On Platanes Beach the august winds of August take the edge off the pulsating heat (of six beach-days, half were red flags), but the only real way to cool off is to retire up the sandy wooden boardwalk up to the family taverna.

Half a litre of Hellenic lager (served in a frozen glass), a Greek salad and fried aubergines, just the ticket in the 30 degree weather (perhaps even grilled octopus if the moment seems right).

Yiannis serves his homemade fare with swirls of Cretan accent atop typically fluent Greek English. His smiles never wavers though in recent years his pancreas has.

“No alcohol for me!” he exclaims describing his doctors orders. “Except raki of course. Raki in the evening, every night”, as he cheekily adds his own version of the doctors orders.

With a wink and a smile plates are cleared and a carafe of his homemade wine appears, “my gift to you”. Delicious, drinkable, simple, no frills. (The olive oil on Yiannis’ table was also his own, from his homestead 12 kilometres along the island).

The moment is to savour. The holiday is just the ticket. Crete (Kphth) is a beautiful, windswept island of 31 million olive trees. The beer served it’s purpose to cool off on the beach, the homemade wine slowed the moments that made the holiday.

Efharisto Yiannis, my next rakomelo is for you.

Mythos: requires napkins

An Ode
To Mythos

Mythical, magical,

yielding barley refreshment to raise a drooping head.

The ice cold glass dripping incessantly, myriad drops

hurrying to wet the table through. All condensation, then:

“Oh yes, that hits the spot!”

Simply perfect, as the sun beats down without remorse.

Hello, we’re back! As you can see two weeks in Greece were well spent indulging in things I’d never normally have the time, inclination or interest in doing. When I wasn’t scribbling crap poetry on the back of restaurant fliers I spent the rest of time playing ‘Yes/No’ with Sarah and finding out that I’ve been calling Barbra Striesand ‘Barbara Striesland’ my whole life. Good job I read 7 books, drank gallons of Mythos and constructed a family tree on the back of napkin, or else I’d have nothing to show for a wonderful holiday but a vague tan line!

When I’m reading on holiday (and spouting verse to rival Simon Armitage) I’m never far from a little notebook where I can jot down words I’ve never come across before. That either make me sounds like a geek or perhaps slightly illiterate, but I read a lot of popular science and it can get quite…technical.

More often than not I can guess the meaning of words from their context and a dash of arbitrary knowledge. That’s because nothing is without context, nothing exists in a perfect vacuum, and that includes beer.

Luckily it only rained once on my recent holiday to Skopelos which allowed me 13 and a half days to lap up the piercing Grecian sunshine. At 36 degrees celsius to was hard not to break into sweats just lazing around with a book.

In such conditions you wouldn’t dream of picking up the same types of beers as you would at home. No matter how much a dry pale ale is perfect with the saltiness of olives or how much a German weisse would compliment the crispiness of a Greek salad, it’s just too hot for everything.

Everything that is except Mythos.

Without meaning to labour on my love for Mythos (I actually drank more Amstel on this holiday once the sun had gone down) Mythos rightly deserves it’s name and holds a special place in beer folklore. Mythos is a mythical creature that brings with it dismay and disappointment when drunk anywhere outside Hellenic border controls, yet chilled to within a inch of it’s life and deployed at critical moments of a boiling hot day on a Greek island, it’s  powers to revive might only be bettered by a cardiac defibrillator.

Admiring the distant olive groves and drying off after a dip in the swimming pool, Mythos is just…perfect. Nothing more, nothing less.

And in the context of the above weather conditions, Mythos is the best beer in the world. Period.

Mythos: the best beer in the world. The Hellenic one, at least.

On the last day our energetic shopkeeper asked me if I drank Mythos at home in England. She was delighted when I said it’s just not the same without the sun and the backdrop of Greece. “Everyone says that!” she exclaimed, wondering how such a thing could be true.