Founded in 1933 by Emmanuel I. Manos, this Heraklion company has exported Cretan dittany, mountain tea, oregano and sage for nearly a century. Its Karteraki brand packages the same herbs, plus worldwide spices, into traditional-recipe teabag blends.
Best for Cretan dittany, mountain tea and oregano, from a family herb house exporting since 1933
Manos & Co. traces to 1933, when Emmanuel I. Manos began drying and exporting Cretan aromatic plants to Europe, Asia and the Americas from Heraklion. Nearly a century later the family-run company still processes its herbs at a plant in the Finikia industrial park outside the city, combining that older export trade with modern food-safety standards. Its core range draws on plants native to Crete's mountains: dittany, an endemic species harvested wild in flowering season and dried by hand, alongside mountain tea (malotira), oregano — which the company describes as its best-selling item, distinguished by growers from the mainland variety — sage and cistus (ladania). Beyond the wild-harvested Cretan herbs, the company sources spices and aromatic plants more broadly and blends them into Karteraki, a teabag line built on traditional Cretan recipes that spans single herbs like chamomile and mint alongside three house blends — Traditional, Aromatic and Green. Products are checked mechanically to remove foreign material and screened for pesticide and heavy-metal residues before packing. The combination of a working export business older than most of its European retail customers and a modern teabag brand gives Manos & Co. a foothold in both the bulk-herb trade and the retail tea aisle.
Cretan aromatherapy and natural care from Heraklion — essential oils, herbal blends and soaps built on the island's own thyme, dittany and olive. A small shop that smells like the Cretan hillside it draws from.
Best for Unique Greek handicrafts and novelties in a charming embroidery shop
In Thrapsano, the pottery village about 30 km south of Heraklion, potter Manolis Moutsakis throws frost-proof jars, pots and planters on the wheel from local clay. The workshop continues the village's long tradition of large storage pitharia, fired for outdoor durability.
Best for Handmade Cretan pottery and garden pithari jars
A family winery in Dafnes southwest of Heraklion working indigenous Cretan grapes such as Vidiano, Vilana and Liatiko across its Dafnios and Enotria labels. The estate also presses extra virgin olive oil and runs cellar wine and oil tastings.
Best for Cretan indigenous-variety wines and tastings
A leather workshop in Gazi on the western edge of Heraklion making stivania, the tall traditional Cretan boots, along with belts, bags and sandals. The shop also stocks leather dyes and conditioning creams for maintaining the boots.
Best for Traditional Cretan stivania boots and leather goods
Irida Family Workshop in Heraklion, Crete makes reproductions of ancient Greek objects. It supplies stores throughout Greece and abroad with pieces it describes as exact museum copies that have received awards for quality and fidelity. The range runs from bronze armour and helmets to Minoan statues and busts in ceramic or alabaster, with geometric vases and chess sets in wooden boxes. It also builds designs a customer suggests, and shows its work each year at exhibitions in Athens and Heraklion.
Best for Own-design ceramic, bronze and museum-inspired decorative objects produced through the family workshop
The Zargianakis family runs a working rakokazano at Prinias in the hills south of Heraklion, distilling tsikoudia (raki) from the autumn grape pressings between October and December. The site doubles as a seasonal taverna and sells the family's raki and traditional Cretan products.
Best for Cretan raki (tsikoudia) from a working still
A family olive farm in the village of Skalani above Heraklion, pressing Koroneiki and Tsounati fruit into early-harvest and single-origin extra virgin oils. Alongside the oils they bottle petimezi grape-must syrup and cure Kalamon and throumba olives, and open the grove for booked farm visits.
Best for Cretan extra virgin olive oil and farm visits
Founded by brothers Manolis and Sotiris Lyrarakis in 1966 and based at Alagni southeast of Heraklion, this winery is known for reviving near-extinct Cretan varieties including Dafni, Plyto and Melissaki. Now run by the second generation and farmed organically since 2020, it bottles single-vineyard wines from more than eleven local grapes.
Best for Rare-variety Cretan wines and vineyard tastings
Meligyris bottles single-flower Cretan honeys - wild and white thyme, pine, oak and chestnut, and citrus blossom - from apiaries around Arkalohori in the Heraklion hinterland. The family operation blends mountain and valley harvests with organic lines and honey-and-nut jars, shipping across Europe.
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