Giorgos Milios, The Businessman

A solitary or a group drink? Thessalonian, Athenian or pan-Hellenic? Esthèteor folk, in the good sense? The questions are many – and the well-known Thessalonian printer, as a lover of the "pure", as he calls it, retsina, has answers for everything.

MYTHS AND REALITIES.

Urban legend has linked some occupations more than others to retsina consumption – usually occupations that are preeminently associated with the works of our hands. Like, among many others, the profession of a printer. Reality or urban myth? How true is this view? Not at all, judging by the answers given by Giorgos Milios, one of the oldest printers in Thessaloniki.

"Retsina, like any other drink, is not in my everyday life, because I'm not a daily drinker, I can't drink alone except with friends", he confesses. "However, it is an integral accompaniment to the tavern with company" he hastens to add.

Could this (albeit under certain conditions) preference for retsina as a party drink mean that Giorgos Milios was not influenced by the reputation that followed retsina during the previous decades – a reputation consistent with the character of this particular wine, a wine uniquely Greek, made from the vine and the pine, two of the most characteristic plants of the Greek flora? "Retsina is the cheap wine - sometimes bottled and sometimes from a barrel - that the tavern keeper would hardly falsify", explains the well-known printer. "Many snubbed it in the years that have passed, the years of 'luxury' and unrestrained neo-enrichment. Indeed, in recent years some winemakers have been trying to give retsina its rightful place".

THE HOMELAND OF RETSINA.

In the course of the last decades, retsina became identified with Thessaloniki, which evolved into a center not only for the production of quality retsina, but also for its consumption. We ask Giorgos Milios if he combines retsina with an area, with a hangout, with a population of Thessaloniki - for example, with students, with the working class, with residents of the center or the suburbs, with locals or neighbors: "Retsina is identified not only with Thessaloniki, but also with Attica - Mesogeia and other areas" he answers. "The question, of course, is provocative, because you want me to combine retsina with Tumba and Coca Cola. I'm a fan of pure, 'unadulterated' retsina, without additives with soft drinks such as Cola, Souroti, Sprite, etc. Retsina is combined with company, with meze, with a tavern with straw chairs, with a glass of retsina and always with good company".

Therefore? Could one say that retsina is also medicine – a company in moments of loneliness, joy or sadness, extroversion or introversion? "Retsina is a resinated wine, which is combined with both company and loneliness, and joy and sadness" answers the Thessalonian printer with a smile.