Ladies who are fond
of the most precious of perfumes, attar of roses, will find, if they
have the best attar, the name Kasanlik (Kazanlak) on the label.
But where be Kasanlik, whether in Germany or France or Italy, is a matter
which not one lady out of a thousand bothers her fair head about.
Kasanlik, however, is a little town on the Plain of Thrace, almost
within shadow of the Balkans. The Plain of Thrace is like hundreds of
others I saw in south eastern Europe - absolutely flat, and the
mountains surrounding rising almost precipitously. There is no
undulation. All the valleys suggest the bottom of dried lakes cupped
by hills. The remarkable thing is that this is the uniform topographical feature over a stretch of hundreds of miles.
Now a great slice of the Thracian plain is devoted to roses. In the
district of which Kasanlik is the centre there are one hundred and
seventy-three villages devoted to rose culture. Roses, roses all the
way, is the feature of the landscape. Where in other lands the
peasants grow wheat and rye and feed cattle, here for long miles all
the fields are rose gardens. It is the biggest rose garden in the
world - eighty miles long. The world seems dotted with roses; the air
is heavy with their perfume. It is not the richness of the soil that
produces the abundance. The soil is rather
indifferent, but there is a
peculiar quality about it - like the soil of Champagne for grapes -
which produces the rose most capable of yielding an exquisite essence.
The rearing of roses is a legacy from the Turks. They grew
the roses, distilled the attar, supplied the harems of the pashas at
Constantinople with the scent. The dilettante Ottoman has gone, and
now there are big firms which speculate in roses as Americans
speculate in wheat, and out-bid one another in purchasing the products
of whole villages before the bushes have even put forth a bud - firms
which are in keen commercial rivalry, and have their representatives
in Paris, London, and New York.
The distilling of roses began in Persia: the word
"atar" (fragrance) is Persian. Until three hundred years ago only
rose-water was obtained. It was about the beginning of the seventeenth
century that the method of securing the real essence was discovered.
From Persia the art spread to Arabia, from Arabia to the Barbary
States, and from the Barbary States a wandering Turk
brought a rose
tree to Kasanlik. The Rosa damascena, grown in such quantities, is the
same as the Rosa damascena grown in Tunis, though now in decreasing
quantities. The Rosa alba, also grown, can be traced, in a sort of
backward route, right through the Turkish Empire to Persia, where it
is abundant.
Fifty years ago something between four and five hundred
pounds' weight of attar was produced at Kasanlik. In 1904 the exact
amount was 8,147 pounds. It is by an accident that rose culture on so
gigantic a scale has grown up in this out-of-the way part of Roumelia.
But everything i
s favourable. The mean temperature is that of France;
the soil is sandy and porous, and the innumerable rivulets from the
mountains provide constant irrigation.
There are plenty of other regions favourable to rose-growing.
No region, however, is quite so suitable for roses needed for attar.
The attar rose is sensitive to climatic conditions. Exactly identical
methods with those followed in Bulgaria have been adopted at Brussa,
in Asia Minor, but not with success.
The rose plantations of the Kasanlik region are not
arranged in isolated plots or in narrow little hedgerows, as in the
rose district of Grasse, in France, but in high parallel hedges, about
a hundred yards long, taller than a man, and with a space of about six
feet between them. The setting of a plantation is peculiar to the
locality. Entire branches, leaves and all, from an old rose tree,
are
laid horizontally in ditches fourteen inches wide and the same depth.
These boughs, each about a yard long, are placed side by side, four or
five abreast, and form a long continuous line in the ditch. Part of
the earth taken from the ditch is piled lightly on the branches, and
above the furrow is placed a slight layer of stable manure.
The rose harvest begins with the flowering
time, about the middle of May, and ends about the middle of June.
Conditions most favourable to the grower are for the temperature to be
moderate and the rain frequent, so that the harvest is prolonged for a
full month. Great inconvenience is caused if the harvest is quickly
over. Gathering takes place every day during the blossoming period.
Every flower that has begun to blow, and every half-opened bud, is
plucked. A hectare (2 2/5 acres) produces generally about 6,600 lbs.
of roses, that is almost three million roses. These three million
yield at most 2 1/5 lbs. of attar. With regard to distilleries the
question of water takes the lead, for unless water is at hand
distillation is impossible.
The distilling apparatus is simple. Its essential
part is a large copper alembic, about 4 feet 10 inches high, resting
on a brick furnace. The alembic consists of a cistern with a peculiar
mushroom-shaped head, and a cooling tube. The cost of the alembic is
reckoned according to its weight; thus one weighing about 163 lbs.
costs about £4 6s. The cost of the vat into which the cooling tube
enters is from 2s. 6d. to 10s. The cooling tube enters at the top on
one side, and passes out into a flask at the lower part of the other
side. The operation of distilling rose-water lasts about
one to one
and a half hours, and is repeated again and again until all the petals
picked that day have been used, because petals distilled after
twenty-four hours' delay have lost so much of their scent that they
only afford an unfavourable yield.
To extract the attar from the rose-water a second
distillation is necessary. From 40 litres of rose-water a flask
containing 5 litres is distilled. Upon this the attar collects in the
form of a yellow, oily layer about 2 to 4 millimetres thick. It is
skimmed off by means of a little bowl in the shape of an inverted
cone, with a small hole in the bottom to let the water, which is
heavier than the attar, pass through.
The current form of adulteration is to mix attar of rose with
attar of geranium, produced from the Indian geranium, or Palma Rosa.
Adulteration is not confined to Constantinople, whence, it may be
said, not a single gramme of pure attar is exported. It is done in
Bulgaria, sometimes by the grower himself. Since 1888 an attempt has
been made to remedy this, and the importation of attar of geranium has
been forbidden by the Government, so that it can only be obtained
secretly. Much more often the attar is sent on to Constantinople,
where it is adulterated in perfect freedom. Another, and the simplest
method of adulteration, is to add some white roses to the red ones to
be distilled, the product of the white being less fragrant but much
richer in stearoptene. The attar of geranium is, in its turn, often
adulterated with oil of turpentine. So it is within possibility that
the little flask of attar of rose you purchase in a fashionable shop
may have very little of the genuine perfume in it.
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Simple and kindly-mannered are the peasants engaged in rose
culture. But the life is not so idyllic as might be thought. There are
no big rose farms. Indeed, the merchants find it more to their
advantage to buy from the peasants who, on their little patches, have
grown roses, and by the most primitive means obtained the attar. This
provides the merchant with security from loss. If a particular crop is
damaged the peasant bears the loss. Besides, the two or three Kasanlik
merchants have the monopoly in their hands; they have their own
peasant customers, and have the power of fixing the price of the
attar. The humble rose-grower can take it or leave it, but, if he
keeps his attar, where else is he to find a market? Some fortunes have
been made out of attar of rose; but no peasants have grown rich.
I had the pleasure of seeing over one or two of
the Kasanlik stores. The merchants are amiable. But
each took me aside
and whispered in my ear: "Of course, we are quite friendly with our
competitors, only I would like you to remember one thing: ours is the
only genuine attar. All the other is adulterated. Of course, our
rivals deny it, but we know." That little speech was made in each
place. I would like to believe that all the attar sent from Kasanlik
is pure. But when, searching for truth, I made independent inquiries,
I was sorrowfully reduced to the conviction that none of it is
absolutely pure.
No perfume is quite so strong as that of attar.
Remember the yield is less than one twenty-fifth of one per cent.
(0.04) of the roses used. For 1 lb. of attar more than 4,000 lbs. of
roses are needed. The peasant gets about 18s. an ounce. For the same
thing, as sold in Paris or London, the price is £8 an ounce.
(The price in 1906).
So strong
is the odour that nothing short of a hermetically sealed jar will
restrain it. A glass stopper, however tight, will not keep it back.
Indeed, so strong is genuine attar of rose that it is nauseating. To
remedy this and make it genial to the nostrils may be put forward as a
kindly explanation why it is so often adulterated and weakened. To be
in a Kasanlik store was to be in a thick and sickening atmosphere. I
put my nose over a copper jar in which was £8,000 worth of attar, and
the smell was so powerful as to be disgusting and productive of
headache.
The time to visit Kasanlik is about the birth of June.
Then you can get astride your horse and ride for two days, forty miles
a day, feast your eyes on a land of damask blooms, and breathe the
scent of millions of roses. When the wind is gentle the roses of
Kasanlik have their perfume carried fifty miles. Anyway, Bulgarians
fifty miles off have assured me that the breeze from the Kasanlik
region has been laden with the breath of a rose garden. The village
girls are out early, piling their aprons with roses and filling the
slow and creaking oxen carts. No Battle of Flowers at Nice ever had
such a mass of roses as deck the rude carts of Kasanlik in June. And
the brown-cheeked, black-eyed peasant maidens always deck their hair
with the most gorgeous of the blooms.
A perfect rose - for a true love.
Click
HERE
to buy Rose Absolute & Rose
Attar (Otto)
The
market share of the Bulgarian attar of roses is between 40 and 50% of
the global production, but its quality is by far considered the best,
the Bulgarian Agriculture and Food Ministry said. In 2007 the land
planted with oil-yielding roses accounted for more than 3,000 ha, of
which 1,200 kg attar of roses were manufactured. This trade will enjoy
financial aid under the Rural Development Programme of the European
Union.
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PEACE HAVENS of BULGARIA
