May Day Bacchanelia

Agreco, an organic farm a few kilometers south of Rethymnon, Crete, puts on a special tour and lunch every May Day. (It's a variation of their regular evening dinner.)

Located on a slope overlooking the Sea of Crete, the 40,000 square meter farm provides produce for select hotels in the area. This re-creation of a 17th century farm also operates as a sort of working museum with stations showing traditional Cretan methods of agricultural production.

At the olive press, a donkey (now retired) would move stone wheels that crush olives as the oil runs off through a drain hole. The tailings are dried and put down as floor covering, much as we use sawdust or gravel. We sampled two Agreco olive oils dipped in fresh crusty bread and in Cretan whole grain rusk, a hard crunchy bread that takes a strong set of molars to chew.

We saw spits of lamb roasting on open-air wood fires and bread baking in the outdoor wood-fired oven. All the aromas mingled with the smell of fresh herbs and blooming flowers--many had been picked and woven into wreaths to adorn the heads of the many French, German, and Russian girls -- and boys -- at Agreco that day.

The wine tasting station offered red and white farm-produced wine and next to it, a wood-burning still, where the fermented must from the wine press was boiled. The steam escaped though a tube that passed through an urn of cool water and emerged as 70% proof Cretan raki. Nancy and I tossed back three half-shots of the delicious tequilla-like liquor that the tradionally-dressed workers kept handing us.

"Yamas!" they'd exclaim as they clicked their glasses to ours. This traditional Greek toast is a contraction of “Stin ygeia mas” (Στην υγεία μας), which means “to our health!”

Happily we moved on up the hill to our open-air lunch overlooking vineyards and fields of artichokes and out to the sea.

Course after course of delicious Cretan appetizers, crusty bread, rice pilaf, lamb, chicken, roasted potatoes and eggplant, salad, more lamb, more potatoes, fruits, goat cheese, creamy yogurt, and desserts. Oh, and a pitcher of house wine.

And that's all I remember...except for a vague memory of Nancy and me holding hands and dancing Greek-style in a large circle . . . .

Becky

Note: For more info about the farm, go to www.leoniki.com/agrecofarm/.