abstract the essential oil produced by steam distillation and the volatile concentrate obtained by supercritical fluid extraction (sfe) from freshly harvested finely cut flowering tops of the clary sage were analyzed by gc and gc/ms. the concentration of linalool, myrcene, p-cymene, -terpineol, neryl acetate and geranyl acetate was higher in the distilled oil than in the oil obtained by sfe. the ratio of linalyl acetate to linalool in the distilled oil and in the sfe extract was 0.7 and 9.6, respectively. only the sfe extract was found to contain sclareol.