Daphnis and Chloe

Daphnis and Chloe Mediterranean herbs, infusions and spices, sourced from small Greek farms.
We provide herbs as good and as simple as possible!

You could hunt for Mediterranean herbs at flea markets, spice stores and delis, but even your best finds wouldn’t compare to the hand-picked oregano bunches that Greek women dry on their balconies in the summer, or to the wild thyme shrubs that each spring fill up the islands’ air with their dainty fragrance. Daphnis and Chloe is all about this genuine bounty that can only be encountered in the natural state of things.

One of the most interesting parts of making our Chili Flakes is the smoking process. Taming the fire, keeping it alive a...
05/12/2025

One of the most interesting parts of making our Chili Flakes is the smoking process. Taming the fire, keeping it alive at the desired intensity for the time needed to dry the whole peppers, is a process that carries the signature of its maker. 

Upon harvest, the fresh peppers are moved to the smoking room on large, room-sized racks, leaving enough space underneath for the smoker to move the fire around as needed.

This traditional method can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks, and during this time, one can sense the mellow, woody smell of slow-burning birch from a distance. The peppers are checked twice a day until they’re ready. Again, here: no machines. Just hands, and the pure instinct of knowing when to stop, which comes with experience. The peppers are also destemmed and crushed by hand, which is why these flakes can sometimes vary in size.

Last November, we traveled to the borders of Central Macedonia in northern Greece to document the making of our Smoked C...
22/11/2025

Last November, we traveled to the borders of Central Macedonia in northern Greece to document the making of our Smoked Chili Flakes.

From hand-harvesting to smoking and shaking, we witnessed how the fleshy Karatzova peppers of Almopia became a spice, a process that has changed little over the past century. 

Chosen meticulously for soil quality and orientation, the fields are prepared to receive the seeds for a year or two. The seeds, selected from the previous year’s most vigorous plants, are sown tightly at the end of May, with the harvest occurring in November. Now produced by just a handful of farmers, these heirloom peppers were a significant source of income for locals until the mid-80s. 

Traditionally, it was a predominantly female occupation, and relatives exchanged labor when extra hands were needed in the fields. Dimitri, one of our longest-standing farm partners who hosted us in his fields, was born among peppers, but mastered the craft of smoking from his mother-in-law.

 We have a bunch of beautiful images by who was my travel partner during this beautiful farm visit, and we’ll be sharing more here in the coming days.

The harvesting window of our Thyme Flowers is just a few days: for buds to be at the peak of fragrance, they need to be ...
08/08/2025

The harvesting window of our Thyme Flowers is just a few days: for buds to be at the peak of fragrance, they need to be just at the point of blooming. Gathering begins at sunrise and lasts only a few hours, as the tender branches need to be destemmed with scissors, one by one, before they dry. It takes a day to make a kilo of thyme, but crush one bud and you will see how much fragrance it carries!

These images are from the thyme harvest in early June, at a small farm in Epirus, where everything is done by hand.

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Mandrokleous 19
Athens
11744

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