Greek Cheeses

Feta is the one everyone knows, protected since 2002, made from sheep's milk with a limited proportion of goat and matured in brine, and it varies enormously between producers in salt, crumble and sharpness. The map behind it is much larger. Graviera, hard and nutty, comes in distinct versions from Crete, Naxos and the Agrafa mountains. Kefalotyri and kasseri go into fried saganaki. Whey cheeses, mizithra, manouri and anthotyro, run from fresh and mild to dry and gratable. Then the regional specifics: smoked metsovone from Epirus, ladotyri from Lesbos aged in oil, peppery fermented kopanisti from the Cyclades, sour galotyri eaten with a spoon.

What to look for

• Feta and its rules - sheep-led, brined, and different in every dairy that makes it.
• The gravieras - Cretan, Naxian and Agrafa versions of the same hard cheese.
• Whey cheeses - mizithra, manouri and anthotyro, fresh through to dry and grated over pasta.
• Regional oddities - smoked metsovone, oil-aged ladotyri and fermented kopanisti.

When to go

Any time of year. The weekly street market in any town is the best single stop, since several dairies show up with cheeses that never reach supermarkets, and they will cut samples. Village dairies in Epirus, Crete and the mountain areas sell direct, mostly in the morning. Spring milk gives the best fresh whey cheeses, which do not travel or keep.

Things to know

Supermarket ranges outside the cities are narrow and dominated by industrial feta, so the good buying takes effort. Almost everything here is salty, and visitors used to milder cheeses find the whole category heavy. Fresh whey cheeses last days, not weeks. Brine leaks in luggage no matter how it is packed, and taking dairy home outside the EU runs into import rules.

Nearby

Epirus around Metsovo and Ioannina is the densest area for mountain dairies and direct sales.