Kefalonia Cheese

At Kefalonia there are 14 dairies, all small and medium-sized family businesses, of which the largest is his business Georgetzatou in Dilinata which produces about 600 tons of cheese and 700 tons of dairy (milk, yogurt, creams) and the brothers Pantazatou in Pastra.

The units may be small, but they are modern because the cheesemakers, utilizing European funds, have succeeded in obtaining quality certificates - which they need in order to sell their products outside Kefalonia. The production of the dairies is available at a rate of 50% in Athens - except for Tzortzatos where 85% is absorbed by Sklavenitis - and the rest is consumed mainly in Kefalonia. Feta is more in demand as "hard" (in Kefalonia at 90%) although in Athens there are supermarkets (eg Sklavenitis, Vassilopoulos) that ask for "soft" or "medium" cheese.

Kefalonian cheesemakers feel particularly annoyed that the well-known in the Panhellenic feta of Kefalonia was not registered as a PDO feta (from island Greece only Lesvos can produce feta) and they can not understand how it is done, those who -as they claim- taught other Greeks from the beginning of the last century the art of producing feta have not yet succeeded in the recognition of their product by the official State!

The name that was finally registered is "Kefalonia barrel cheese", a solution that gives an identity within Greece, but does not help the export activity at all, because abroad feta has a much better price than white cheese (about twice).

About 1200 livestock families produce 45 tons of milk almost daily (about 16.500 tons per year). Cheesemakers produce from this milk slice, myzithra, manouromyzithra, kefalotyri, gruyere and prenza. The undisputed "king" of production is slice since about 4000 tons / year are produced (to produce one kilo of feta you need four kilos of milk).

Η manouromyzithra produced from Kefalotyri, is of exceptional quality (about 10 tons / year) and mizithra from the rest of the feta production - from which also stump ή giza. About a third of dairies produce kefalotyri. To produce one kilo of kefalotyri, 6,5-7 kilos of milk are needed and about 50 tons are produced annually.