My Socratic Travelogue; ...That's Socrates the Winemaker and His Countrymen Who Introduced Me to the Sublime Tastes of Cyprus

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Byline: Michelle Fleming

I'm eating dinner with Michel Panicos, hotel manager of the Alion Beach Hotel in Ayia Napa, Cyprus, who has steam coming out of his ears as he rages about how the raucous ravers and teenage party crowd who flock to the island's capital each year are giving the place a terrible reputation.

With my mouth full of mouth-watering, perfectly salted Haloumi cheese, and lifting a big glass of soothing red and fruity Zefania Cypriot wine, I agree wholeheartedly, nodding like a maniac, willing him on.

The reality is I could listen amiably to Mary Harney right now; indeed, would listen rapt to hours of musings on the finer points of German grammar, so long as I was allowed to slowly sink deeper into this warm tingling sensation, the closest thing to gastronomic heaven I've come to in all my 30 years.

Truth be known, most of my three days travelling along the southern coast of Cyprus, from Limassol on up over mountains and across haystackfilled …