Rakidio Aerial View
Sellia · Rethymno · Crete

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An authentic Cretan estate where copper stills, old stone walls, and genuine hospitality meet. Join us at our family table to taste the real Crete, not just see it.

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The Rakidio Estate

Making memories
on the farm

Before you reach the long table, the estate unfolds in layers — animals in the garden, a copper still breathing smoke, a stone mitato where hands still shape cheese, a museum of quiet tools, and a feast that tastes of the soil it came from.

Lived
Experience
across the estate

This is not a tour. It is a morning that becomes an afternoon, and an afternoon that becomes a memory.

01

The Experiential Farm

Explore our 50-acre estate, meet and feed our friendly animals, and enjoy a traditional donkey ride through lush organic gardens.

02

The Art of Raki

Discover the secrets of authentic Cretan distillation. Follow the journey of our iconic spirit from the copper still straight to your glass.

03

Traditional Cheese Making

Visit our stone mitato, try your hand at milking, and actively participate in crafting fresh, traditional tyrozouli cheese.

04

A Journey Through History

Step back in time at our folklore museum. Witness authentic 19th and 20th-century treasures, old farming tools, and historical artifacts.

05

Cretan Hospitality & Flavors

Enjoy a genuine farm-to-table feast. Savor fresh, handmade delicacies straight from our land, including traditional kalitsounia and savory apaki.

The Estate

Fifty acres,
one slow morning

Wander vineyard terraces and orchard rows across our family estate, greet the donkeys and goats who've grazed here for generations, and pick herbs from gardens that answer to nothing but the season. This is Crete before it hurries.

Saddle up for a traditional donkey ride along the old mountain paths — the same route our grandparents used to carry the harvest home.

50Acres to Explore
100%Organic Grown
DonkeyRides Included
Raki Distillery

The kazani has
never gone cold

Each autumn, grapes from our own terraces and neighbouring growers are pressed and left to ferment in stone vats. What remains — the stalks, skins and seeds — becomes the soul of tsikoudia, slow-distilled over wood fire in a hand-beaten copper kazani older than most of our visitors.

We distil in small batches, tasting as we go, the way it was taught to us: by ear, by smell, never by clock.

3Generations Distilling
40°Traditional Strength
Oct–NovHarvest Season
The Mitato

Cheese, made
the old way

Inside a stone mitato built for shade, not show, we milk by hand each morning and coax that milk into tyrozouli — a soft, tangy Cretan cheese passed down through three generations of Papadakis women.

No machines, no shortcuts — just patient hands and a recipe older than the village road.

HandMilked Daily
StoneAged Mitato
TyrozouliHouse Recipe
Living Memory

Where every tool
has a story

Our folklore museum holds the quiet evidence of a century on this mountain — hand-forged ploughs, wedding chests, oil lamps and looms that once furnished ordinary Cretan life.

Every object here is real, retired from actual use, and free for you to ask about.

100+Years Preserved
19th–20th c.Artifacts
FolkFarming Tools
The Long Table

A feast grown,
not bought

Everything on the table walked, grew or fermented within sight of where you're sitting — flaky kalitsounia straight from the wood oven, apaki cured in-house, olive oil pressed from our own trees.

This is Cretan hospitality as it's always been: generous, unhurried, and shared.

Farm→TableSame-Day Harvest
KalitsouniaHandmade Daily
ApakiCured In-House
Rakidio Stone House
Our Story

A family courtyard,
opened to guests

Rakidio began as the Papadakis family courtyard in Sellia — a single still, a handful of olive trees, and a table that never seemed to empty. Three generations later, we've restored the old stone buildings and opened our rituals to travellers who want something more than a postcard view of Crete.

Nothing here is staged for photographs. The raki is the same raki we drink ourselves; the cheese is the cheese our family eats; the welcome is the welcome we'd give a cousin arriving from Athens.

"We don't perform tradition. We just didn't stop doing it."Manolis Papadakis, Founder
Visit & Book

Come up the mountain

Rakidio sits 20 minutes above Plakias, in the village of Sellia. Visits are small, hosted, and best booked a few days ahead — especially during harvest season.

Sellia, Rethymno

Above Plakias, Crete, Greece

Visiting Hours

Tuesday – Sunday, 10:00 – 18:00

Reach Us

hello@rakidio.gr · +30 6900 000 000