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Rose festival in
Kazanlak, Bulgaria |
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Bulgaria is one of
the biggest producers of rose oil in the world. The reason for
this is hidden in the high qualities of the Bulgarian Kazanluk rose
("Kazanlashka roza"), a special type, that was
cultivated in our country after many years of production and
development. The Bulgarian roses are inheritors of the so
called Damascena rose, that was brought here ages ago. The rose
oil is called "the liquid gold" of Bulgaria, because it
is a very expensive |
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product,
used mainly for the making of perfumes, chocolates, liqueur and jam. The
rose oil is 3 times more expensive than the real gold. One kilogram
rose oil can be extracted from 3000 kg of
roses. This means, that for one gramme of rose oil are used more
than 1300
rose blossoms! Every flower is picked by hands and preserved
carefully for the distillation. More than 2000 people are occupied
in the harvest every year. |
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period of the harvest lasts only 20-25 days. No other cultivation
method has been able to preserve the character of the rose almost
unchanged for over three centuries. This fact explains why there
were no attempts at cultivating other rose varieties in the Rose
valley near Kazanlak. It has established
itself as a stable, independent type of rose, differing in its
anatomy and physiology from
the oil-bearing roses cultivated elsewhere.
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