains the case for tallow, and also says that no trial has compared it with ordinary moisturizers.
The gaps are about proof, not formula. Everything we know comes from the maker’s own pages: the ingredients, the grass-fed sourcing, the USDA-inspected suet and the lack of testing beyond its own. We found no EWG Verified or MADE SAFE listing and no lab report. The wording also drifts into claims that belong to drugs, such as “for all manner of skin conditions” and “heal the skin”. Those are the maker’s words, not our findings. Our guide to what “clean” and “non-toxic” labels mean covers how to read that kind of language.
We are asking Vintage Tradition where its tallow comes from and for a recent batch lab report, as the notice above says. If you want tallow in the meantime, the alternatives below include a balm whose maker publishes a lab certificate for a recent batch.
Quality & testing How it measures up against our checklist
| What we checked | What we found |
|---|---|
| Every ingredient listed Maker’s claim | Two: tallow from 100% grass-fed cows, and certified organic cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil. No “fragrance” line. |
| Independent screening: EWG Verified or MADE SAFE Not verified | None found. Vintage Tradition does not claim either, MADE SAFE’s index does not list it, and EWG’s site blocked our requests. |
| Fragrance-free Maker’s claim | The Totally Unscented balm contains no essential oils, so the only scent is the tallow itself. |
| Short formula Maker’s claim | Two ingredients. |
| Tallow sourcing Maker’s claim | Suet from James Ranch in Colorado “and other ranches” with 100% grass-fed cows, from USDA-inspected processors, rendered in-house. The maker says it keeps the inspection certificate for each batch. No farm names beyond James Ranch, and no certificates, are shown. |
| Testing Not verified | No third-party test or certificate of analysis is published on the pages we read. |
| Claims on the page Not verified | “For all manner of skin conditions”, tallow’s power to “nourish and heal the skin”, and “healing salve” for its oils. These are the maker’s words. We found no evidence for them for this balm. |
What the labels mean
- Verified We opened an independent record that confirms it: a certifier’s listing, a regulator’s list or a lab report. It is linked under Sources.
- Maker’s claim The maker says so on its own page or label. We read it but found no independent record.
- Not verified We looked and could not confirm it, or the maker does not say. Treat it as unknown.
Sources Where our facts come from
- Vintage Tradition Totally Unscented Tallow Balm, 2 fl oz: maker’s product page. Maker’s page. Price and ingredients, seen 2026-10-22. Open ↗
- Vintage Tradition Totally Unscented Tallow Balm, 9 fl oz: maker’s product page. Maker’s page. $80.35. Open ↗
- Vintage Tradition tallow balm FAQ (sourcing, organic, sunscreen). Maker’s page. Source for the suet, USDA-inspection, organic and sunscreen statements and the “heal” wording. Open ↗
- MADE SAFE product index. Certifier or regulator listing. We searched its list of 461 products on 2026-10-22. Vintage Tradition is not in it. Open ↗
- Summer Solace Pure Unscented Tallow Balm: product page. Maker’s page. Price, ingredients and the link to its lab certificate. Open ↗
- ACS Laboratory certificate of analysis for Summer Solace unscented balm, batch BAL-PURE1. Test report. Commissioned by Summer Solace, batch dated 2026-06-24. About this alternative, not Vintage Tradition. We read the first page. Open ↗
Alternatives Other options to compare
- Summer Solace Pure Unscented Tallow Balm Tallow from Northern California (Stemple Creek Ranch), olive oil and calendula extract, about $36 for 60 mL. Its page links a certificate of analysis from ACS Laboratory for a June 2026 batch that shows passes for heavy metals, pesticides, mycotoxins, residual solvents and microbes. We opened the first page of the report only.
- Vanicream Moisturizing Cream A petrolatum-based cream with the National Eczema Association Seal of Acceptance, about $13.59 for 16 oz.