A few years ago we organised a tour of Crete with a food and wine theme - though mainly wine. It was good timing as Wine Enthusiast magazine had just nominated Crete for its Wine Region of the Year award, along with Champagne, Provence, Sonoma County in California, and the eventual winner, Oregon's Willamette Valley. That’s not bad company to be keeping!
Olive Oil
Before I get to the wine, let’s share some of the other food and drink experiences we had on Crete. Everyone knows about the health benefits of the Cretan Diet, and one of the reasons for that is the generous amounts of olive oil people consume. So we jumped at the chance to tour an olive oil factory.
Biolea is one of the few olive oil factories that does tours, and although it’s a modern facility they still crush the olives the traditional way, on a stone press. It was a fascinating tour, with a tasting of some of their different oils at the end. You can read all about it here.
Petimezi
Petimezi is a kind of syrup that’s very popular on Crete. It’s made from grape must, and our wonderful guide Isi of GoCrete tracked down a couple who make it in their home and were happy to show us how it’s done… and of course to let us try some, and buy some. They use only organic grapes and you can learn about the process here. It tastes fantastic on ice-cream and other desserts.
Rakomelo
Rakomelo is another Crete treat! They do make it elsewhere in Greece so if you spot some on your travels, give it a go. If you know any Greek you’ll spot that rakomelo is a combination of two short words that tell you exactly what goes into it - the spirit raki, and meli, which means honey. It’s also flavoured with spices, often cinnamon. Again we owe it to our guide Isi from GoCrete who tracked down a guy who makes it, and took us to talk with him. You can read about that here.
Winery Visits
Isi also took us on several winery visits, all of which were first class. I won’t describe them all, but will give you a list of the ones we went to, which we can guarantee you’ll enjoy. Some serve food, some serve snacks, and some provide nibbles to go alongside the wine tasting.
Some tours are longer than others, depending on the size of the winery, but they were all very different and the wines were all top quality. Living on Crete, Isi knows his local wines very well, and picked out the best wineries to visit.
We kept hearing the Greek word ‘meraki’, which means to do something with passion, to put your whole soul into it. In fact Donna liked the word so much she used it when she formed a music duo with a friend, and called them Meraki.
So the wineries we can definitely recommend are these. You can click on the name if you want to read a full account of our visit.
You can also see from the photos what lovely settings the wineries have, another good reason go wine-tasting on Crete! They’re all my own photos, by the way. I simply haven’t watermarked all of them.
Till next time, there’s only one way to sign off…
Yammas!
Mike and Donna