MADE IN CRETE (c) is our new brainchild. Launched this month after five years of planning, a Food and wine trail is off the starting blocks. We feel it’s about time the world discovers this stunning island and its culinary treasures – by exploring its agrotourism hotspots in both summer and winter.

The World Health Organisation recognises the Cretan diet as the world’s best, not surprisingly having the highest percentage organically registered farms, bringing unprocessed products to market with little changed over the last few centuries.

At the heart of the trail, our trail partner, ELEONAS Hotel is championing locally sourced, sustainable food and wines, some of which are only found in one region of this island. ELEONAS is an exquisite collection of stone cottages scattered across the olive clad slopes of the Rouvas Gorge in Zaros.

The trail starts in the island’s capital and gateway – Heraklion  -heading south through Crete’s green hinterland and prime wine growing territory to the lush agricultural heartland of Mt Psiltoritis National Park (UNESCO ). Zaros village is located at the mouth of the little visited Rouvas gorge which provides Greece with bottled natural mountain spring water.

The bustling working village of Zaros and ELEONAS Hotel overlook the sunsoaked fertile Messara Valley towards the Libyan Sea. This tourist free zone is a bucolic network of quiet rural roads which meander through the dense glistening olive groves, vineyards and family run farms – once the breadbasket of the ancient Minoan culture, and still scattered with fascinating ruins and remains like the sites of Gortyn and Phaestos.