"It's obvious, almost a pleonasm: the French love food. Good food - French food first and foremost, because it has to be said that they are a bit chauvinistic in that respect... But that's just the way it is! It's part of their culture. It doesn't matter, because when it comes to flavours, I think Crete is also in an excellent position. At least that's what Maria Scalou Prodomitis, director of Select Holidays & Travel, thinks, and given the incentive programmes she organises, there's not much chance of her being wrong.
Whether it's a question of privatising a restaurant in a small port, visiting an oil mill, a wine cellar, an ousery, a cheese factory or even a cookery course... time and time again, Cretan receptive operators work around the riches of their land, and invite guests to sumptuous feasts that they give to the health of their world-renowned gastronomy, under the highly simplistic heading of the "Cretan diet".
The place where we live the longest
Let's face it, the Cretan diet has nothing to do with weight loss. It's more a way of approaching earthly foods, almost an art of living. On the other hand, what scientists have discovered - and demonstrated over the last fifty years - is that this unique way of cooking and eating makes the island the oldest place in the world to live. The secret? Basically, if you can call it that, olive oil in abundance - each Cretan consumes an average of 35 litres a year, 50 times more than a French person - an abundance of fresh or dried vegetables and fruit, a small amount of meat in the recipes, especially red meat and... two or three glasses of wine a day. And this is nothing new, since we know that the Minoans, at their peak around 2000 BC, had a similar table.
"Our cuisine is obviously part of our cultural heritage, stemming from antiquity mixed with the influence of the cultures brought by our visitors and also by our successive occupiers: the Arabs, Byzantines, Venetians and Ottomans. But we would never envisage an incentive operation that was reduced to a succession of banquets, however varied and generous," explains Kostas Markakis, Director of Cretan Holidays. We therefore arrange for professional guides to accompany our MICE tours, always emphasising the contemporary translation of Crete's historical links with ancient Greece. Of course, they never fail to make the link with Minoan civilisation."
To be honest, you'd have to go to Crete and miss out on the Minoans. For the first and most brilliant advanced European civilisation is everywhere on the island. In the Heraklion museum, one of the most important in Greece, but also on the archaeological sites, including the famous Knossos. We know a lot about the Minoans, but not everything. Which only adds to the mystery. For example, it is only recently that scientists believe they have solved the mystery of their sudden disappearance, around 1500 BC: a gigantic tsunami, a wave almost 30 metres high caused by the eruption of a volcano to the north of the island of Santorini, which swallowed up palaces and temples, sculptures and frescoes, harbours and ships, people and works of art. We're using our wine route to make the connection," says Marie-Laure Würz, head of the French market at Cretan Holidays. Because, according to scientists, the Minoans already knew about our famous wines, which are now internationally renowned."
So off we go to the vineyards, the cellars, the tastings, the reds and whites and, in the process, discover the real Crete, the rugged mountains of the hinterland where old moustachioed gentlemen, some still wearing the traditional boots and trousers - but not the cap with the frills - spend their time watching time go by in the shade of the village pubs.
Scents of sage, thyme and rosemary
Mountains, steep roads, gorges, caves, groups of free-roaming goats, the scent of sage, rosemary, oregano and wild thyme, plus a multitude of endemic plants that give Cretan cuisine that special flavour that can't be found anywhere else; villages in their natural state, scattered houses, olive groves (35 million olive trees in Crete, or 60 per inhabitant) and sunny hillsides lined with vineyards. Like Agreco farm, high above Rethymnon, many of the estates open their doors to group visits. We always start with a welcome drink," says Marie-Laure Würtz. Usually raki, a strong spirit distilled in autumn from the seeds of pressed grapes. Then we take them on a tour of the estate, explaining the various stages in the wine-making process, and last but not least, we seal the deal with a tasting of the best vintages. In season, we organise harvesting of the vine leaves we use to make the dolmades. And in January-February, we teach them how to girdle olives. Once again, success is guaranteed. Especially when we offer them a picnic in the heart of the olive groves.
The specialities that have made the island's gastronomic reputation are lined up on tables set up all over the island by hosts in search of authenticity. Cheeses are the first to appear on the tables, in keeping with Greek tradition: kefalotyri, graviera (baked pastry) and above all myzithra, made from sheep's milk and spread on paximadia, a barley and wholemeal bread baked twice to produce a kind of rusk that is very hard to the bite. Then there's fava (split pea purée), chickpea pâté, spinach puff pastry, a multitude of turnovers filled with seasonal vegetables, meat or cheese, or lamb prepared on the grill, sometimes rabbit served in a much more sophisticated dish, with olives, for example. Dishes of snails, a speciality already much appreciated in Minoan times and now simmered with vinegar and rosemary, come as no great surprise to the French...
Cooking with the villagers
And plenty of fruit, always in season, except when it's deliciously candied; and yoghurts sweetened with mountain honey and never sugar. At the end, of course, raki, again and again, because it seems you can't do without it. "Sometimes we have them spend a day with a cookbook author. They talk, exchange ideas and, above all, get their hands dirty in one of the many places that have been opened for this purpose," says Kostas Markakis. In the evening, they leave with the cookbook as a gift. For example, we've sometimes taken a whole group to a village and spread them out over several houses. The village women - real village women in their real houses - got in the kitchen and taught the participants how to roll vine leaves, make bread and much more.
In the same spirit, Maria Scalou Prodromitis sometimes recreates christening or wedding meals. In the evening," she says, "we invite the whole village to the square and party late into the night. But there's also the Arolithos eco-museum, which is a faithful recreation of an ancient Cretan village, large enough to accommodate large groups. In the evening, during dinner and the traditional dances, the Greek tradition of smashing previously distributed plates on the floor is followed. We have also been known to fully privatise all the restaurants in the little port of Rethymnon. In this case, it's obviously the fish and seafood specialities that are served. Which they have sometimes had the opportunity to catch themselves."
The sea is never far away. Omnipresent, it floods Crete, which is 250 km long, 60 km at its widest point and 12 km at its narrowest. Depending on the place and the side, and depending on how urbanised it is, the sea offers a Mediterranean landscape of long white sandy beaches, hidden coves, sleepy little harbours and even, as in Vaï, a breathtaking and very exotic palm grove. As befits an island, the sea is cobalt blue. Greek blue.
