A sweet, clear liqueur scented with mastic, the aromatic resin tapped from mastic trees grown only on the southern half of the island of Chios. The flavor is unlike any other spirit: piney and resinous, with a cool herbal sweetness and a faint cedar-and-pine echo on the finish. It is poured chilled or over ice as a digestif and increasingly into cocktails. The crystals dissolved into it are the same mastic Greeks have chewed and cooked with for millennia.
Mastic (mastiha) is the resin of the mastic tree (Pistacia lentiscus var. chia), which yields its prized 'tears' only in the arid south of Chios; Herodotus recorded the Greeks chewing it in antiquity. Chios mastic was granted EU Protected Designation of Origin status in 1997, tying the name to that single growing area. Resin-flavored spirits are an old Aegean and eastern Mediterranean tradition, and modern Chios mastic has been turned into a dedicated sweet liqueur sold under several labels since the 2000s.
Cool and sweet up front, then the resin opens — a clean pine-and-cedar aroma that reads almost like an herbal incense rather than a fruit or grain spirit. The body is silky and lightly syrupy, the finish long and faintly bitter-green where the mastic lingers. Best served very cold, when the sweetness tightens and the resin turns crisp rather than cloying.
Mastic's aroma comes from volatile terpenes locked in the resin, which are only sparingly soluble in water but dissolve readily in alcohol; steeping or distilling the crystals in a neutral spirit pulls these compounds into solution, then sugar is added to round the sharpness into a liqueur. Because the terpenes are delicate and bittering if overextracted, producers control contact time and temperature carefully. Serving it cold suppresses the sweetness on the palate and lets the resin's high, cooling top notes read clearly.
Variations
Served neat and chilled, on the rocks, or stretched with soda; bartenders pair it with citrus, gin, or sparkling wine. A non-alcoholic mastic syrup (mastic 'submarine,' hypovrychio) is a spoon sweet stirred into iced water. Mastic also flavors the unrelated chewy ice cream kaimaki and is dosed into some Cretan tsikoudia and other Aegean spirits.
On the Palate
Where Mastiha sits in the Greek flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 1How it's made
4 steps · 5 min
- 12 min
Chill a small tumbler or liqueur glass, or fill it with ice.
- 21 min
Pour about 50 ml of mastiha liqueur over the ice.
- 31 min
Optionally top with a splash of chilled soda water and a twist of lemon peel.
- 41 min
Stir briefly to release the resin aroma and serve cold as a digestif.
Watch outServe it well chilled — the cold holds back the sweetness and lets the resin's cool, high aroma come through clearly.
Archive tool suggestions — not reviewed
These legacy suggestions have not been evidence-reviewed and are not presented as required tools.
