Santorini's Donkey beers are...kick-ass!
Pun intended: The Donkey Beers are…kick-ass!
Despite the “frigid” and uncertain economic times Greece is going through, a small group of optimistic–and slightly crazy–friends (as they describe themselves) took a risk and opened one of Greece’s most innovative businesses, the Santorini Brewing Company. The driving spirit behind the brewery is none other than Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, one of Greece’s most daring and innovative wine makers, who started out as one of the rising stars of his generation, worked for Greece’s favorite wine-maker-cum-mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, during the company’s salad days as THE place to be in wine, and went on to build his own wineries in Santorini and Nemea. Ever restless, always brash, Paraskevopoulos staked new ground when he turned his vintner’s talents to the vintner’s nemesis, vinegar, producing one of Greece’s most delicious aged vinegars from Santorini’s sun-drenched Assyrtico grapes. He did that because he refused to sell his excess wines in bulk to the tourist market, opting instead to stay true to his visions of quality. He makes kick-ass vinegar, too, BTW.
Now, Paraskevopoulos has turned his considerable talents to beer. ”Greek beers are dead boring,” he said one night recently. A growing group of microbrewers aims to change that. Yiannis is first among them. He calls the beers “Lagered Ales,” as a way to differentiate them from the insipid, if refreshing, mass-produced lagers that flood Greek tables as soon as the weather turns warm. He sources the hops in New Zealand, Oregon, Slovenia and the Czech Republic and the malt in Germany and Austria. But he plays around with local ingredients, too, experimenting even with Assyrtico in the brew. And, he sees the economic opportunity of producing a local beer with a cool name on an island whose tourism industry provides enough of a market to keep the company afloat. “You’re not limited by the weather, or the harvest when you make beer. There’s no middle man between us and the customer. And, you’re not sitting on profits waiting for the stuff to age.”
So far, the Santorini Brewing Company is producing three donkey beers: Yellow Donkey, a Lagered Ale that’s closer to a refreshing lager than it is to an aromatic ale; Red Donkey, more ale than lager; and Crazy Donkey, which is delightfully bitter and a little doubtful, “the teenager” in the crowd, Paraskevopoulos says.
The Donkey Beers make for a great quaff, but more than that the company is a paradgim for what Greece needs now: Innovative risk takers whose eye is on quality and who have the integrity to attract some outside financing. So many of these innovators have come from the world of food and beverage production.
