Culture Magazine

T R AV E L 202 2 culturecheesemag.com 61 Crete. Because the Cretans who came to Naxos were traditionally involved in livestock production, and because several of the settlements they found were in the rain shadow of Mount Zas (Zeus)—rendering it too dry for agriculture—animal husbandry thrived there. Obscured from the sea, the area provided a shield from pirates while the local phrygana, the Mediterranean heathland full of species-rich plant communities, offered the perfect grazing environment. "Goat production, goat herding has a long history in this part of Naxos," says Dr. Johannes Foufopoulos, an associate professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability who has done ecological research on the island. "People identify as goat herders—it's not, 'Hey I'm just doing a job,' it's, 'This is who I am.'" That identity often encompasses cheesemaker. "Everyone on Naxos knows how to make cheese," one of the islanders tells me. While today—with most of the coastal population engaged in tourism—it might be an exaggeration, cheesemaking is in the island's DNA. To make cheese in the past, villagers convened in their local cheesemaker's μαζωμός (mazomos), a shack-like, low-ceiling dwelling whose name derived from the Greek word μαζεύω meaning "to gather." Milk contributed by those who owned livestock but didn't have the equipment to make their own curd was measured, and the amount of cheese every family got at the end of the week was calculated. Cheesemakers were often paid with cheese, which they later exchanged for other goods or sold at a local λαϊκή (laiki), farmer's market. Today many of those cheesemakers' descendants produce the curd that sells beyond the island and often abroad. I meet one of them, third-generation cheesemaker Stefanos Liofagou Maeras, who makes his Arseniko Naxou in the old mazomos just outside the village of Filoti. Synonymous with the word "cheese" for many Naxians, Arseniko is made from unpasteurized goat's and sheep's milk and gets its name from the Greek word for "masculine," a reference to its strong and piquant flavor. Maeras uses 60 percent sheep's and 40 percent goat's milk—in proportion with his herd— and prepares his Arseniko in the 100-year-old stainless- steel cauldron his grandfather used. He adds rennet to the fresh milk and stirs it with a wooden stick until the mixture thickens into kernel-size curd pieces. He then packs the cheese by hand into plastic molds, rubbing it with salt the next day to dry it. Maeras ages his Arseniko in the basement of his house in Filoti, sometimes brushing it with the olive oil from his own olive trees—an aging process that adds complexity to the cheese's taste and a black, paraffin-like casing to its skin. Because Arseniko is made from raw milk, it needs to be aged at least three months, but Stefanos often keeps it for longer. The older Arseniko is, the sharper and spicier its taste—and the higher its value. Goats on Naxos' phyrgana, or Mediterranean heathland Cheeses from the dairy of Nikolas Pittaras at the organic farm of Iouliani and Stathis Polykretis Cheeses at the Babounis family dairy

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