Tsipouro

Tsipouro is distilled from the skins, pips and stems left behind once the grapes have been pressed for wine, which makes it a product of the vintage rather than a drink made for its own sake. It is associated above all with Thessaly, Epirus and Macedonia, and monks on Mount Athos are generally credited with distilling it as early as the fourteenth century.

On Crete the same spirit is called tsikoudia, or simply raki, and it is always left unflavoured, where mainland tsipouro is sometimes distilled with anise. A small glass arrives at the end of a meal whether anyone ordered it or not, usually with a little fruit or a sweet. Rakomelo warms it with honey, cinnamon and cloves, and is drunk through the winter.

In the kitchen it belongs in pastry rather than in sauces. Cretan kalitsounia, both the sweet cheese ones and the savoury ones filled with greens, take a measure of raki in the dough, where the alcohol keeps the pastry short and helps it blister and crisp in the pan. It is also the base spirit for tentoura, the cinnamon and clove liqueur of Patras.