We’re driving through Evia, the island north of Athens and begin to notice the pine trees, each it seems adorned with white plastic bags. The speculation begins, “Must be the farmers’ sarnies”,” No, they’re to catch insects.
The answer came from Peter, on BA0632 from Heathrow to Athens. “Rosin,” he told me. “It’s a type of resin collected from Greek pines. It’s one of the highest quality there is and there’s a world shortage at the moment.” He went on to ask if I had noticed, in the film Black Swan, that they use rosin on ballet shoes to give grip to their points. I hadn’t, but I did have a distant memory of a transparent amber brown block I used to pull across the strings of my cello bow in the vain hope it would make me sound better.
It appears rosin had been used since ancient times, indeed has another name ‘colophony’ which comes from the ancient Ionian city of Colophon where the resin was used to induce trances and smoke for medical and magical purposes.
Then they would have used clay pots to gather the viscous liquid but the tapping method today remains the same, except modern day Greek farmers now use the less aesthetically-pleasing plastic bag. But still a small piece of bark is removed; then one-cm-wide grooves are gouged into the tree and renewed every few days to make the tree bleed. Occasionally, the addition of an acid irritant is used to speed the process and a labour-intensive and patient wait begins for the collection of the sap as it drips slowly into the bag.
But it’s not just orchestral string sections who use this product, although they may be the ones who demand its purest and most carefully-harvested forms, from Larica ‘Liebenzeller’ made in Germany from pure larch resin with added gold, to the handmade Greek Melos made entirely from natural products. Every violinist will have their favourite to produce the mellowest of notes.
It is also, as Peter went on to explain, a product with a diverse range of industrial uses, from making sticky labels and chewing gum, to paints and glass, and incorporation into soft drinks and medicines. As more uses are found, demand grows, which is why there is a world shortage. About 100 types of pines are currently being tapped, from the Americas to Asia and New Zealand, but he considered European pines to be the best with the age-old methods employed. But the future is changing. In Brazil, straight-rowed plantations are being grown with wide enough gaps to mechanise the harvest.
Perhaps when the older farmers die out and costs become too high, the plastic bags of Evia will disappear forever from the pines trees. Suddenly they seem more charming after all…
