First Shot: Not Good. Second Shot: OK. Third Shot: Yes, We Want More!
First Shot: Not Good. Second Shot: OK. Third Shot: Yes, We Want More!
Tsipouro in Sifnos
Nothing says Sifnos better than a bottle of tsipouro a Greek anise -flavored liqueur similar to raki. I downed countless number of shots during a ten-day trip to this Cyclades island, and most of them make for great memories.
My girlfriend Johanna and I had our first taste of it a few hours after setting foot at its port. Our host, Giorgos, drove us to his place inland, Artemonas, through a dry but breathtaking valley. We had found Giorgos on Couchsurfing.com and he was pretty sure we were the first couchsurfers ever to set foot on the island—not surprising, considering that Sifnos’ biggest income seems to come from hotels and guest houses.
Giorgos poured three glasses of his homemade tsipouro, and explained: “First one: not good. Second one: OK. Third one: yes, we want more!” But truth be told, we enjoyed the first one.
A few days later, he invited us to the island’s finest tsipouradiko, where we tried a mass-produced version of the beverage. A better one, according to him, as each bottles tastes the same, whereas the 20-something liters he produces every year can be worlds apart—from a sugary, fruity liquor to undrinkable moonshine. But then again, the homemade version was much more satisfying than the labelled one.
Everywhere you go on Sifnos, a glass of tsipouro is waiting for you. You come to think it’s the way to say pretty much anything you want to strangers. You may not share any common language with the Sifnians, but you’ll probably share a glass of tsipouro with them.
This was the case in Profitis Ilias, the monastery built on Sifnos’ highest point, at 680 meters (2228 feet) above sea level. Most Sundays, the monastery is filled with noises from a bunch of locals, renovating the place and getting it ready for the annual gathering in July. Dimitri, one of the volunteers, offered us a Greek coffee. Before we could finish it, he was back with glasses of tsipouro.
Two days later, at a potter’s workshop, we ate local cheese, crackers, and homemade tsipouro again, as we were taught how to work the potter’s wheel.
We ended up leaving the island with a full bottle of Giorgos’ batch, but didn’t drink much of it. As the Greek writer Nikos Kavvadias wrote in The Shift: “The best coffee I’ve drank, it was in Moka. The best tea, in Colombo… The worst coffee I ever brought back to my mother was bought in Moka. The worst tea I bought, it was in Colombo. In the very same shops where I drank them.”
The same could be said of tsipouro: have a sip on the Aegean, and it will be the sweetest thing you’ve ever tasted. Pour a drink of the same bottle back home, and it’s just an awful, strong liquor.