Tetteris Bros, Chios, Aegean Islands

Established in the mid-nineteenth century, Tetteris Distillery is a family-run business that uses traditional methods and recipes. Stylianos Tetteris began distilling ouzo on his native island in 1846, and it was particularly popular with the wives of the occupying Turkish forces. Eventually, his ouzo and mastiha was imported to Istanbul and, by 1930, to Egypt, where many Greeks resided. In 1912, just after the liberation of Chios from the Turks, Styllianos’s son, Ioannis, officially opened the distillery and it became the first authorized distillery of the Greek state. Shortly after 1954, Tetteris Distillery was the first one to distil and produce a mastic-based liqueur. The distilling of ouzo is a time-honoured process which takes anything between 9 and 12 hours; anise seeds are carefully blended with aromatic herbs and pure alcohol and distilled over wood burning fire to produce a high-quality ouzo which then matures in stainless steel tanks.