MANI Greece
Stretching southwards from the Peloponnese, the Mani Peninsula is a fertile land bordered by small sandy coves, with a distinctive cuisine and award-winning wines made with indigenous grapes
Mention ‘Mediterranean’ to food lovers and they will probably say ‘olive oil’. Specify Greece, then refine it a little further to the Peloponnese and you may hear ‘creamy cheeses, aromatic herbs, crusty bread, wild greens, grilled fish and seafoods, stews of lamb, game and kid, perfumed citrus, luscious figs and quince, honeyed pastries, memorable wines’. At least if they’ve been here, because all these are staples to Peloponnese cooks, used in dishes that are rich with their very fine olive oil, from lathera (vegetable bakes) and siglino (preserved meats) to lathotyri (cheeses).
Around Kardamyli, an hour’s drive south from Kalamata, olive groves reach down to curving, sandy bays. In Lela’s beachside taverna lelastaverna.com (booking recommended) you may find briam (aubergines, courgettes and tomatoes baked in plentiful olive oil), hirino lemonato (pork in lemon), katsiki (baby goat) or yemista (rice- and herb-stuffed vegetables) from a daily-changing menu. Lela has credentials – for several years she cooked for Patrick Leigh-Fermor, the explorer and author of Mani, Travels in the Southern Peloponnese, who owned a house (now a museum) nearby. Or head to Kiki’s Taverna and try a lamb stew made with the family’s own olive oil, sitting at a table overlooked by the magnificent Taygetus mountains. Sixteen kilometres south, in the foothills above Stoupa you can discover for yourself how organically grown koroneiki and kalamata olives are made into olive oil at the producer, Mani; and at the attached Sonnenlink Bio Hotel mani-sonnenlink.com you can wake up among olive trees.
While this part of the Mani – the middle ‘finger’ of three at the southernmost point of the Peloponnese peninsula – is fertile, further south, ‘inner’ Mani is wild and rocky. Here lie tiny Byzantine monasteries and around 90 villages with houses of 18 metre-tall stone tower houses. At Cape Tainaron, its isolated tip, The Temple of Poseidon protects the legendary site of the Gate to Hades. If visiting the entrance to the underworld sounds off-putting, be reassured the views are marvellous, the atmosphere palpably exciting. The narrow roads, however, are not for the faint-hearted.
A few kilometres north and high on a hill, a 16th-century village, Vathia, is made up of a dramatic cluster of tower houses – built so families could defend themselves from each other and pirates, rather than an invader – once home to seriously-feuding clans. A few small coves and the azure-green waters of Marmari Bay are nearby, and so, too, is the 19th-century tower house-turned-hotel Tainaron Blue tainaron-blue.com in whose theatrical setting you can try award-winning PDO Peloponnese wines of indigenous grapes – red agiorgitiko, pink-skinned, perfumed moschofilero, whites kydonitsa and mantinia. The area is also famous for its sweet wines, malvasia and mavrodafni.
Towards Gerolimenas (once a pirate base), pause in the little village of Alika. A stroll takes you past many intriguing Byzantine churches, some with frescoes, and through cobbled squares to the small, tucked-away taverna Alika. It’s in these friendly, family-run tavernas, found throughout the Mani, that you’ll get to try regional dishes such as gigantes (dried beans baked in olive oil-rich tomato sauce), rabbit with horta (wild greens), snails with trachanas (wheat sun-dried in yogurt), hilopites (handmade pasta), all made with the local olive oil, honey, herbs and cheeses beloved by chefs the world over.
In quiet, picturesque Gerolimenas, dinner on the terrace of hotel Kyrimai kyrimai.gr a converted tower house on the small, pebbled bay, consists of tyropittes (little cheese pies), psaria fish fresh from the bay, glaktoboureko (syrup-soaked, semolinacustard pie) and glyka (fruits in syrup). Heading further north, a ride in a ferried punt takes you to the crystal-clear waters and stalactites and stalagmites of the Diros caves. The water is clear – but cold – in Stoupa, too, as springs in the Taygetus mountains flow into the sea here. Eighty years ago, this was briefly home to author Nikos Kazantzakis and his friend Alexis Zorba, while he was writing his epic book, Zorba the Greek, and the words: ‘What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish and radishes, and out come sighs, laughter, and dreams.’