Sifnos' food & wine
CUISINE
Sifnos’ residents are hospitable by nature, high-spirited,
good-natured and they keep their traditions and their traditional
cuisine. Sifnos’ residents are revelers and gourmands, therefore they
are good cooks. The unique tastes of the local cuisine make Sifnos
special!
 It
is not accidental that Sifnos is the homeland of many great chefs
as for instance Nikos Tselemendes and Marcos. Its cuisine is
delicious and it includes traditional dishes such as: chickpea
croquettes, string beans with garlic paste, Sunday traditional
chickpea soup, which is put in the oven on Saturday night and is
cooked during the whole night with wood, caper-salad, meat cooked in
the mastelo (traditional utensil made of potter’s clay), cheese-balls
etc.
One
of the secrets of its cuisines: Cooking in utensils, which are made
of
potter’s clay,
and are manufactured by the local potters! Also, the local cheeses,
such as myzithra (skim-milk cheese), manoura (cream cheese) and
chloromanoura (fresh cream cheese) during Easter time, are famous for
their quality. Have a glass of ouzo or wine with grilled octopus
or
with any other fresh fish, which has been fished the same morning by
the trawlers, while you are seating under the shadow of a tree in a
small tavern, next to the sea. Enjoy this unique experience!
And
as for your dessert, chose one of the famous homemade sweets
and teacakes of Sifnos, such as: macaroon, patties, sugar buns, pasteli, loukoums, rolls etc. One of the secrets of the sweets: The
main ingredient of most of them is the local thyme honey!
THE GREEK WINES & SIFNOS
Apart from giving birth to Dionysus, patron god of wine, Greece is the
birthplace of the first VSOP wines in history. They were the wines of
the islands of Chios and Thassos, renowned in the entire ancient
world. Due to various historic and social reasons, as well as natural
disasters, the art of wine-making was neglected from the middle of the
nineteenth century until the early sixties. It was then that the
ancient traditions of wine-making started being rediscovered and
today, one can find many excellent Greek wines produced all over the
country. When tasting Greek wine, bear in mind that it is a product
of a distinctive environment and of grape varieties unknown to western
wine lovers.
The wines
of Greece are divided into 4 distinct categories:
1.
Controlled Appellations of Origin
Wines
2.
Very Superior Old Pale Wines
3.
Local
Wines
4.
Table
Wwines.
The Controlled Appellations of Origin
is a category that contains only liqueur wines, such as the
Mavrodaphne of Kefalonia and Patras, the Muscat wines of Patras,
Limnos, Kefalonia, Rhodes and the Doux of Samos.
 The
Very Superior Old Pale category contains many of the best wines of
Greece. There are 20 areas so far that have the right to Appellation
of Origin. In northern Greece, there are the Appellations of Zitsa,
Amynteo, Goumenissa and Naoussa, in Chalkidiki the Appellation of
Playies Melitona, in Thessaly Anchialos and Rapsani, near Athens
Kantza, in the Peloponnese the appellations of Patras, Mantinia and
Nemea, on the Ionian islands the Robola of Kefalonia, on the islands
of Paros, Limnos, Rhodes and Santorini, and finally on Crete there are
the appellations of Acharnes, Peza, Sitia and Daphnes.
Finally, the 2 other categories of the
local
and table wines
hide many pleasant and exciting surprises for the wine lover.
You can enjoy many of the abovementioned wines in the taverns and the
restaurants of Sifnos!
In Sifnos you shall also find unique aromatic traditional wines of
domestic winery, thanks to some remarkable wine-making efforts that
take place during the last years by minor producers! |
