Chios Mastic Gum Small Tears – PDO Greek Mastiha Resin, 10g & 100g

This is the real damla sakizi — natural mastic resin from the island of Chios, packed in the official sachet of the Chios Gum Mastic Growers Association, the cooperative that has managed the island's entire mastic harvest since 1938. The PDO mark printed on the package means what it says: under EU Protected Designation of Origin rules (granted in 1997), only resin harvested on Chios from the Pistacia lentiscus var. Chia tree can be called Chios mastic. Nothing grown anywhere else qualifies.

Each tear is a hardened droplet of sap that wept from a cut in the tree's bark, dried in the sun, and was cleaned by hand in one of the island's mastic villages — a harvesting tradition UNESCO added to its Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2014. Small tears are the size most cooks want: they crush easily under a knife or in a mortar with a pinch of sugar, releasing the pine-and-cedar aroma that defines mastic ice cream (dondurma), Turkish coffee with mastic, sahlab, muhallebi, ma'amoul, rice pudding, and Ramadan sherbets across Turkey, Greece, and the Arab world.

How to use it: chill the tears first so they shatter instead of smearing, grind one or two with a teaspoon of sugar, and add to warm milk, dough, or syrup. A little goes far — two small tears flavor a whole pot of milk pudding. The resin is a single ingredient with nothing added: no sweeteners, no fillers, just the tree's own sap.

The 10g sachet covers several batches of dessert or a few weeks of mastic coffee; the 100g pack suits bakers, ice-cream makers, and anyone who cooks with mastic regularly. Stored cool and dry, the tears keep their aroma for a long time — warmth can make them stick together, which is natural resin behavior and does not affect quality.