A 2,500-Year Tradition
Ancient Roots
Mastiha has been gathered on Chios for well over two thousand years, prized across the ancient Mediterranean and recorded by classical writers. What began in antiquity continues today in the very same villages, by much the same methods — a tradition unbroken through the centuries.
- Valued for more than 2,500 years
- Noted by Herodotus, Dioscorides and Galen
- A prized trade good of Byzantine and Ottoman times
Named by the ancients
Mastiha has been valued for more than 2,500 years. The historian Herodotus noted the tree's resin as far back as the 5th century BC, and a line of celebrated physicians — among them Hippocrates, Theophrastus, Dioscorides and Galen — went on to record its uses in their writings. Its very name reveals how it was enjoyed: 'mastiha' comes from the ancient Greek verb meaning 'to chew' or 'to gnash the teeth,' the same root that gives us the English word 'masticate.' In Rome, it was even shaped into toothpicks, prized for helping to keep teeth clean and breath fresh.
The 'white gold' of empires
For centuries Chios mastiha was treated as a treasure to be guarded. From the 14th to the 16th century the island was controlled by the Genoese, whose ruling company tightly managed the mastic trade and grew wealthy on it. When the Ottomans took Chios in 1566, the resin became so valued that the finest tears of each harvest were reserved for the Sultan's court in Constantinople, and the mastic villages were granted special privileges — and burdened with special taxes paid in mastic — to keep the crop flowing.
An unbroken tradition
What makes Chios remarkable is not only that its mastiha is ancient, but that the tradition never stopped. The same villages that supplied emperors and sultans still harvest today, using tools and techniques their ancestors would recognise. Few foods or ingredients anywhere in the world can trace such a continuous, living history — and when you open a bottle, you're tasting the latest chapter of a story thousands of years in the making.
Taste the tradition