Rose Valley

Worth a detour

The long valley between Stara Planina and Sredna Gora grows the oil-bearing Damask rose, and Bulgaria supplies a large share of the world's rose oil from it. For about three weeks from mid-May the fields are full of pickers before breakfast and the whole valley smells of it. The rest of the year this is ordinary farmland and the guidebooks are misleading you.

Story

Background

The valley runs east-west for something like ninety kilometres, sheltered between two ranges, with Kazanlak at its centre and Karlovo at its western end. The combination of mild winters, high humidity and sandy soil suits Rosa damascena, and rose growing here has been organised as an industry since the eighteenth century. The product is attar of roses — the essential oil — and it takes something in the region of three tonnes of petals to make a single kilogram of it, which is why the stuff is priced like it is. Most estimates put Bulgaria's share of world output well over half.

The harvest is the whole show. Flowers are picked by hand from about first light, because the oil concentration is highest while the dew is on them and falls away once the sun is properly up; by nine or ten the pickers have stopped. The petals go in sacks straight to the distilleries, which have to process them within hours. Kazanlak holds its rose festival in early June, with a crowned rose queen and a good deal of organised folklore, and it is busy.

The honest caveat: come in August and you will drive through a perfectly pleasant agricultural valley wondering what the fuss is about. The roses are low bushes in rows; unflowered, they are hedgerow. This is a place with a three-week season, and the rest of the year the reason to be here is Kazanlak's Thracian tombs rather than the fields.