Drinking Ouzo in Lesvos
(Painting from the Ermis Cafeneon in Mytilini probably the best place for ouzo and mezedes in Lesvos, if not all of Greece. See Mytilini restaurants)
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Lesvos makes the best ouzo in
Greece and if you have never had ouzo from Lesvos there is a
possibility you have never had good ouzo.
 Ouzo
drinking is an art. Or maybe it's
a way of life. Whatever it is,
Lesvos is known for it's ouzo.
Most cafe owners in Greece will
admit that the best ouzo comes
from here and they probably carry
one of the more popular Mytilini
brands. But it's not the ouzo but
who you drink it with that really
makes the experience. When I am in
Lesvos I spend a lot of time
drinking ouzo and eating with my
friends. So much so, that when it
is time to return to America I
have to seriously consider
becoming a member of AA. But
usually my desire for ouzo ends
when I get on the plane back to
America.
 The
key to drinking ouzo is to eat
snacks known as mezedes. These
keep the effects of the alcohol
from overwhelming you and enable
you to sit and drink slowly for
hours in a profoundly calm state
of mind where all is beautiful and
life is fine. In the villages
where life is slow ouzo is
partaken day or night. On Sundays
after church the cafeneons are
full of lively voices and singing,
including sometimes the village
priest. In many cafeneons the
cooking is done by men, but in
some it is a woman who does the
cooking and serving and acts as
den mother to the old men who come
around each day. She knows their
likes and dislikes, favorite seats
and personal history.
WARNING!
If you don't like licorice you
won't like Ouzo. Well, you might.
My favorite Lesvos ouzos
are:
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- Ouzo Giannatsi from Plomari: Distilled in an
old-fashioned wood burning
kasani (still). Two
varieties, one of 42% and
the other 45% alcohol.
Hard to find outside of
Plomari.
- Ouzo Pitsiladi is another excellent distilled ouzo and
one of the favorites of my friend Vagios
at his ouzerie in Keratsini, Pireaus. I
bought a bottle of this for the bar at the
Attalos Hotel in Athens because all they
had was Ouzo 12
- Ouzo Dimini
is distilled and the only ouzo I can get
in my local grocery store in Kea. The bottle
is in the shape of a still.
-
Plomari by Arvanitis. It
is the first ouzo with a
cork and becoming the most
popular in Greece and shares a near monopoly in Athens with Mini.
-
Ouzo Mini: Mild and smooth
with an alcohol content of
40%.
-
Ouzo Veto: 42%. Stronger.
Andrea likes this
kind.
-
Ouzo Kefi: The ouzo of
choice in my local
cafeneon though who knows
if it is really Kefi or
some other ouzo bought in
bulk and poured into Kefi
bottles.
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-
Barbayannis: The most
famous of the
Plomari
Ouzo. Some say it's the
best.
The blue label is the strongest at 46%
but I really love their green label which is 42%.
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Then there are many other
smaller companies like
Kronos and other labels
from the large ouzo
companies like EPOM,
including Lesvos, Eva and
Thimi.
-
Then there are the
commerical ouzos made for
tourists and
Greek-Americans who don't
know good ouzo from
sambucca which are
generally too sweet or in
some cases just plain
undrinkable. I don't want
to name them because they
are big corporations with
an image to preserve and
employ a multitude of
lawyers to help them
preserve it but if you
stick with the ouzos I
mention above you should
be OK.
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In the
cafeneons ouzo is served with a
meze included, for about a dollar
a glass. The mezedes can be
anything from a salad, stewed meat
and vegetables,
sardeles
pastes
, koukia (beans), sweetbreads,
meatballs, cheese, sausage, fried
fish or whatever the specialty of
that cafeneon is that day. Eat and
drink slowly and enjoy the
journey. The cafe owners are
always good cooks and in many
places it is almost like a
competition who has the best
mezedes. Don't be macho. Drink
ouzo with water. When you pour it
in the ouzo will turn a milky
white. How much to pour in is a
matter of taste. A good trick is
to water it down as you drink it.
In other words you keep adding
water. You won't get as drunk this
way and because you will be
drinking as much water as ouzo (or
more) you won't be dehydrated or
hungover (maybe).
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If you
should be lucky enough to meet
someone who makes his own ouzo
watch out. Though they call it
ouzo it is really
raki
or
tsipuro
and
does not have that licorice flavor
one associates with ouzo. It is
made in homemade stills and goes
down smooth but it's effects are
rapid and powerful. But one glass
won't hurt and two is even
better.
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Ouzo
Plomari of Isidorou Arvanitou is
the ouzo with the cork in it.
Strangely enough I could not find
it in the cafeneons the first time
I went to Plomari. The story I
was told is that the original
company was sold to the man who
owned the famous OUZO 12. When he
sold OUZO 12 to a big European liquor company, he took his money and
bought the small Arvanitis
distillary in Plomari and changed
the recipe and made it a
kinder-gentler ouzo so people like
me would like it and they could
hopefully market it all over
Greece and maybe in America too.
But in Plomari they still like
they original recipe so there are
actually two versions. The bottle
in Plomari is completely different
and it does not have a cork and it
is stronger. I went to the factory
to check out the authenticity of
this story and unfortunately it
was closed. Since then they have
used their marketing expertise to
make the ouzo with the cork one of
the most popular in Greece. You
can even get it at duty-free in
the airport. The attractiveness of
the bottles has made them very
popular in restaurants which use
them for oil and vinegar on the
tables.
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| By the way to make the story even more interesting after he sold OUZO 12 to the big European company, people stopped drinking it and it was losing so much money that they sold it back to him. He put a cork in OUZO 12 and within a year or so it was almost as popular in Athens as Plomari and Mini. |
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Most
of the ouzos on Lesvos are not
distilled. In other words they
just buy the ingredients and
assemble them in the shops and
then bottle it and sell. Some of
the more popular brands are
assembled rather then distilled.
In Plomari the
Ouzo
Giannatsi
which
was owned by Greek-Australian
George Kavarnos and his son, is
distilled in the old fashioned way
and is one of the best tasting
ouzos I have tried. Because they
were a small company and not able
to pay the large sums of money
required to get your product
placed in supermarkets, their ouzo
could be found only in his shop in
Plomari and in some small
cafeneons and restaurants in the
area. But since the company was sold a few years ago it has been making its way into cafes, restaurants and shops all over Greece.
According to Mr. Kavarnos
real traditional distilled ouzo
has no side effects (besides
drunkeness) and will not cause a
hangover because there is no sugar
added and the other ingredients
which give each ouzo its distinct
flavor, is cooked rather then just
added to the mixture. To test this
claim I brought a bottle of
Giannatsi to my friend Michalis,
the owner of the cafeneon in the
upper village of Vatousa and asked
him to try it. He was quite
impressed and then pointed to the
bottle. "You see this Mathios?
This is why this ouzo is so good.
It says 'apostegmena'. That means it is distilled."
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I can
almost remember my first ouzo
'experience'. I was a sophomore in
high school attending the American
school in Athens. My friends and I
were at a neighborhood cafeneon,
loosening up for the big dance by
drinking Ouzo 12, a popular
Athenian brand. Though we had all
sampled ouzo before this was the
first time we had come to a
cafeneon with the intent of using
it as our primary source of
entertainment, (not counting the
dance itself.) At 7:30 I knew I
had enough and began walking the
quarter of a mile to the school
gym. I arrived there just as the
buses were taking the kids home at
11:30. What happened to those four
hours I will probably never know
though I have always suspected
that I was picked up by aliens and
experimented upon before having
some kind of chip implanted in me
that made me unable to take school
very seriously and rendered me
useless for any kind of job
besides being a musician and
giving unsolicited advice about
Greece. The purpose of this and
what the aliens have in store for
me I can only guess at.
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My big
plan this summer was to fill a
carton with as many different 200
ml bottles I could find on the
island. What I discovered is that
there are a lot of brands of ouzo
that I had never seen or heard of
before. Even the small town of
Skalahori, with a population of
about 500 people has its own ouzo.
One of the best of these small
brands I discovered on a visit to
the village of Agia Paraskevis.
The ouzo there is called Kronos
and though the owner of the
company (a shop really), seemed a
little suspicious of my interest
in ouzo, he warmed up enough to
give me a bottle which I took home
to my village. It turned out to be
Andrea's favorite ouzo and I liked
it too. I asked Nick, an
Australian who owns the mini-mart
why Kronos ouzo is not available
all over the island and he said
that Mr. Kronos needs to work on
the public relations division of
his company. As far as I could
tell the only people who work for
the company at all are Mr. Kronos
and a very nice young guy who
though a little slow was happy to
make the most of the opportunity
to promote the company by posing
for some pictures with the
ouzo.
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Trying
to describe the taste of ouzo or
to say why I prefer one to another
is hard. Not that each ouzo does
not have it's own taste and subtle
differences. There just are not
enough ouzo connoisseurs
communicating with each other to
put together a lexicon of
descriptive words for ouzo. I
could borrow from the wine experts
terms like fruity, and tasty
but they don't work for ouzo. I
could move up to the words used to
describe the finest whiskeys and
scotch, but ouzo does not have the
same mystique or pedigree. It
hasn't been aged for 12 years in
oaken casks or had people waiting
in anticipation of this years
batch.
It's
pretty much cooked or mixed
together, bottled and shipped
out.
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If one
has a favorite ouzo it is probably
not because they prefer one grape
to another (who says they all use
grapes anyway?). It is usually
because they like the flavor that
the ingredients added to the
alcohol give it, they like the
higher or lower percent of
alcohol, or they like the color of
the bottle or the advertisements
for it. As
Thanasis
the Australian
of
Xidera, says of the old men who
visit his cafe, each one an expert
on ouzo with his own personal
preference "I buy whatever is
cheapest and put it in whatever
bottle I have. If I buy Veto and
all I have is an Empty bottle of
Kefi I put it in a bottle of Kefi
and nobody has ever said to me
"Hey. This is not Kefi!" in all
the years I have been
working."
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I have
to face the fact that while in
Lesvos, ouzo is my life. I am not
ashamed, nor do I consider myself
an alcoholic (who does?). I spend
the day doing various activities
like writing, reading, swimming,
visiting places, until the sun
goes down when I walk down to the
cafeneons and order my first ouzo
and meze. I know that I may drink
two glasses or I may drink ten,
but in the course of those ten
glasses I am going to have
interesting conversations, meet a
stranger or two, be bought an
ouzo, practice my Greek, watch my
wife and child head home to bed,
and end up talking to the cafe
owner about something I know from
living in America that he is
curious about. I may have the
opportunity to explain what the
internet is in terms he can
understand (that's a fun one), or
why it's not necessary to throw a
strike on an 0 and two
count.
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Andrea's
uncle Mitzo was famous for
his
xima
. He called it ouzo but it
tasted nothing like ouzo and a
lot like moonshine, raki and
tsipuro. It shared an element
with all three. It could knock
you on your ass in no time
flat. There was an old still
in his garden that he used to
make his ouzo. He would sing
to us:
Otan kapnizi oh loulas
esi then prepi na milas
kitaxe trigiro i mages
kanoun oloi toumpeki
or
When you light the loulas
you must not speak
look around at the "manges"
they are all making "toumpki" (cutting the
tobacco to pieces )
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It's
the lines from an old Rembetika
song by Mitsakis that I
interpreted as being about
hashish, but Uncle Mitso had his
own meaning, the key obviously
resting on the translation of the
word
loulas. Unlike the commercial ouzo, his
came from his own grapes. Even
after he could no longer drink he
continued to make his own ouzo to
share with friends and family and
unsuspecting visitors.
Not many people outside of Lesvos
realize that their grapes were
wiped out by a blight several
hundred years ago and have not
been grown except in private
gardens, until the last few years.
It is only in the last two years
that wine from Lesvos has been
introduced thanks to a grafting
technique that has made a variety
of blight resistant grapes. In the
past the island was famous for its
wine because the soil and climate
are perfect for it and perhaps now
we are witnessing the dawn of the
new age Lesvos wines. Most of the
wine served in Lesvos is the
commercial variety from the
mainland and Santorini, or
excellent local
xima
wine
from Lemnos.
But several years ago Methymnaos Winery began producing the first commercial wine from Lesvos in the last 500 years or so. |
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Occasionally
on a Sunday I will drive over to
Xidera, the most remote village in
Lesvos, where my wife is from, and
visit with my friends who live
there. Most of them are old men
though there are a few my age like
Thanasis the Australian. He owns
the cafeneon directly across the
small street from Andrea's aunt
Aglaia who is the finest one
burner cook in all of Lesvos and
makes grand feasts for us to be
washed down with ouzo. Her husband
Panayotis (riding the donkey on
the front page of this guide) is
the village butcher so one of the
staple mezes are the fried organs
of whatever he has killed
recently, usually a sheep or goat.
I think it's the staple. Maybe she
only serves them to me to get rid
of them or because I told her I
liked them when she served them to
me once many years ago.
Regardless, whenever I sit down
with Uncle Panayotis and he offers
me an ouzo, I know there is a
spleen not far behind.
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Thanasis
is my primary source of village
information. His wife also makes
great mezedes and I can't set foot
in the place without somebody
buying me an ouzo and offering me
a small meal with it. Normally I
try to control myself and save my
ouzo drinking for evening, but
more often then not, a visit to
Xidera is an excuse for an
afternoon of letting go of the
rules I have made up for myself
and is always rewarding in some
way. I either have some major
breakthrough in communication with
one of the old villagers or I am
filled with such peace of mind
that I realize a few more weeks on
the island and I will be beyond
treatment but who cares?
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Kefi
My
first day in Lesvos a couple years
ago. It was a Sunday which is a
popular day in the cafeneons and
spontaneous explosions of kefi are
not uncommon. What I mean by kefi
is a feeling that comes over one
that can only be expressed by
dancing, singing or
radiating(sitting there and
glowing with happiness which is
what I do). I was with my daughter
recovering from the drive and the
carrying of luggage to our house
at the top of the village where no
car dares to go for fear that it
may never return. We were sitting
in a corner of Tryphons while in
the other corner sat a group of
young and old men who would burst
into song when one of the tunes
being played struck a chord within
them. The finest singer of them
all was a young carpenter and
stone mason named Panayotis who
every so often when he was really
filled with kefi would leap to his
feet to dance. Not for us, not for
his friends or anyone else in the
cafeneon (which was empty except
for us), but for himself. He was
lost in the music, the moment and
the movement. He was expressing
himself to himself and we were
blessed to be witnesses. It was
really very spiritual, like
watching lovers, or a holy man
talking to God and realizing that
God is indeed listening.
Ouzo
is a kefi-catalyst. For more
on the subject rent the movie Zorba the
Greek or read the book by
Nikos Kazantzakis
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