Ouzo

The aniseed spirit of Lesvos, clouded with cold water and set beside grilled octopus and salted anchovy

Origin: Plomari, Lesvos, Greece

From the journey of Anise.

Ouzo is protected in European law: it may be made only in Greece and Cyprus, it must be flavoured with anise, and a proportion of its alcohol must be distilled in traditional copper pot stills. Fennel, coriander, cardamom, mastic from Chios, and a small list of other botanicals are permitted alongside the anise, and every house keeps its own combination quiet. It grew out of the Ottoman still rather than the classical garden. The ancestor is tsipouro, the pomace spirit that the monasteries of Mount Athos have made since the fourteenth century; when aniseed was added in quantity and the result rectified, what emerged was ouzo. The name is disputed and probably always will be. The tidiest story has crates of Thessalian spirit stencilled uso Massalia, for use in Marseille, and the stencil sticking as the name, which is charming, widely repeated, and unproven. The industry is better documented than the etymology. Distilleries were established at Tyrnavos in Thessaly and, decisively, at Plomari on the southern coast of Lesvos, where Nikolaos Barbayannis founded his house in 1860. The island's soft water and its own anise set the standard, and roughly half of all Greek ouzo still comes from Lesvos. Greece drinks it as the whole belt from Marseille to Beirut drinks its anise: spirit into the glass first, then cold water, then ice, until it clouds to opaque white. What is distinctly Greek is the food. Turkish rakı takes white cheese and melon; ouzo takes mezédes from the sea, grilled octopus above all, with salted anchovy, fried courgette, small cheese pies, and tomato. The establishment that serves it, the ouzerí, is a category of restaurant in its own right: no menu in the usual sense, small plates brought as they are ready, and the expectation that a table will sit for several hours. Ouzo is not drunk before dinner in the way a French aperitif is. It is drunk instead of dinner, slowly, in the late afternoon or the early evening, and the plates keep arriving as long as the glasses do.

Ingredients

The Drink

200 ml ouzo (Barbayannis, Plomari, Mini, or another Lesvos distillation)
300 ml very cold still water, soft rather than heavily mineralised
8 cubes ice, added last

The Mezedes

300 g grilled octopus, dressed with olive oil, red wine vinegar, and dried oregano
8 whole salted anchovy fillets, rinsed and dressed with olive oil and lemon
200 g feta, in a slab, with olive oil and oregano
2 whole tomatoes, thickly sliced and salted
1 whole cucumber, in rough chunks
1 whole lemon, cut into wedges

Method

Chill four small straight glasses, the narrow kind about 150 ml. Ouzo is not drunk from anything large.
Pour 50 ml of ouzo into each glass.
Add 75 ml of cold water in a slow steady stream and let the glass turn opaque and milk white. One to one and a half is the usual ratio on Lesvos; adjust to taste.
Add two cubes of ice to each glass last, once the louche has formed and settled.
Bring the mezédes to the table a plate or two at a time rather than all at once: the octopus first whilst it is warm, then the anchovy, feta, tomato, and cucumber.
Drink slowly, always with food in front of you, over two or three hours. Refill the glass rather than enlarging it.

Notes

Ouzo houses differ considerably. Barbayannis of Plomari is the historic reference and is anise-forward and clean; Plomari Isidoros Arvanitis is the widest-selling and slightly softer; Mini is drier; and Tyrnavos bottlings from Thessaly tend to be sharper and more assertive. A distillate that is genuinely 100 per cent pot-distilled will say so and is a different order of drink from the industrially rectified kind. Soft water gives the cleanest louche. Hard tap water can make the emulsion grey and thin. Ouzo has real uses in the Greek kitchen: a splash goes into garídes saganáki with tomato and feta, into octopus braised in wine, and into loukániko, the Greek sausage that is characteristically flavoured with orange peel and either fennel or anise. Do not confuse ouzo with tsipouro or Cretan tsikoudiá. Those are pomace spirits, frequently unflavoured, drunk in smaller measures and usually neat; ouzo is always watered.

The Gastrographer

Name: Ouzo
Prep time: 10 min
Total time: 10 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Greece
Ingredients: 200 ml ouzo (Barbayannis, Plomari, Mini, or another Lesvos distillation); 300 ml very cold still water, soft rather than heavily mineralised; 8 cubes ice, added last; 300 g grilled octopus, dressed with olive oil, red wine vinegar, and dried oregano; 8 whole salted anchovy fillets, rinsed and dressed with olive oil and lemon; 200 g feta, in a slab, with olive oil and oregano; 2 whole tomatoes, thickly sliced and salted; 1 whole cucumber, in rough chunks; 1 whole lemon, cut into wedges

Mapping Culinary History

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Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control