Canaves Epitome simply topped Journey + Leisure’s World’s Greatest Awards. The rating is the least fascinating factor within the announcement.
The press launch reached me partly in Portuguese, from a PR agency in Brazil, a couple of resort in Greece. Journey advertising and marketing has its personal geography.
Journey + Leisure’s World’s Greatest Awards named Canaves Epitome the primary resort in Greece and the fifth in Europe, with a sister property, Canaves Oia Suites, shut behind at quantity two and quantity eleven. Congratulations to all concerned. I’ve opinions about awards lists — mainly that they’re how the web retains routing everybody to the identical ten resorts, and {that a} rating principally tells you the infinity pool pictures effectively from a drone.
The precise information was additional down the e-mail, previous the fifth pool photograph, and it’s the motive I’m penning this up as a substitute of submitting it with the morning’s different seventy-plus provider blasts.
The resort is not simply promoting the view.
Harvest & Heritage
For 2026, Canaves has launched a program known as Harvest & Heritage. The brief model: the best-ranked resort in Greece has determined to promote you entry to the individuals who make the island work.
The roster, as a result of the names are the purpose:
Andreas Makaris is a fourth-generation potter who may have you on the wheel in his non-public studio, working the identical volcanic clay the Cyclades have been shaping for about so long as anybody has been shaping something.
Kostas Papalexopoulos is a seafarer who has spent his complete life on this water. He runs a non-public passage alongside the cliffs beneath Oia that ends in lunch at Armeni, the fish taverna on the previous port the place the morning’s catch goes roughly straight from the boat to the grill. You attain Armeni by a number of hundred steps or by water. Take the water.
Eugenia Liodaki, born on the island, walks you thru the ruins and the quiet inland villages by means of her personal childhood, which is a type of context no concierge desk can print on an itinerary.
At Artemis Karamolegos Vineyard, Margarita Karamolegou teaches a cooking class set proper within the vineyards, the place growers coil every Assyrtiko vine into its personal low, round basket, or kouloura, a method discovered virtually nowhere else within the wine world, born of necessity on an island with fierce winds, near-constant solar, and virtually no rainfall, for the reason that tight wreath shields the grapes inside its personal shade whereas the vine’s low crawl alongside the volcanic ash retains roots cool and moisture trapped, proof that Santorini by no means discovered the straightforward manner of doing something and made an artwork of the laborious one as a substitute.
For the hidden caldera viewpoints and the black-sand shores, photographer Machos Kapetanakis skips the cliché, the outsized ballgown trailing dramatically within the wind that each customer to Santorini Instagram feed appears to demand. As an alternative, he captures pictures that transcend the everyday overexposed shot, with a pun very a lot supposed to create distinctive and delightful reminiscences.
However the potter is the inform.
Applications like this could actually really feel staged. Like a resort dressing up native colour for friends who’ll by no means know the distinction. This one doesn’t. Any resort with sufficient cash can organize a pottery class.
What Canaves is doing runs on one thing cash doesn’t purchase instantly: forty years of the Chaidemenos household displaying up on this island year-round, incomes the belief of which fisherman, which winemaker, which grandmother of the village will truly let friends in.
In Oia in July, the sundown crowd and cruisers arrive by the coachload, and the island can really feel like a backdrop rented by the hour.
The rarest luxurious on provide is Santorini with the folks nonetheless in it. And deeply amid it.
I’ve stayed at Epitome and walked each hall of Oia Suites, and I can inform you whether or not the number-one-in-Greece crown truly matches and which of the 2 you need to be reserving. That’s a separate piece, and it’s coming.
Do the plain issues. Maintain the caldera-view suite, preserve the dinner reservation you fought for. And add the potter.
Ceaselessly Requested Questions
What’s Harvest & Heritage at Canaves Epitome?
It’s a 2026 program at Canaves Epitome in Santorini that connects friends instantly with the individuals who form the island’s day by day life — a fourth-generation potter, a neighborhood seafarer, a village historian, a vineyard cook dinner, and a photographer — quite than the same old concierge-arranged excursions.
Is Canaves Epitome actually the primary resort in Greece?
Journey + Leisure’s World’s Greatest Awards ranked it primary in Greece and fifth in Europe, with sister property Canaves Oia Suites at quantity two in Greece and eleventh in Europe. Awards lists replicate one methodology amongst many, and are value studying alongside firsthand accounts.
What’s the distinction between Canaves Epitome and Canaves Oia Suites?
Each are Chaidemenos household properties in Oia, Santorini, and each ranked on this yr’s World’s Greatest Awards. A full comparability of the 2, together with which one to truly e book, is coming in a separate piece.
When is one of the best time to go to Santorini to keep away from the crowds?
July brings heavy cruise and sunset-crowd visitors to Oia specifically. Applications like Harvest & Heritage that put you with native craftspeople and small operators are one approach to discover the island’s quieter, extra private aspect even throughout peak season.
What’s kouloura winemaking?
Kouloura is a Santorini winemaking approach wherein every Assyrtiko vine is coiled right into a low, basket-shaped wreath near the bottom. The form shields the grapes with their very own shade and helps the vine’s roots keep cool and retain moisture, adapting to the island’s wind, solar, and near-total lack of rainfall.