The country may be in a difficult state of affairs, but Greece has an export business with a very bright future—its wines.

You may think that someone who spends their professional life tasting dozens of wines a week will have sipped just about everything the world has to offer. It’s true—to a point. But like the art critic who stumbles across a rare masterpiece at auction or the literary critic who discovers the next big thing, there are times when a wine knocks even a critic sideways, surprising with both its flavor and its quality.

This happened to me a few weeks ago. I was handed a white wine at a tasting, and its pale yellow color, floral aroma, cushion-soft texture and crisp, refreshing, salty tang left me in raptures.

It wasn’t that it was the best wine I had ever tasted; it was just that it had a particularly unusual and enjoyable flavor. And it was from Greece. Not that this should have made any difference, but given the current state of affairs in the country, it caught my attention. As I took a second sip, it occurred to me that if Greece can keep producing wines of this quality, there will be at least one export business with a bright future.

The wine in question was an Assyrtiko from Santorini. When its identity was revealed, I nearly dropped my glass. Not long afterward I bumped into Mark Squires, who covers the wines of Greece for Robert Parker’s consumer newsletter, the Wine Advocate, and I told him about my experience. “It’s a sleeper,” he said. “No doubt about it. Greece is your classic emerging region. When you look at what is happening in Greece, this is a country that is simply a great wine-producing region—they just don’t have much to prove it with yet.”

The country has hundreds of grape varieties, and some, like Assyrtiko, may have the potential to become truly world-class. But few wine lovers have discovered them. That’s Greece’s first problem: unfamiliarity. After all, Malagousia, Xinomavro and Limnio hardly roll off the tongue like Chardonnay and Merlot.

But for anyone with just a passing interest in wine, Greece is a fascinating country to explore. Where to start? Well, the main grape varieties for red are Agiorgitiko, which is widely planted and makes full-bodied, smooth, easy-drinking reds; Limnio, which is often blended but on its own produces distinctly herbaceous wines with high-alcohol content; and Xinomavro, which is planted in the north, where it makes wines with high acidity and an appealing savory character. There are also plantings of French varieties like Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

To read more, please visit The Wall Street Journal
By: Will Lyons

ATHINEO, the first Creative Brewery and Beer Museum in Greece, opened its doors to the public recently and aims to become a reference point for beer history and tradition in the country. It is located in the exact place where the Athenian Brewery opened its first plant fifty years ago.

Through the museum exhibition and a training center, ATHINEO will host interactive workshops, while the micro-brewery will also test innovative recipes for unpasteurized beer that will be released to the market four times a year at selected distribution places.

The exhibition mainly includes objects found at three Athenian Brewery plants, which were identified and archived by Greek historian and curator Iris Kritikou. ATHINEO will feature a permanent exhibition of original ceramic beer cups, following its history through the centuries.

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter

Location: Athenian Brewery ~ 102 Kifissou, Aigaleo 12241
Visitor Hours: Every Saturday during the month of June from 13:00 - 20:00. Regular operation will begin in September 2015.

Sotirios Voulgaris (1857-1932) was the Greek creator of Bulgari, one of the world's most famous jewellery brands today. Born in the Greek village of Kalarites in March of 1857, Sotirios began his career as a jeweller in his home village of Paramythia (Epirus, Greece), his parents were George Voulgaris and Eleni Strougari.  Of the eleven children of the family, Sotiris Voulgaris was the only one who survived and managed to continue the family tradition. The passion with jewellery started from his grandfather Constantine, who was a street vendor in the villages of Epirus. The talent to create jewellery was inherited by Sotiris, who along with his father opened a jewellery shop in Paramythia.

At that time, Paramythia and other villages in the region were facing problems from the Turks. Continuous burning of the village and serious damage to the shop, forced the Bulgari family to move to Corfu and then to Naples, Italy. In Naples, the family opened their first gold jewellery shop. The city crime posed a major problem for their valuable jewellery. So, after several burglaries, they were forced to close.

In 1881, Sotirios Voulgaris and his family moved to Rome. Three years later, in 1884, he founded his company and opened his second shop in Via Sistina. The store in Via Sistina was then replaced by the current flagship store in Via dei Condotti opened in 1905 by Bulgari with the help of his two sons, Constantino (1889–1973) and Giorgio (1890–1966).

After Giorgio's death in 1966, his son Gianni led the company as co-chief executive with his cousin Marina. As chairman and CEO of Bulgari in the early 1970s. Bulgari opened its first international locations in New York City, Paris, Geneva, and Monte Carlo in the 1970s.

The University of Patras in Greece has once again been put under the spotlight, thanks to Evangelos Skodras’ double distinction for the development of EyeType. Skodras is a PhD student at the Wire Communications Laboratory of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Patras.

Skodras developed an Android app called EyeType that gives the user the possibility to control what is typed on the device’s keyboard with his eyes, by recording the person’s eye movement.

This is a real innovation in the field that will enable people suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis), LIS syndrome (Locked-In Syndrome) or quadriplegia – who are only able to move their eyes – to communicate by using a smartphone or tablet.

To read more, please visit: Greek Reporter

Perhaps the most touching part of tradi -tional Greek cooking is what we call “Recipes Made from Scratch.”

Loukoumades (fried dough pastry), tiganites (pancakes), kourkoubinia (little phyllo rolls)… “Fried sweets” are among the most popular pastries in traditional Greek cuisine and they have made generations and generations of children’s faces gleam with joy over the years. And yet, these countless moments of pure childhood delight were masterfully made “from scratch:” a handful of flour and water with some olive oil for frying. Freshly baked bread is also made from “scratch,” and even today when it comes out of the oven nice and hot, even the most conscientious carb counter cannot resist reaching over for a slice. Flour, olive oil, and water are also the basic ingredients in a pita (pie), which often contained nothing more than a few wild greens that some homemaker picked along a trail on the way back home from the field and carefully stashed in her apron.

They say that the foundation of traditional Greek cooking is the trio of flour, olive oil, and wine. And when we hear the word “foundation,” it is usually implied that it will serve as the basis for some “superstructure” that will soon follow, where all the ingredients will ultimately come together to form the entirety of a dish. The (somewhat bitter) irony in the whole matter is that, as we have seen, Greek folk cooking has some very popular recipes to showcase where the initial foundation and the final product are one and the same – while the gastronomical “superstructure” never appears. And the irony is somewhat “bitter” because this observation testifies to the existence of a cuisine in which everyday cooks –the housewives with the “golden touch” – learned their art not at some culinary seminar, but from the necessities of life.

These women had to bear the burden of providing for the daily sustenance of a typically large family living in a poor and harsh natural or social environment. Some were farmers who were not fortunate enough to be born in the so-called “blessed” lands of the Mediterranean, next to fertile plains with well-fed livestock, fruit-bearing trees, plentiful gardens, abundant water, and cultivable soil, but rather in some “hellacious” mountainous crag also located in the Mediterranean, where you’d shudder in fear when it started to snow, or in some weather beaten, scalding “barren island,” where the only thing you’d think grew there were rocks. Still others were members of the early “urban” working class… You know the ones… those who lived in Athens in the 1920s, 77 percent of whom packed their entire family into a one-room home, with 41 percent of them (adults and children alike) sharing the same bed. And then again, there were others whose destiny included having to feed their entire family amidst wars and displacement.

To read more, please visit: i Cook Greek

Aiming to boost connections between Greece, the US and Canada, SkyGreece Airlines presented its plans last week to the Hellenic Association of Travel and Tourist Agencies (HATTA), with sights on garnering their support.

The Markopoulos-based carrier, founded in Greece in October 2012 by a team of Greek-Canadian businessmen, aims to connect the Greek diaspora to Greece by offering non-stop flights between Athens and North America (Chicago & Boston), with plans to offer flights to South Africa in the near future.

The first direct Athens-New York route will launch on June 19 2015.

With headquarters in Athens, SkyGreece also has offices in New York, Toronto and Montreal and employs 150 people, 100 of whom are based in Greece.

HATTA President Lysandros Tsilidis welcomed the new initiative, stating;

“The air link is an important tool for travel agencies that deal with incoming tourism from the US and Canada, which is particularly dynamic, for expatriates, and of course, is expected to play an important role in outbound tourism by offering competitive prices.” 

To read more, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

The Clumsies is a newly opened, prestigious bar housed in an old 1919 neoclassical mansion, located in central Athens near Monastiraki and Panepistimio Metro stations.  It’s actually hidden off a small square on Praxitelous street, at number 30.

"[A] bartender is not only judged by the impeccable execution of a recipe, but also by the way he connects with customers." Nikos Bakoulis, the co-owner of The Clumsies, used to bartend in 2012 with fellow co-owner Vassilis Kyritsis. This was their philosophy – and the Clumsies was born as follows:

" …bring them [Vassilis and Nikos] into contact with three industrious businessmen in the hospitality sector: Lefteris Georgopoulos, Thanos Tsounakas, and Giorgos Kaissaris. Stir gently, then serve."

The two roomed private area is like stepping into a ‘Gentleman’s Club’ and can host up to ten people for an evening.  Decked out with feature fireplace, bookcase,  billiard table and vinyl LPs, the mood here is somewhat more formal. With your own private bar tender, Nikos can create a concoction of cocktails, tailor made to suit the individual: rum, vodka or gin based with a variety of ingredients.

To read more, please visit: Life Beyond Borders

Clumsies Website: http://www.theclumsies.gr/
Clumsies On Facebook

Photo Credit: The Clumsies

The Byzantine emperors, it is said, regularly exiled dissident members of their court to Kastoria. Like Ochrid to the north, half-way across the breadth of the Balkans on an artery reaching from Constantinople to the Adriatic Sea, evidently exile in this little Greek lakeside resort was meant to be a chastening punishment.

Today, such punishment is a rare pleasure. Kastoria boasts a Byzantine heritage that seems second to Constantinople. But, unlike Istanbul, this little town in summertime enjoys a captivating serenity. In wintertime, I should add, it is entirely different, so they say. For this is the fur capital of Greece, a status it owes to its ancient heritage of trapping beaver (beaver in Greek being kastori, with the plural being kastoria) in Lake Orestiadha. An inexplicable number of shops fit out Greece’s best-dressed women in bulky coats as well as tight leather, risking political incorrectness in most other European countries.

Lake Orestiadha is graced by pelicans. These bewitchingly beautiful birds circle around the lakeside like jumbo jets before effortlessly descending, twisting then gliding to plop onto the water close to shore alongside the ungainly but distinctive watercraft here. The restless pelicans catch your eye as you enter the town, which has colonised the isthmus of a steep and bulbous promontory reaching out into the northern part of the lake. Refurbished Roman fortifications belonging to ancient Celetrum were probably first renovated in the 6th century AD when this had become Justinianopolis. These were strengthened again with 13th century bastions by the Epirot Despots. The unevenly restored walls extend across the narrow neck, in front of which is the daily market of local farmers, men and women from the slopes of the Grammos mountains, wizened by long summers. Rising steeply behind the walls is the modern town with its roots in Byzantium and the Ottoman age. Along the west-facing shoreline is a string of bright cafés; this is the heart of the present city. By contrast, the east-facing shoreline, tracked by a promenade, is shaded by planes and has an elegiac air. Here the discrete sense of serenity is profound as the trees drift past the excellent Kastoria Hotel into the thicker woodland that shrouds the narrow sylvan track that winds around the promontory a distance of some six miles.