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Kleos Mastiha Spirit: The Passion, the Process and Female…

April 17, 2018
by irene Archos

Kleos is the ancient Greek term that means, “fame or glory attained through good deeds and hard work.” This is what the heroes in ancient Greek tragedy were striving for. But Kleos also captures the essence of the product, Kleos Masticha spirit, and the passion behind the process of its maker, Effie Panagatopoulos, entrepreneur extraordinaire. She is the first Greek woman in history to start a liquor brand from scratch. For Panagatopoulos, it has been a labor of love almost a decade in the making. But since last summer since launching in posh lounges on Mykonos, Kleos the masticha liquor is bound to be Greece’s first luxury spirit brand and the world’s first super premium mastiha spirit.

The Process Behind the Passion

The story of its maker to bring it to life scintillates with the great Hellenic values: meraki, philotimo, pursuit of excellence, and drive. Yes, plenty of drive. The story starts with Panagatopoulos’ involvement as the National Brand Ambassador and sole distributor of Metaxa brand in the US. She has had 15 years of experience in the liquor industry having worked for Bacardi. Her work takes her to Mykonos for the summer of 2008. While sipping drinks at Nammas, her friend music producer Easy Coutiel, hands her a tumbler of mastiha cocktail and says, “This is what you should introduce to America.”

“That first sip,” she explains, “sparked a love affair with mastiha that would end with Kleos as the next big global spirit product.”

She did plenty of homework. She concocted 17 different formulas from six different distilleries and 20 different cocktail mixes for the product.

She put together an advisory group of celebrity mixologists and chefs including Michael Psilakis, MP Taverna chef who incidentally introduced mastiha as an ingredient on Iron Chef, 2010; Allan Katz, portfolio mixologist of Southern Wine and Spirits, and Joaquin Simo, head bartender of Death and Co, the first bar in NY to introduce mastiha.

She organized taste tests with American audiences. (Amazingly, 9 out of 10 Americans hated ouzo yet the same ratio loved mastiha).

She went through three years of sourcing design before arriving at the alluring blue eye version, distinctive and beautiful.

She built trust with the Mastiha Growers’ Cooperative in Chios, a very tightly knit group, that does not allow outsiders in.

She tested and tested the product with the head of research and development of the Mastiha Ennosi.

She learned about mastiha history and its medicinal uses.

She found a wealthy investor who helped her draft a business plan and put down $1.5 million in capital. And then she lost the seed funding when the Eurocrisis tanked the Greek stock markets in 2010.

She went back to square one–more than once.

She hustled to find investors.She did stand-up comedy to boost her confidence to stand up in front of investors to pitch her brand.

She sent over 159 pitch emails just to get eight on board.

She even trained in body building competitions gathering her earnings to raise capital for the product.

She persevered. And here she is: the first Greek woman in history to start a liquor brand.

Kleos launched officially last year on the island of Mykonos in some of the most jet-setting venues, including at luxe hotels like Cavo Tagoo, Bill and Coo, and Kouros in Mykonos, as well as the most exclusive beach bars SantAnna, and Jackie O, and restaurants like Interni and Ling Ling

“The road to get to market as a woman in a male dominated industry made me determined to uphold my own value,” Panagopoulos explains.

The Kleos formula also happens to be made by Greece’s only female distiller, Maroussa Tsaxaki, at the famed distillery Isidoros Arvanitis in Lesvos.

By June of this year, it will be available in the duty free shops of three Greek airports-Athens, Crete, and Rhodes. It has soft launched in Massachusetts, Panagopoulos’ home state and is available in select bars in New York City. (If you really need to take a swig, head over to Omega Liquors, the one store in Astoria that carries Kleos.)

Why Mastiha?

“Mastiha is Greece’s best kept secret,” she explains. “It is a superfood.”

While most Greeks know its distinct taste from the “ipobrichio” the submarine, sugary dollops of mastiha, the gooey desert served on a long spoon in a tall glass of cold water, it is not well-known outside Hellenic borders.

The trees that mastiha is harvested from is called the skinos. It only grows in the perfecture in Chios historically the place of martyrdom of St. Isidore. The tree miraculously shed tears in response to the suffering of the saint who blessed them as a means of healing the world.

Even so, mastiha has been used as a medicinal herb from Hippocrates’ time and makes various appearances in the historical record in the writings of Herodotus and Dioscurides, the Greek father of pharmacology, whose “De Materia Medica praised the therapeutic properties of mastiha on the same page he praised cannabis.

Although she has no family connections to Chios, the one place in the world where masticha is harvested, she states, “My soul lived there in a former life.” Panagopoulos’ felt an immediate connection to the land and the trees from which it is harvested. “I cried the first time I harvested it,” she narrates.

Her passionate belief in the product has transformed her purpose: to become the ambassador for mastiha to the world.

The Person Behind the Product

Effie Panagotopoulos grew up in and around Boston, Massachusettes. Her parents, heralding from Sparta and Tripoli/Megalopoli, carried the same immigrant narrative: they came off the boat with $20 in their pocket looking for a better life. “Part of my drive comes from this, that my parents came from poor little villages. I grew up a teen knowing we did not have what others did. I wanted to do better than my parents.”

The fact that she could achieve her ambitions as a woman speaks to the power of growing up American. “The system in Greece is a mess, whether female or male,” she confesses. “It is extremely difficult to be an entrepreneur in Greece. But for a woman, it is like going back 50 years.” The distributors could not believe she was the owner of the brand, but kept referring her as the sales associate.

Part of the problem Panagotopoulos’ decries is the lack of role models in business for women in Greece. “Young Greek girls do not have much to aspire to except in media or entertainment,” she explains, “fake blondes with fake boobs.” They feel comfortable taking on traditionally feminine professions such as teaching. They are too afraid to venture out and take risks, a mandatory element for most entrepreneurs.

The bi-cultural perspective allows the opportunity to exhibit her ambitions. Not without a struggle. She remembers to be taken seriously by venture capitalists who kept passing over her brand, she had to organize an entire advisory board of recognized (majority male) restauranteurs and bartenders.

Quotes On Success

“Money is power. Men make more money, so for women to be in positions of power, we need more money.”

“In order to make it, you have to be gutsy. Leave fear at the door. Only until you put balls to the wall, only when you make very bold moves can you finally make it.”

“Modern day Greece has had a fall from it’s ancient Glory, and with KLEOS Mastiha Spirit, I hope to in my own way restore a piece of Greece’s long lost glory with a beautiful product for the global market, that we can call a luxury brand.

If along the way, I can inspire my fellow Greek women, and young Greek entrepreneurs to look back into our roots and the best our country has to offer, to reverse what previous generations have done, and spur the economy, I will have had success.”

Mastiha Cocktail Recipes

The signature cocktail—The “KLEO-Patra”

Kleo-Patra, signature cocktail made with mastiha liquor

2 parts KLEOS Mastiha Spirit

1/2 part fresh lemon juice

1/4 part Simple Syrup

4 basil leaves

Shake all ingredients vigorously.

Strain over fresh crushed ice in a highball.

Garnish with a lemon wheel and basil leaf.

Adapted from the modern classic cocktail “The Med” created by the Greek demigod of the modern age of cocktails, Michael Menegos.

Like Plato and Socrates, you can find him in Athens’ best watering holes waxing poetic on government, philosophy, food and drink.

Mastiha Trivia:

-The US has become a large purchaser of mastiha. Hospitals are buying it for bandages for wound healing, and US supplement companies have started selling it in pill form. A serving here of Jarrow Mastic is 2 pills, 1000mg, for stomach health.

-Ancient Romans spiced wine with Mastiha

-Mastiha is used to manufacture surgical thread. Stitches made with this thread are absorbed by the body, do not require cutting, and have an anti-inflammatory effect

-Also used by American hospitals to make bandages for wounds

-Mastiha appears in the famous pre-Prohibition cocktail book by Robert Vermiere that references mastiha as a classic cocktail

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ToMov: Purple is the Color of Greek Feminism

January 6, 2018
by irene Archos

In a previous post entitled “Greek Feminism: The Unwoman’s Movement,” the claim was made that there was no women’s movement in Greece and that feminism was basically a taboo word. Well, things are not so black and white. An interview with Sissy Vovou, a 25-year veteran of the feminist cause in Greece and contributing editor of the Greek feminist site, tomov.gr (“mov” translates to the color purple), set the record straight.

Vovou noted that the election of Donald Trump that awakened a latent women’s movement in the US has sent shock waves across the world reawakening an interest in gender equality. “All things good and bad with regards to the women’s movement comes from the US,” she contends. “It’s like an electric current that surged the women’s movement all over the world.”

Greece as a small country with over a 5,000-year history of patriarchy has harbored a women’s movement, according to Vovou. While she notes that Greece is in the 90^th place for gender equality on the World Index and comes in last place for the nations in Europe, she is optimistic that change is coming in her society. “Feminism is not strong in Greece,” she says, “but it exists.”

She noted that the Eurocrisis that hit her nation particularly hard in 2010 has both strengthened and weakened the feminist position in Greece, according to how one reads the consequences. One reading of the impact of the crisis is negative. The dwindling of resources allotted by government and the private sector to women’s resources in health, employment has eroded women’s empowerment, leading to increases in unemployment, domestic violence, and a step back into more traditional roles. The looming crisis with its after-effects also shifted attention to more pressing concerns, mostly matters of survival. “With so many other societal priorities to attend to, we can’t have the luxury of focusing on women’s rights was the claim,” Vouvou explains, “Women’s rights are important but it is not the right moment.” (She noted this has been the common call at all times, whether good or ill.)

However, the impact of the crisis did bring a positive result. Many women for the first time choose to take a place in the public sphere. They rallied to espouse the cause of refugee rights, especially the rights of women refugees in record numbers. They learned about instances of rape and sexual exploitation of refugee women first-hand, so much so that “all those women who never wanted to hear about women’s rights became a bit more sensitive to the cause.” The active participation of women in a cause that brought them out of the domestic role into the public sphere actually accomplished one of the goals of the women’s movement, according to Vovou. Even if women have traditionally embraced social causes that involved nurturing (i.e. feeding the homeless, finding housing for refugees), natural extensions of their responsibilities in the domestic sphere, nevertheless, this entrance into the public space signals an important shift for themselves and society at large.

While she notes that Greece has followed the American trend of putting more female graduates through higher education with terminal degrees, approximately 55% of students are female in Greek universities, the access of graduates to higher-level paying jobs is much less than their American counterparts. Even though more small businesses have been operating by women, economic opportunity for women does not change the map for political equality.

In Vovou’s mind there are three major drivers of change: 1 changing the mindsets of both men and women with regards to gender equality; 2 changing the state’s stance on gender equality and 3 changing the composition and outlook of the courts.

For each of these columns of change, Vovou offered distressing examples of how Greece is still in the gender Middle Ages. For one, a general consciousness raising has to happen for both genders. “Some of the most vicious police of the patriarchy are women themselves,”Vovou cites. Women are the most critical of other women when they try to act independently outside the prescribed traditional roles for them. Secondly, the Greek state has made no efforts to embrace change for women’s rights. “It still has not ratified the Istanbul Convention,” she implores. While 2016 ushered in the Family Violence Act that openly considered the issue, it remains a problematic piece of legislation. Thirdly, while the judicial system is packed with female justices, in some jurisdictions over 65% of the women, it is very conservative and usually votes aggressively against women’s interests.

Vovou cautions about assuming that just because an institution is populated with women does not necessarily mean it has feminist leanings. Greek jurisprudence is still grappling with the legal definitions of rape and sexual harassment, issues the US law system has reached consensus . As evidence, she cites two court cases involving the murder of a husband by an abused spouse. In both cases, unpublicized and confidential as of yet, the women have not been allowed to enter a plea of self-defense in the matter because of the conservative interpretation of ‘murder’ in the Greek legal code.

The revolution that the #metoo movement has unleashed in this country is far in the horizon for Greek feminists. That does not mean that Sissy Vovou and others will not continue to fight. Their organization makes sure to disseminate information, create flyers and leaflets, and maintaining a listserv, forum and website, protesting and raising awareness for gender-related rights issues. Tomov organized a rally to bring justice to a sensationalized serial rapist case last year, for example. They marched to close the women’s prison in the notorious Korydallos complex as well as organizing a march and rallying for the cause of female refugees at the Ellinikon Detention Center.

When asked whether a feminist is born or made, Vovou on first response answers, “Of course, everything is made” but only at the very end of the interview does she remember the secret story of her birth she learned from a gossipy aunt many years later:

“I was the third and last daughter of my mother. She was 36 when she had me. So on the day I was born at the hospital, my father came to visit. Before he came up to the room, he was greeted by the doorman who congratulated him, ‘Oh Mr Vovos, congratulations! May she live many years, you have a little girl.’ With that my father turned away and it did not go up to visit his newborn or her mother. It was so terrible a shock to know that his last and final child would be another girl. When I learned the story, I was born a feminist.”

Vovo ended with an optimistic insight, “We can’t get rid of 4,000 of the patriarchy inscribed in poetry, art, and literature so easily, but we must try. The smallest thing we do does have an impact.”

Resource List for Greek Feminism:

Greek Feminist magazine: Tomov.gr

What is Intersectional Feminism?

“The Rebel Woman: The early years of Greek Feminism”

League for Women’s Rights in Greek

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Revolution Starts Within

March 24, 2014
by irene Archos

As Women’s History month comes to a close and as we anticipate the many pom-pom pumping tsoliades and shiny blue Amalias floating with Hellenic pride on 5^th Avenue for the annual Greek Independence Day celebrations, it is our sincere wish that we end with a statement of awareness. Some of our followers would claim we are “Greek men bashers” that the women’s movement, especially among the Hellenic community is non-existent, because it is based on hatred and resentment for men, the very men that have engendered us, supported us, and love us. While we will not underplay the damage the Greek male ego has and continues to brandish in the face of women’s needs and aspirations, what we really need is a revolution from within (to echo the words of the famous Gloria Steinem.) What we must realize as women of Hellenic descent, the mothers, the wives, the daughters, the sisters, the grandmothers, the cousins, the co-workers, and co-creators of one of the most exulted civilizations in human history, is our part in perpetuating the male patriarchal grip over our destinies. As women, we are responsible for forging the behaviors, the ideologies, and the character of the males in our lives. We cannot “bash them” for bashing us. We must take responsibility for our own hand in the inequality of the sexes. We must first of all become aware of the gender stereotypes and internal damage we have undergone, recognize this and choose a different script for ourselves. We have to recognize our implicit and complicit responsibility for the damage we perpetuate on our men and ourselves. The change must begin with us.

A friend and fellow writer who comes from an entirely different cultural milieu, South Korea, explains the “movement” in a recent email:

Can we start a grass roots revolution? At least a movement? To educate women about how WE raise, encourage, and enable the infantile male. How WE teach them learned helplessness. How WE devalue ourselves and, worse, our precious and beautiful daughters. WE WOMEN are equally responsible for gender inequality! Perhaps more so. Agreed, until we realize what imbalance we are creating, we will remain subjugated, subservient, inferior. We will give up our dreams, fail to express ourselves, snuff out our inner voices and opinions, suffer, sacrifice, sell ourselves short. We will teach our daughters to honor their brothers more than their sisters, to not question their dissatisfaction.

It is tragic that generations of women in this country have spent their lives tethered as servants and nannies to immature, psycho-emotionally unformed boy-men. South Korea has the highest level of gender inequality among OECD nations. We rose from the ashes of war to become an economic power, but many attitudes are back in the Chosun Dynasty, the Confucian legacy of which has kept women as servile entities: as daughters, wives, mothers, but barring us from becoming realized individuals. It is no wonder I have not married. So much God-damned baggage.

A women’s worst enemy is another woman, a Greek saying goes. I look at my mother and the example she has provided me with the choices in her life. She stayed married to an emotionally abusive, mentally ill man who tortured her day in and day out. She “learned to be helpless” and take the “martyr” role because in Greek society, well, it’s your fate, your “tihi”, your luck who you marry and how you turn out. (It’s your fat fu**ing luck who you marry and you have to take your “moira”.) My father’s illness, his megalomania, his ego crushed our burgeoning sense of ourselves. He uprooted me just at the verge of my entering an Ivy League school because he had had enough and wanted to move back to Greece, thereby ruining my chances at a scholarship. My mother taught me both overtly and subtly that women were worth far less than men. By the way she catered to the males in the family, (to this day my little brother is the golden boy who can do no wrong) and the way she treated herself, eating two day leftovers, and the expectations she has of us her daughters—you must be the one to cook and take care of the family, you must clean out the yard full of dog shit, you must take care of the bills, even if you are already working a full-time job, a part-time job and managing a house of three children and a dog.

While I was growing up, I always blamed my father for being the abusive, selfish, megalomaniac. But now that I have matured, I can see that my mother was just as guilty for the soul-crushing anguish in childhood. She, too, was responsible for her own sorrow and unhappiness. She never once stood up for herself. She has wound up bitter and perpetually depressed. (My father has since passed away; what she should have inherited from his estate, a considerable amount to keep her comfortable and secure in her old age, his mistress, some Ukrainian or Georgian house maid, ran away with after she managed to get her name on his bank account.) My mother has been left without insurance, destitute, to be taken care of by who else? the daughters of the family.

My mother never taught me to honor myself just as much as I honored the males in the family. She taught me to be “sloppy seconds” to hate myself because I was a girl. The worst she has done is that she has perpetuated that role in me. I too give too much. I too consider myself sloppy seconds. I care too much about others at my own expense and I wind up exhausted and resentful because I believe in a place so deep I cannot see it, that I am only as good as what I do and can offer to others, not that I am worthy as me, myself, just because I am who I am. No strings attached. Yes, then, my mother is my worst enemy. But I have had to do a lot of self-reflection (and a lot, a lot of therapy) to see that I too am perpetuating the unhappiness. But I don’t have to. The change begins with me–recognizing how much of the unfairness I have perpetuated on myself and making a conscious effort to stop it.

Let us, then, unite as women, as men, as Hellenes, and work towards a more equitable, more authentic, more enriching awareness for gender equality.

Let’s start that small movement here and now. Join us at our monthly Symposium and be moved: this Friday, March 28^th at Victory Sweet Shop and Garden in Astoria.

Tag: Hellenic women

Kleos Mastiha Spirit: The Passion, the Process and Female…

The Process Behind the Passion

Why Mastiha?

The Person Behind the Product

Quotes On Success

Mastiha Trivia:

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ToMov: Purple is the Color of Greek Feminism

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Revolution Starts Within

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