Greece
Breweries on the map
Lakoniki Zythopoiia (Sparta Beer)
The Laconian brewery created Laconia's first beer, Sparta Beer — and its role in Greek craft history reaches beyond its own labels: it was in its kettles, near the ancient city of the hoplites, that Strange Brew brewed its first batches in 2015. Today the company keeps expanding, backed by an investment plan under the national development law, from the Eurotas valley where the olive groves climb towards Mount Taygetus. For visitors, Sparta Beer is ideally tasted after Mystras, the Byzantine city clinging to the mountainside, or the olive museum — a distinctly more hospitable 'molon labe' than the original.
Messiniaki Microbrewery (NEMA) · Kalamata · Peloponnisos
In Kalamata, whose black olives have conquered delicatessens worldwide, Messiniaki Mikrozythopoiia brews the NEMA range — fresh Messenian beer made for the Mediterranean table that built the region's reputation. The city also hosts the Peloponnese Beer Festival, where microbreweries from across the peninsula come to measure up, proof that the Messenian capital takes beer seriously. Between the old quarter and its castle, the long urban beach, the Rindomo gorge and the sumptuous coastal road running towards the Mani, NEMA gives the south-west Peloponnese its hopped signature — the logical pairing for the salad that bears the city's name.
Zeos Brewing Company
In Argos, which claims the title of Europe's oldest continuously inhabited city, Zythopoiia Argolidas — Zeos — ranks among the pioneers of Greek craft brewing: its beers have graced Peloponnesian tables for years, from the town's ancient theatre to the terraces of Nafplio, modern Greece's lovely first capital fifteen minutes down the road. In an Argolis saturated with major sites — Mycenae and the Lion Gate, Epidaurus and its perfect theatre, cyclopean Tiryns — Zeos supplies the local accompaniment those post-excavation evenings were missing. A safe bet of Peloponnesian craft, born where Greek history began.
Zythopoiia Peloponnisou (Karma Beer)
Daring to make beer in Nemea borders on provocation: this Corinthian valley is the capital of agiorgitiko, the Peloponnese's great red, and its roads line up wineries the way others line up olive groves. Yet this is where the Peloponnese Brewery installed the Karma range, poured from Corinthian cellars to Argolic beaches, with the sanctuary of Nemean Zeus and the ancient stadium of the Nemean Games as neighbours. For the enthusiast, the stop feels like a friendly duel: winery tastings in the afternoon, a cold Karma in the village at night — and the legend of Heracles strangling the Nemean lion as a mental label.
No brewery for this initial.