History of Greek Food & Wines
History of Greek Food
Perhaps the most important thing to know about Greek food and Greek cuisine is that eating out and sharing the dinner is as important as the food itself. Greeks even have a special word for this: paraia: a transcendence of the dinner table to include conversation, the view, ambiance and the overall spirit of place.
A Brief History of Greek Cuisine
In Greece, food is a central topic of conversation. Debates about how to prepare a Moussaka take place over cell phones. In markets, customers and indignant greengrocers can be heard exchanging oaths in arguments over the freshness of vegetables. In a country that traditionally has been poor agriculturally, making the most of meager produce has evolved from necessity to a national obsession with food. As necessity breeds innovation, Greek cuisine comprises a rich diversity of cooking styles, ingredients, and flavors. It also has a unique and colorful history dating from antiquity.
What is Greek Food, Then?
Defined broadly, Greek food is any ingenious way of making a simple meal using lots of fresh vegetables, lamb, fish, chicken, Feta cheese, olives, capers, and tomatoes. Herbs and spices generally include oregano, dill, fennel, bay leaves, cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Greek cuisine relies on the tastes of the freshest produce available.
There are also subcategories of Greek cuisine: cooking in large casseroles, stews, grilled meat and seafood specialties, and filo items (pites). Each type of cooking is represented by a specialty restaurant. Greeks specialize in pre-prepared casserole items (Moussaka, Pastitsio, vegetables stuffed with rice), which are plated out at a moment’s notice. Psistaries serve only grilled meats, which are ordered by the kilo for large parties. Pites, filo pastry pies stuffed with greens, are generally bought from bakeries and eaten on the run.
Evolution of Greek Wine...
For most, navigating through a list of Greek wines can be as daunting as trying to read the Greek alphabet: Some of the items may look the same, but it’s anyone’s guess as to what the rest mean. Greek wines traditionally do not fit into standard French wine categories, like Chardonnay, Merlot, or Cabernet. Most varieties (varietals) of grapes cultivated in Greece trace their lineage to ancestral lines cultivated since antiquity. Like the Greek alphabet, Greek wines are unique. They are the product of millennia of uninterrupted cultivation and evolution on the varied soils and climates of continental Greece and its islands.
Greek Wine: The Present and Future...
With Greece’s accession to the European Union, winemaking in Greece is currently in an exciting period of transition. Wine producers, whose goal previously was to produce a decent table wine to accompany a meal in a Taverna, have raised the bar, to produce and export a world-class portfolio of wines able to compete with their French and Italian counterparts. In an effort to catch the eyes and palates of cognoscenti who would probably not even deem an indigenous Greek variety as worthy of consideration, many of the wines emerging today in Greece are blends of traditional Greek varieties, such as Ximomavro and Agiorgitiko, with Cabernets and Merlots. These hybrids, although delightful in themselves, are intended to be a ‘passport’ for Greek wines to enter the world market and raise awareness of the quality of indigenous Greek varieties. Perhaps, in the near future, asking where to find a bottle of Moschofilero will not be greeted by a look of utter confusion at your corner wine store.
