Chasing the stars on a bottle

A visit to the home of Metaxa, or the Greek spirit blended from Muscat wine, is a lesson in craft, taste and drama

- Vikram Achanta

Come quickly, I am tasting the stars" is a quote often attributed to Benedictine monk Dom Perignon, when he created the sparkling wine and changed celebrations forever.

It's probably apocryphal but what's true is that I am looking at the stars—the Scorpio constellation, to be precise, on the ceiling of Dubai's Galaxy Bar.

The marble rings behind the bar combined with the stars give a customer at this intimate bar the sense of being in a jewel box. The stars are there for good reason: This is probably one of the world's few bars to feature a Metaxa-heavy cocktail menu.

Stars are found on each bottle of Metaxa, with the story being that they refer to the number of years of ageing. A common myth, but who better than the Greeks to create myths? I've often wondered about those stars and the story they tell, and so when the chance came last year to visit the Metaxa distillery in Greece, I grabbed it. It's a sunny day when we reach Kifissia, an hour from downtown Athens, where the home of Metaxa is located.

Metaxa traces its origins to 1888 when this eponymous spirit was created by Spyros Metaxa. Beginning life as a cognac, it had to switch to brandy, when GI rules for cognac were introduced in 1936 and then again in 1989 when the EU defined brandy. Compelled to change course again, it branded itself "the original Greek spirit", but what is Metaxa?

To answer that question, we're led along dark corridors flanked by barrels full of Metaxa until we reach a brightly lit table at which a dapper young man is seated. Since Spyros Metaxa in 1888, there have been only six people who bear the title of "Metaxa Master", and Konstantinos Kalpaxidis is the current one.