Cretan olive oil: how to tell its the best in the world!

 

From November thru January, nearly every Cretan will be out in their olive groves, harvesting olives! Its a common sight to come round a corner and find nets spread out over the road to catch the olives.  And there’s the very distinctive noise of the rotary harvesting rakes - a sort of scratchy whine – you’ll need to come here to know what we mean!

So how do you tell what’s a good olive oil?  Well, clearly you need to taste it!  But you don’t need to see it – all that stuff about its rich green colour (with one exception, see below) is just that, does not mean anything about its taste, at professional tastings blue glasses are used.

Here’s how to go about it:

1. With a little oil in a small glass, warm it in one hand, whilst closing the top of your glass with the other.
2. Take a sip and aerate it in your mouth by drawing air in between your lips – may need practise to avoid spilling it down your front!  This should concentrate the aroma.
3. Note the tastes, then swallow
4. After swallowing a spicy burn should develop in your throat – its like the finish in a wine.  After a few seconds this should die away again. If it lasts longer this is a sign of poor quality.

The only instance when you should be careful of colour is if you see a yellow Cretan olive oil.  This is a sign of degradation through exposure to light.  A well-kept Cretan oil should be a deep green.  Olive oil is best kept in dark glass bottles out of sunlight at an even temperature not over 20 deg. Plastic bottles may contaminate the oil with plasticizers, and though metal tins are fine whilst unopened, afterwards the metals may react with the oil.

Our Tasting Notes
Recently we visited Terra Creta, a producer with one of the most modern olive mills in Europe, based in Kolymbari, Crete.  They have made this charming video which shows you how central the olive is to Cretan culture and life.  We tried several of their olive oils, guided by Costas, the plant manager, and here are our impressions.

PDO Kolymbari Extra Virgin Olive Oil: grassy nose; mild taste, smooth on the palate and with very little spiciness.

Terra Creta Biological Olive Oil: stronger grassy nose and stronger grassy taste; much spicier aftertaste this is caused by the polyphenols.

Terra Creta 0.2% acidity Olive Oil: smoother texture; milder taste; spiciness develops slowly in the mouth and then dies away.  This limited production is from olives harvested in November, at the beginning of the harvest season.  At this time the olives yield less oil, but of a higher quality.

Cretans call the olive trees “the children of the earth” -  its in every Cretan’s blood and soul, passed from one generation to the other.  Cretan olive oil is made from the Koroneiki olive, with a small proportion of Tsunati.  The latter is typically used for eating, and has a fruitier taste but higher acidity.  This enables Cretan olive oils to be anything up to a medium fruitiness and spiciness.

You may have heard of “first cold pressing” being the best olive oil.  The maximum temperature for cold pressing is 27 degrees done to preserve vitamins, (mainly E and A).  After this pressing about 10% of the oil remains in the olive pulp.  This will typically be extracted by a different process using heat and chemicals, which destroys much of the benefits, but yields a very neutral and low acidity oil.  Therefore low acidity is not necessarily a measure of a good olive oil, but it is important for first cold pressed olive oil.  To be “Extra Virgin” it must have acidity less than 0.8% whilst “Virgin” olive oil can be up to 2% acidity.  

Olive oil contains approximately 200 polyphenols which give the oil its spiciness and bitterness, too much can affect taste;  therefore it is necessary to get the amount right!  Many of these phenols have not yet been fully explored.

And olives age well!  One of the 10 oldest olive trees in the world is in VOUVES in Crete. It was pretty old even when Christ was born, and may even have been around when the Minoans were inhabiting their palaces! 

Its important that the olives are processed as soon after picking as possible, and this explains why there are so many olive mills, almost literally dotted around each village.  Each services their local area, and even larger producers like Terra Creta only take olives from their region.


At Panokosmos, we use the best olive oils, from a modern plant processing olives from local farmers.


If your interested we can set up a tour of Terra Creta in Kolymbari, which is less than an hour away.

Cheap Flights to Crete: Ten tips to getting the best deals

 Ten tips to getting the best deals:

1. Book early if you want the best prices.  Get on the budget airlines newsletter distribution, at least Ryanair and Easyjet from UK – this will give you early warning of the new summer schedules, as well as special offers.  Routes to Crete for the summer are out latest by Oct previous year.  Register with them to save you time booking (by storing pax data) and give you a heads up on relevant travel info.
2. Check who flies to Crete from your country.  These days there are many, some less well known budget airlines flying into Crete.  Here is a pretty up to date list of airlines flying in from around Europe.
3. Check out departure airports too – in UK there are many northern alternatives eg EMA, Leeds/Bradford.  In the south don’t forget Bristol, Bournemouth, Birmingham, as well as the LHR/LGW/LST/LUT Londons. 

   

   Al Canea on the harbour front at Chania

   For Hamburg, Bremen is an alternative, about 1h by train.  Often alternatives can be unexpectedly cheaper.  Often easier to look at the reverse flight – chose Chania on the route map, and see what airports are served – here for Ryanair
4. Think about staying overnight near the airport if its a long drive.  Many hotels, particularly smaller private ones, offer a good value “stay and parking” offer for the duration of your holiday, which may work out cheaper than long stay at the airport.
5. If you are up for it, there are cheaper options not flying direct.  But watch out for odd routings – last summer one guest family flew from UK via Prague.  Norwegian are big on this sort of thing.  Rome is a Ryanair alternative stopover for Crete.
6. Beware weird (typically Ryanair) airports – Hamburg-Lubeck is 1h from Hamburg by motorway; Frankfurt-Hahn nearly 90min; if you need to change in Rome, remember Ciampino (used by budget airlines) is 2 ½h from Fiumicino, the airport used by all the rest!
7. Coming to Crete, consider both Heraklion and Chania – the latter is a Ryanair hub, and served by many airlines, but the former has many more flights.  

   

   Lyra Maker

   Timing and cost may favour one in and the other out – bear in mind a one way car rental will only cost 30 euros extra.  Chania is only 50 min from Panokosmos, and whilst Heraklion is a 2h drive on a good highway,  its a lovely way to get a first sight of the countryside.
8. Flight time of day affects costs - often early or late flights are cheaper if that’s important to you.  If you appreciate more civilized flight times check out return flight – often the early start aircraft will  be routed onto the same return leg, leading to a late morning departure rather than an 0600 red eye!
9. Economy means no hold luggage, and no frills, but for a bit more comfort worth having allocated seats – a few euros,  and speedy boarding at the gate gets you ahead of the crowd, gives you more time to store luggage on the plane, less jostled and an opportunity to get settled.  Bring your own sarnies if pushed for cash, and buy water airside will still be cheaper than on the plane.  But they are pretty tough on drinking your own alcohol on board, so don’t try it! 
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    Panokosmos Villa and Pool

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13. And if you’ve got this far, check out panokosmos for a place of peace and tranquility to recover from all the hassle you’ll have been thru to get out to Crete.   And to get future blogs from us, add your email to the box on the right!

Panokosmos Renaissance!

View from the pool terrace - can't you just feel the warmth of that sunshine!

A lot has happened in the two and a half years since the Red Rain!  We’ve established our holiday business here in Crete and seen around forty parties of guests.  They’ve come from all over the world – from New Zealand to Canada, Spain to Romania.  

Panokosmos Ten Fruit Muesli - the best of health & taste!

We’ve entertained Americans, Scots, Dutch, Germans, Austrians, as well as a fair number from that country which is still, Brexit notwithstanding, in the EU!  

We’ve had folk so young we couldn’t arrange hire cars for them, to those in their ninth decade – and those latter were some of the most adventurous and full of curiosity!

Breakfast in the Secret Corner

This year we served over 180 breakfasts in six different locations around the garden and 25 three course evening meals, each with an individual personalised menu!

Dourakis Winery: open all year round for tastings

We’ve established a great selection of Greek wines, mostly Cretan, for example Dourakis lovely fruity Chardonnay (at the moment a one off, Impromptu, but we hope it will become a regular).  We can see the vinery just across the Apokoronas from our terraces!

Douloufakis in Heraklion, makes a Sauvignon Blanc, great with our stuffed dorade or sea bass fillets with mushrooms and salsa.  We are also finding good wines made from some of the local grape varieties – Kotsifali, and Agioritiko.  

This is Yasmin's fruit trifle, a breakfast dish, but you get the idea!

Yasmin has been rediscovering her German heritage, honing her cake making skills.  Guests have had poppy seed cheesecake, Panokosmos applecake with home made custard.  And how’d you fancy frangipane fig tart, drizzled with orange blossom honey, served with Greek yoghurt & whipped cream?

Set for two - romantic or what!

We’ve found some great beers from microbreweries on the islands like Septem with a beer for each day of the week – the 8th is a particular gem!  And what better than Campari and fresh squeezed orange out on the pool terrace as the sun goes down?  Want a touch of England in the summer, then our Pimms comes with a menagerie of fruit, and mint to tickly your nose, picked straight from the garden!

Since the Red Rain days we’ve set up a new website, ably created by a young Texan web designer, who came to stay with us back in May 2014.  We’ve been mostly talking on Facebook, with a smattering on Twitter, but now we feel we have enough to say to take up blogging again.  

Villa and Pool: stretch out and relax in the sun!

So here goes – watch this space!

Red Rain!

There’s been a bit of a gap in the blogging, not for want of things to say, just time to say them!  We’ve been back to Northern Europe for a month – lots of snow in Hamburg, and very cold.  Here we’ve had some dramatic weather – 140km/h wind gusts recorded, but we are still here!  Now wind back to late February:

The front of the house has taken on a two tone look! 

They call it Kokkino Vrechi – “red rain”.  It comes from the Sahara on a hot South wind, strong enough last year to strip off a gutter and 15 tiles!  On the night of 21^st Feb, we just such an experience.  Luckily this time, no house damage, but plenty out in the garden.  

We lost a large pithoi out on the swimming pool terrace, despite several attempts by John to wire it up (again) to the railings.

Our terrace chairs had been fighting up on the East balcony, and the cypresses look like they’ve had one too many raki. 

The car had been neatly camouflaged out on the parking area.
 

There’s plenty of window cleaning to be done, Oh, and whoops!  The concrete mixer has 

 

been blown over – Yes blown over!

The Monday Market

Monday Market - note shopping trolley in full flight!

We've got into a routine of going to a street market in Chania, to buy all our fruit and veg, yoghurt and cheeses.  Its on a Monday in a narrow street, just up from Elefteria Square.
Its a real experience, and we've got to know some of the stall holders, and talk a bit in whatever - "with hands and feet" as Yasmin would say, a bit of Greek, English, German, and lots of hand waving, and smiling!

Maria with her Honeys

One of our favorites is Maria, the Honey!  Her honeys come from their hives in Falassana, on the western most tip of Crete, and very unusually for Crete, she sells a whole series of separate flavours.  There's the usual thyme honey - like you can get all over the island, aromatic and intense; heather reputed to be the most beneficial with minerals and vitamins.  There's pine honey, dark, spicy and piquant; and our favorite, orange blossom, with the most gorgeous delicate citrus flavours.

The Orange Man!

Clementines, oranges, mandarins...

Then there's the orange man, very important for us with our daily fresh orange juice!  He's a gem, so generous, always friendly and cheerful, and always insisting on giving us extra fruit, mandarins, clementines, eating oranges.

Mastorakis, the Dairy stall

Mastorakis is the dairy, based in Tsitsifes, a mountain village nearby Xiliomoudou.  They have the best yoghurt in the area  we believe - its tangy and sharp, with a firm texture.  What's unique about it, in our experience is that it does not produce any whey over time - so many of the other yoghurts are half liquid after a few days.  Another of our favorites, is their low fat goats milk cheese - beautiful texture, and delicate taste.  They also have fresh goat and sheep milk, but we need to be there early as they often sell out.

Fresh Herbs and Sal

There's a stall selling virtually only herbs - heaps of vivid green parsley, dill, mint, sometimes coriander and fennel.  Its strange that the Cretans don't deal with more herbs, and their cooking reflects a conservative approach - thyme, oregano, parsley, dill and mint - but we love to grow and use other herbs.

All the serious shoppers have a shopping trolley - partly so you can thrust your way thru the crowd, running over feet not quick enough to get out of the way!, but also to carry the massive amounts of fresh produce - 10 kilos of oranges; apples, pears, bananas; broccoli, courgettes, red peppers; herbs & spring onions; potatoes, onions, carrots; oak leaf & lollo biondi lettuce, rucola, and the local greens: stamnagathi & others.

Olives preserved in Lemon, in Vinegar, in Salt, in Pergamo

The olive man did not want his picture taken - maybe its his religion, maybe he's shy, or maybe its the tax man?!  But his olives are great, we particularly like the ones preserved with pergamon - bitter orange.  We asked him why each of the olives is sliced, "its what we always do" he said!

Kalamaton Olives

Then its back home again for a huge unpacking session, filling fridge, washing and prepping herbs, stocking up the store cupboard.

Into the New Year

Its 2013, just, and we are revived from a few days off.

Windbreak - first trees!

When the weather has allowed, we've been busy in the garden.  We've planted 3m cypresses, pine trees and ficus in an embankment of rocks at the North edge of the plot which we had constructed.  We've had to make up our own soil - adding peat, sand & fertilizer, as the native stuff is so full of clay its almost impossible to work.  And each tree has to be staked and secured with stays in three directions to stop the winds blowing them over.  Every morning when we wake up we check to make sure they haven't been blown over during the night!

Inside we've been experimenting with bread making, and have now got a super and reliable country loaf - good texture and crumb, crisp brown crust, and the most wonderful smell of baking when we get up in the morning!  Added to that the aroma of hand crafted coffee - each round individually ground and filtered from beans which we unashamedly say are one of 8 varieties we get from Starbucks (my do they do good beans!), and we hope you are already yearning to be here!

Recipes which have made it include pork loin wrapped in pancetta tray baked over apples with a sauce of dried figs and apricots, poached in concentrated local grape juice, flamed in tsikoudia (the local spirit, made from the remainders of winemaking), spiced with anise, cinnamon and cloves.  Continuing the winter theme, duck on quince slices cooked in a local pomegranate liqueur, with copious saffron.  The cooked duck meat fried in duck fat with raisins & prunes in Amoroso sherry, and the juice of a fresh orange.  Wow, it was lovely, tho I have to say we did drink a splendid full fruity Santa Alicia Cab Sauv from Chile - can't always stretch to Cretan wines!

Over the past month or so, the outside works are virtually complete - a crazy paving driveway up the hill, circling the huge fig tree in an oval island; a splendid pool terrace, linking the basement reception room to the pool, all on the level.

New Pool Terrace, almost finished

The website continues to be embellished - we've now got a small slideshow of pictures of the accommodation on both floors, and have made some contacts with others offering information or activities in the area - more to be added to the website in due course.

Our Aims, in this Blog! And About Panokosmos

What we aim to do in this blog is to give a feel about what its like to live in Crete; to tell you a bit about what's happening around us, as it affects us; and to keep you up to date with Panokosmos so that you want to come and visit us!

So, what is Panokosmos - well the name, rather freely translated from the Greek, means "On top of the World" - what this place is, and how we want to make our guests feel!


Panokosmos is a 2500m2 site 400m high up in the foothills of the White Mountains, the "Lefka Ori".  It is in a tiny - 11 household - village, Xiliomoudou (the name means 1000 peaks), far above the Apokoronas valley.  On this site we bought a rather curious little two bedroom house built in 1995, and, after major efforts to try to retain the original layout, ended up demolishing it back to the concrete frame.  From this, rather depressing and expensive perspective, we designed and built a house which we feel does justice to the fabulous position and views offered by the site.
This took over two years, and was an all consuming and intense activity.  The house is built very precisely to our requirements - we had a set of principles, and every aspect of the house was planned to deliver against them.  The result is, well, just amazing!
Now we want to share our place and our experience with like minded people - people who love nature, who want to reflect and contemplate, to take time out to review what they are about, and to find new direction for their futures.

  And who love to eat and drink, and who want to experience some of the real Crete - the atmosphere, the people, the environment.
We offer an exceptionally personalised and intimate experience, in which we can offer you a tailored programme designed, with you, to give you what you want coming to such a break.

At the moment we are busy trying to complete our website, Panokosmos, to show off what we have, and what our guests can experience.
Its a mammoth effort, as we are doing everything ourselves - building our website, taking our own photos, creating our own descriptions.  Gathering our own experiences, writing down our recipes, our tasting notes, getting together our contacts.  And, yes, that's in addition to furnishing the place, designing and planting the garden, sorting out the last issues with the building programme, and organising everything.

The plan is to produce a blog at least every month, to describe what we've been up to, what's happened to the place, and what is happening in Crete and Greece all around us.  We're going to try to focus on how things affect us, on the ground, to give perspective on what we all hear in the media.  And inbetween, some snippets about life and the world around us - like the first snow on the White Mountains on 5 Dec!

So lets see how it goes...