They call him “The Magician,” and he mixes mystical elixirs in the makeshift distillery and workshop under his house. He calls them a “pharmakon”: They are medicine, made of herbs and plants harvested from the fertile countryside of Evia, Greece. The shelves are lined with jugs distinguished only by a number. They are filled with mysterious, amari-like liquors: bitter, sweet, and bursting with beautifully pungent flavors; with Old World, funky wines; and with herbaceous, kombucha-like ferments.
He also makes fresh, salty, creamy goat and sheep’s cheese, and from the moment we walked in, he was sandwiching giant hunks of dairy and sun-ripened figs between my fingers so fast I could barely hold my camera, filling our sample cups and holding forth in Greek at breakneck speed. This was no typical Western tasting, where you’re ushered into an expensive room and slowly savor small pours—it was gas-fueled, semi-deranged, Gonzo sampling, and it was a sheer delight. He’s built everything from an affinage cave to a dehydrator and brick oven in his space, where he measures out concoctions whose ingredients he doesn’t remember from one beaker to another, mixing and matching and tasting until the balance is just right. At the end, no matter what you buy, he charges €5.
The experience and its aftermath were downright psychedelic. It felt like time travel with a harder-drinking Doc Brown, and I loved every minute of my afternoon with “the magic guy.”
Words + Photoby Holly Regan