Aleppo pine

For centuries Greeks have flavoured retsina with Aleppo pine resin – a white wine with a distinctive resinous taste.

A medium-sized conifer with an irregular, often umbrella-shaped crown and a pale grey trunk that becomes covered with fissured, reddish-brown bark with age. The needles are thin and pale green, grow in pairs and are 6–12 cm long. The cones, set on short, curved stalks, can stay closed on the tree for years and often open only after a fire. The species tolerates drought, heat and limestone soils extremely well, which is why it covers the dry coasts of the Mediterranean.

Significance in the country

Retsina, wine flavoured with Aleppo pine resin, harks back to the ancient custom of sealing amphorae with resin and is a recognised traditional name for a Greek wine. Forests of this pine surround Athens and cover the coasts of Attica, Euboea and Halkidiki, but every summer they are threatened by devastating fires.

Where it grows

In the lowlands and low hills of western and central Greece: in Attica, Euboea, Boeotia, the Peloponnese, the Ionian Islands, the Sporades and Halkidiki; on the eastern islands it is replaced by the Turkish pine.

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