Xygalo SiteiasΞύγαλο Σητείας

Appearance & taste

Xygalo Siteias, also spelt Xigalo Siteias, is a whitish cheese made from soured milk with a creamy and/or grainy texture; it does not form a rind. The taste is fresh, tangy and slightly salty, with a pleasant aroma of its own. The cheese contains at most 75 % water and 1.5 % salt; in dry matter it has 33 to 46 % fat and at least 31.5 % protein.

According to the specification, it is less salty than other Greek spreadable cheeses such as Galotyri or Katiki Domokou, because the salt is dissolved in the milk before souring, and it has a lower fat content. It keeps for at most six months after production and is packed in the area in containers of at most 5 kg, as a spreadable cheese has no protective rind.

Production

The milk comes from goats of Greek breeds and from sheep of local breeds, above all the Siteia sheep, as well as Psiloritis and Sfakia sheep and their crosses. The animals are kept extensively or semi-intensively on the plains and in hill areas up to 1,000 m. From December to April they eat mainly wild plants such as sage, Cretan rockrose, heath, Jerusalem sage and kermes oak, plus branches and leaves from olive pruning until early March. In autumn and summer olive leaves, dry fodder and cereals grown on the farms’ own fields are added.

If goat’s milk is lacking, the fat content of the sheep’s milk is adjusted. The milk is optionally pasteurised and cooled to 25 °C. After salt, lactic acid bacteria and a little rennet are added, it sours for 7 to 10 days at 15 to 20 °C in a covered but not fully closed container. The butterfat is then skimmed off the surface, and the curd ripens for around another month at 10 to 15 °C in the same container without ever being stirred. Finally the whey is drained off at the bottom and the cheese is stored in barrels at no more than 4 °C. Cheese made from unpasteurised milk is kept chilled for at least another two months before sale. Milk production, cheesemaking and packing take place in the area.

Origin & history

The area is a peninsula at the eastern tip of Crete, bounded to the west by the Thrypti and Ornos mountains and otherwise by the sea. It consists mainly of hill areas between 300 and 1,000 m. Siteia is drier, windier and warmer than areas at the same altitude in the rest of Crete and has 2,700 to 3,000 hours of sunshine a year. Over 700 plant species are recorded here; phrygana with thyme, sage and the endemic Cretan ebony, and on the rocky slopes maquis with mastic and carob trees, cover large areas. According to the specification, the aromatic plants give the milk its special taste.

Excavations of a Minoan house in Palaikastro found cheese vessels with holes in the base, and the ancient city of Praisos minted coins showing a goat. From 1347 to 1450 cheese was regularly shipped from the port of Siteia to Venice, Alexandria and Cyprus, and in 1847 and 1929 Siteia produced more cheese than any other eparchy of Crete. Xygalo was made mainly in summer from the small amount of low-fat milk, at home or in the shepherds’ dairies, the “mitata”, in small clay jars (“kouroupia”) with a hole at the bottom through which the whey drained. It is mentioned in writing in 1957. According to the specification, the name goes back to the ancient Greek “oxygala” for soured milk, and the method is similar to that of Hellenistic and Roman times.