by Haris Vekris
Photos: Nikos Ragkousis, Nireas Vekris
Summer is gone. It took along with it vacations spent next to gently lapping waves, large groups of people eating around beachfront tables, and the enjoyment of drinking our ouzo while nibbling on seafood appetizers as the sun sinks into the sea. Although for those of us who live on the islands this summer game always ends in “overtime”, September continues to be the month of reckoning, the month when the foundations for new beginnings are laid. So, now is the time to talk about this past summer’s celebrations which surrounded ouzo.
TSOU.GRISMA 2018, our very own celebration, was held on June 15, in Syros, for the second consecutive year. The tables for the gathering were set literally next to the waves of the beach of Kini, a fishing village of Syros. Apart from our website’s collaborators, our main guests were journalists from Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras, and Syros. With our sponsor being “Barbayannis Ouzo Distilleries”, ouzo flowed in copious amounts, and delicious, choice appetizers never stopped arriving. The second birthday of tsou.gr began with a brief look back at what we accomplished in the past year. Next, Stathis Barbayannis talked about the long tradition of the renowned family-owned distillery and on the firm’s “100% distilled” way of preparing ouzo, helping us in this way appreciate even more the ouzo we’ve been drinking all these years. Then, the presentation of the book “Ouzo 44 Ouzo” by its writer Angelos Avgoustidis took place. Presentations were completed by historian, dance critic, and ouzo fan Andreas Rikakis who told us of his personal experiences on ouzo-drinking. The night’s agenda closed with open-air excerpts from Greek movies where ouzo played the leading part. It goes without saying that thanks to the great people who had come to celebrate with us our ouzo-drinking took a lot longer than we had anticipated. Instrumental in that delightful “delay” were the songs adjusted from the music scores of Greek films by Aristea Yannou, seasoned music producer for ATHINA 9,84 FM.
Three weeks after that event, on 6-9 July, another celebration was held on the beachfront of Plomari, in the port of Mytilini: OUZOFEST 2018. As it has been doing since 2013, the Lesvos Association of Wineries & Distilleries, organized a festival aiming at acquainting the public with ouzo, the culture surrounding it, and its secrets. Visitors to the event had a rare opportunity to sample over 40 ouzo labels and talk to most of the island’s distillers and winemakers. Various musical and gastronomic events taking place at the local venues made a great frame for the festival. The participating distilleries offered their ouzos free of charge in a souvenir shot glass stamped with the festival’s logo and available for two euros at the Association’s kiosk. As to appetizers, in Plomari at least, the only choices available were souvlaki or octopus. Tables were spread everywhere around the space, awaiting those who wished to drink their ouzo and watch the night’s scheduled musical program which included traditional and “rebetika” songs. Connoisseurs visiting the festival found a pleasant surprise waiting for them: an exhibition with old ouzo labels on display, courtesy of the General Chemical State Laboratory, Lesvos, and lovingly organized by chemist Apostolos Gavriil. The festival was promoted through on-site coverage by two, international television networks and we had the pleasure of actively collaborating with Deutsche Welle, one of the two networks!
After all is said and done, the summertime ouzo celebrations can only benefit ouzo and its producers: absorbing articles are written, seamlessly run TV coverage on ouzo makes the rounds of the world, the fanbase of our national drink widens and, last but not least, the demand for ouzo rises accordingly. So, we should shout out “Yes” to ouzo celebrations and offer our congratulations to their planners. Still, the celebrations come with a caveat: Some caution should be exercised to the damage that can be done by “organizers” who either view festivals with a “fly-by-night” mentality, or believe they can fool of the people all of the time by means of cheap, let’s-get-it-over-with tricks. It is broader than daylight that the quality of any planned event is instinctively identified with the quality of the product being promoted, a quality which is usually judged on the merits of the details that went into any event’s planning. On that note, let us hope that, next year, we won’t have a repeat performance of what happened this year at the OUZOFEST 2018 Festival of Lesvos where the souvenir ouzo shot glasses proudly bore the logo OUZOFEST 2015!
