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One of the things I was most excited about during our trip to Greece was the Kitron liqueur. While my wife was researching the trip, she told me that the island of Naxos had a liqueur all their own that has been produced there since the late 1900’s. On our second full day on Naxos we stopped at the Kitron distillery in the village of Halki. It was a tiny building with a small staff. The tour lasted less than a half an hour, taking us through the rooms housing the distillation equipment. We learned that the liqueur is made using the citron tree. Apparently the fruit from the tree is similar to lemons, but is not edible when raw. The locals make a marmalade with the fruit and use the leaves of the tree to make the liqueur. While on the tour we got to see old (c.1920’s) newspaper ads for the liqueur in various papers from Europe and the United States. Since I had never heard of the drink before, I asked our tour guide where the liqueur was available. She explained that the liqueur used to be widely distributed but had fallen out of favor and was currently only available on the island of Naxos. The family (yes, there is and was only one) that produced the liqueur pulled up the citron trees and planted more profitable crops just a few decades ago. However, they recently decided to re-enter the “world-wide” liqueur market. Unfortunately, the citron crops have not been able to produce enough liqueur to distribute outside of the island to date. The last stop of the tour was the tasting table! There were three choices of Kitron: yellow, green, and clear. Yellow was the driest, green was the sweetest, and the clear version was somewhere in the middle. The flavor was complex, with a strong citrus flavor. We could not put our finger on a specific orange or lemon flavor, it was somewhat a combination of the two, and was overall very enjoyable. We purchased a couple bottles to bring back to the States and when we served it to some friends, they, like us, really enjoyed it as well. The consensus was that although the dominate flavor has a lemony citrus taste, the liqueur is more complex than that. Upon first taste it would be easy to put it in the same category as Curacao. The first difference is the Kitron is 40% alcohol vs. Curacao’s 17% and, outside of that, the Kitron is not nearly as sweet or simple as as Curacao. It’s hard to describe but Kitron has multiple layers to its flavor. If you ever go to Greece, I highly recommend a stop on the lesser touristy island of Naxos where you have the added benefit of their own delicious specialy liqueur!