Cretan Olive Oil Farm

Located about an hours drive from Myrtos, skirting around the city center of Agios Nikolaos, is the delightful Cretan Olive Oil Farm. It's a family run business that prides itself on providing interactive tours that not only drops knowledge about olive oil production, but about the history and cultural significance of olive oil, cheese, raki and offers cooking coursing using all of these foods/beverages.

Helping Christos, the goatherd, make cheese

We signed up for the tour plus the cooking class. The tour began with the owner/farmer Vassos, telling us about the old timey process of distilling olive oil. Back in the day they would use a manual olive crusher. One worker would climb up and load olives into the basket at the top while another would guide a donkey around in a circle moving the stones that crushed the olives. Then the crushed olives would be taking to the next machine where two other workers would press the crushed olives into oil.

Manual olive crusher

Vassos telling us about old timey olive oil production

Manual olive presser

Next we went to help make cheese. This was super hands on - we got to milk a goat and stir the milk into cheese!

Goat milking party! The girls didn't want any part of it (other than posing for the photos) but Ryan, Francesca and I got in there and pulled some teats.

Ryan stirring the goal milk

Ryan milking a goat

Christos stirring the heated goat milk to make cheese

Austen didn't milk them but she fed them

Finley feeding the goats

Next Vassos told us all about the various cheeses that are made in Crete and how they are made, whilst we drank locally produced Raki (an alcoholic spirit similar to Ouzo or Aquavit) and ate the goat cheese we helped make.

Vassos passing out the cheese

Kids trying the second cheese, called "Mizithra", the most famous cheese in Crete.

The soft cheese

Goatherd Christos distributing the first of the cheeses he made, a soft cheese called "Malaka". This cheese is rarely sold in shops as it is used to make 2 other cheeses (Graviera and Kephalotiri).

Two flavors of raki, normal and honey infused (from bees they keep on the farm). Interesting cultural note about raki, years ago the European Union said that local farms could not produce and sell raki to local markets as they had for centuries (saying it was unsanitary) instead requiring them to sell their grapes to large factories (that paid ample taxes to the government) who would then sell it to the local markets. This caused the price of raki to go up for everyone.

The local farmers still make bootlegged raki up in the mountains in violation of the EU ordinance and apparently have raucus multi day parties during the raki production time each year

Dan and one of the farm workers enjoying some raki. Iyiamas!

Note, feta is not made in Crete as it's made from sheep milk and crete has tons of goats not sheep. They seem pretty sensitive about feta and while you can get it in restaurants, they typically stear you towards the Mizithra.

Students in the cooking class - consisting of Germans, French, Swiss, Canadians and Americans

Next we took all that we learned about olive oil, cheese and raki and put it all together to make two classic Greek dishes: Dolomades and the Tzatziki sauce to dip it in. Chef Thespia - named after the Greek goddess of Knowledge, Grace and Benevolence - was our expert guide through this experience.