Our presence in Crete enabled Chris to meet up with a French friend of his, Pascal. When Chris and Pascal met many years ago, it was in tragic circumstances when Pascal was then a policeman. Not long after their meeting, he left the police force and since then has done many interesting things in interesting places. For the past 7 years, after falling in love with this island whilst here on holiday, he has lived and worked in Crete and now runs a travel company, specialising in bespoke A La Carte holidays. He made a few suggestions about places to visit during our stay including a new winery that had award-winning wines. And so, the next day we hired a car to do some exploring.

Once we had negotiated our way out of Rethymnon – not easy especially when your sat nav is totally wrong – we were soon heading up into the surrounding hillsides on our way to Spili, a pretty mountain village with cobbled streets and rustic houses. In the middle of the village is a unique Venetian fountain that spurts pure spring water from 19 lion heads. It made a great stop for coffee and cake and then we browsed the shops and ended up buying a book all about Olive Oil. Well, we use it virtually every day and Crete is famous for it, so it seemed the thing to do.

Our journey to the winery took us over to the south of the island, crossing over mountain tops that are covered in snow in the winter, and through green valley’s bursting with agriculture, mostly of which was row after row of neatly lined up olive trees – well, what else would it be! We passed by the special Cretan goats ‘kri kri’ on the side of the roads with their sleek, shiny golden coats and finally arrived at the impressive Domaine Zachariousdakis, located on the steep slopes of Orthi Petra hill with fabulous views of the Cretan countryside all around.

The family-owned organic vineyard of 20 hectares was started from scratch in 2000. It took them 3 years to hand-dig out small and large terraces on the rocky and calciferous hill slopes at an altitude of 500m and get everything ready for the first plantings of both local and foreign varieties in 2003. They were told that the rule of thumb is that you throw away your first harvest, share your second one with family and friends and then your third harvest might be ok to sell. They won awards with their very first harvest and have continued to do so since. The state-of-the-art winery is a tribute to them, their sheer hard work and their passion to create a great Cretan wine. We left with a couple of cases of their unique and delicious wines and will enjoy recalling our visit to this unique place when we open them.

CRUISERS NOTES
Car hire – 35/40 euros a day. Lots of car hire companies to choose from.

Domaine Zacharioudakis – location in Plouti. www.zacharioudakis.com Easy access from Rethymnon and Heraklion