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Amvix, al abik, labikos, which means batch still and in other words…
rakokazano! The art of distillation has a long history that gets lost in
the depths of time. Aristotle was one of the first who described the
process of turning sea water into drinking water in the 4th century BC
in his work “Meteorology”. Few people know, however, that Pedanius
Dioscorides, an important doctor and botanist, but also the greatest
pharmacologist of antiquity, used the term amvix in the 1st century AD
in his work “De Materia Medica” to describe a primitive type of batch
still. Then, of course, it was not used for the production of tsikoudia
(the famous grape-based spirit of Crete, also known as raki) but for the
production of pharmaceutical products.
After centuries of evolution of the distillation techniques and
equipment by different peoples around the world, and after its use for
the distillation of various fluids (as for example, in perfumery and
pharmaceutics), the first distillation of tsikoudia officially takes
place in 1920, in Crete. The Prime Minister of Greece at that time,
Elftherios Venizelos, voted a law in the parliament and Cretan people
got the first legal permissions for the distillation of tsikoudia. In
this way, the production of tsikoudia started with the consent of the
Greek state. Since then, tsikoudia is distilled in copper cauldrons
(called rakokazana) from the beginning of October to the end of
November. The whole process becomes a celebration in which friends and
relatives take part by sampling the tsikoudia as it is being made!
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