Have a glass of Wine in Cyprus

I have recently had a very nice chat with an expert in Tourism who is very sensitive to how sustainable is the tourism activity. Someone who I respect very much and who I strongly believe his views are valid and very reasonable. Views I share and I find extremely easy to understand and follow.

During our relaxed chat I have realised that he has been around in Cyprus and at one point he was disturbed by the fact that in a traditional Cypriot taverna he has been offered South American wine. Nothing wrong with wines from Argentina or Chile but those wines, he said, are to be drunk in the adequate places. Can you imagine how much gasoline was spent to bring me this bottle of wine all the way from South America in order to drink it with Cypriot Meze?, he added.

This comment made me go back in the beginning of the nineties when an official from the state (hygienic inspection) visited my family’s stone built hotel in Pafos, to make a hygiene  inspection. On his report, he wrote down that the hotel was not “up to European standards” since the bread the hotel offered was made in wood oven and without proper installations. This report went on and on for months until the authorities got tired .  The bread was made by my grandmother, (today aged 87), who was kneading the dough in a wooden kneading container (see picture here), fermenting covered in white cotton cloths and baked in wood oven at the summer restaurant of the hotel.

Today, 20 years later, I realised how idiot the inspector was and how ignorant we were to let him step in our traditions, I realised that the Europeanization of the Cypriot tourism industry went down the wrong path just because of idiotic reactions and guidelines.

I feel that my friend was very right to be disturbed for having to drink South American wine, I feel that he is very right when he stresses out that sustainability is tradition and that tradition is authenticity. I feel that we deliberately lost those two very important elements in Cyprus, but I also know is totally feasible to recover them fast enough in order to get back on the right track. The question is who is going to start the “fire” first. When I volunteered long ago to do it, some people thought I went crazy, today I know they are the ones who went crazy so I keep the “fire” on waiting for you to join me for a glass of red wine probably from the hills of Paphos, from Vouni Panayias.