Mastic oil - Agricura - Buy online Sardinian food

Mastic oil, natural product made in Gonnosfanadiga, Sardinia, by Agricura.

From the millennial tradition of Sardinia, Lentisco oil, an oil that has always been used in the Mediterranean to season and cure. Incorporable perfume, the same scent of Mediterranean scrub, is the same strong but welcoming and benevolent character.

Mastic oil - Agricura - Export Italian olive oil

The mastic oil is obtained from the mastic tree (Pistacia Lentiscus), an evergreen shrub typical of the Mediterranean basin, which grows wild in Sardinia with low and bushy habit, leaves dark green, which has a strong and distinctive smell. The fruits are small berries that ripen in autumn, ranging from white, red, to dark purple almost black to full ripeness.

Lentiscus oil, Sardinian biodiversity
Lentisco (Pistacia Lentiscus) with ripe berries.

The trunk produces a resinous substance called mastic (mastic of Chio, from the most famous place where it was produced) still widely used today mainly by pharmaceutical companies, but also as a color component for paintings and cewingum.
From the flowers, leaves and sprigs the essential oil is extracted, and from the berries, when it comes to maturation, it is obtained, by squeezing, a vegetable oil, known and used since prehistoric times.
With the introduction of olive trees, the use of this oil in the gastronomic field slowly decreases, remaining relegated to only use as fuel for lighting lamps, and then disappear almost completely to our day.

Recent scientific studies are analyzing the composition, nutritional and healthy properties of lentiscus oil, often confirming how much it has been handed down by popular medicine.

Lentiscus plant of Sardinia
The Lentis plant

Mastic oil - Agricura - Organic Sardinian food

The properties of mastic oil were well known to our ancestors. The impassioned appearance of the bush that produces it would nevertheless suggest its immense qualities.
The wood, the leaves, the resin and especially the oil obtained from the berries are used in the ancient and in the modern science.
In a recent book: Blue Zone, Bucket Dan Buettner reports the results of his research: analyzing the areas of the earth where the population is most long and studying their lifestyles, finds in Sardinia one of the five world's largest areas densities of centenaries, characterized and shared among other things by the assumption of mastic oil.