Metaxa – the smooth Muscat brandy born in Athens in 1888 – seems to be on everybody’s lips in the city tonight. From Angeliki, a certified tour guide of the Acropolyis, who craves the sprightly five star version with icy tonic and a juicy orange wheel after a long day describing time-worn stones to ever awed tourists, to the cargo of passengers gazing up at the light show bounced from the roof of the brandy-branded funicular onto the otherwise drab walls of a concrete tunnel.
Their destination is a panoramic restaurant where they will eventually finish their meal with the violet-scented 12 star, served neat (or maybe with an ice cube) alongside the twinkling cityscape below. Even the owner of the musty bric-a-brac store, who valiantly managed to pass off a giant empty bottle of the five star (complete with little brass plated taps) as an antique so he could buy the supple seven star, is considering a splash of it in celebration…
And, on the city’s fringes, a safe distance from Lady Gaga who jigs to thousands of fans tonight, Metaxa’s stars star as the base for cocktails blended for the bronzed and the beautiful, including soft, Metaxa-spiked gels that pop – startlingly – on the tongue. There, beyond the mixology bar and in the ‘lab’, it is helping to reinvent yesterday’s classics and perhaps define tomorrow’s classics.
126 years on from the day Spyros Metaxa first served his brand to his cityfolk, his spirit certainly lives on, on the lips of many.
Live the spirit too at metaxa.com.
