Chios built its mastic villages with no street-level doors to guard a tree resin
Under Ottoman rule, a sticky resin from a shrub on the Greek island of Chios was worth its weight in gold. Villages that produced it were walled like fortresses, hidden from the sea and entered only by ladder. The resin, mastic, may also be the world's first chewing gum.
Mastic seeps from the resin glands of an evergreen shrub, Pistacia lentiscus, and hardens into brittle, translucent drops. Chewed, it turns bright white and opaque, bitter at first and then fresh, a little like pine or cedar. The drops glint on the bark like crystal, earning the name tears of Chios. Its name probably shares a root with the Ancient Greek verb to chew, and in modern Hebrew the colloquial word for chewing gum is simply mastic.
Its value runs through history. Hippocrates is the first known writer to mention the tears, and Romans mixed it into a spiced wine with honey, pepper and egg. Byzantine emperors made the trade a state monopoly, and Ottoman sultans claimed the best harvest. The Turkish name for Chios translates as gum island. Ancient Egyptians used it in embalming, and it remains essential to chrism, the holy anointing oil of Eastern Orthodox churches.
Harvesting fills the year. From early July to early October growers sweep the ground beneath each tree and sprinkle it with calcium carbonate, then every four or five days cut 5 to 10 slits in the bark. The first drops take 15 to 20 days to harden and fall. Farmers wash them in spring water and spend much of the winter sorting tears from sand by hand. A cooperative founded in 1938 manages all Chios mastic, whose name is protected by the European Union, and 24 villages still produce it; a fire in August 2012 destroyed some groves.
Across the eastern Mediterranean it flavours ice cream, Turkish delight, breads and the Greek liqueur mastika, and it also appears in varnishes, perfume and incense. Across the strait in Turkey, over 3,000 saplings were planted between 2008 and 2011 to revive production on the Çeşme peninsula.
Source: Mastic (plant resin)
