Gary Hirshberg on the beautiful Greek island of Patmos. Inset: Meg Hirshberg sampling Greek yogurt on the island of Crete.

Oikos is made by the world’s leading organic yogurt-maker, Stonyfield Farm, in partnership with Euphrates, makers of authentic old-world foods.

As a boy, Stonyfield Farm President and “CE-Yo” Gary Hirshberg lived next door to a Greek family that often treated him and his siblings to baklava and other delicious old-world foods. “It was our most favorite and special treat growing up,” remembers Gary, salivating over the memory. Years later, after building windmills modeled on ancient Greek technologies, Gary traveled across Greece with his wife, Meg, to see windmills and to sample authentic Greek yogurt. He found the taste of the yogurt unforgettable.

So began Gary’s passion for authentic recipes handed down from one generation to the next – a passion that would later compel him to bring Stonyfield Farm’s organic experts together with Euphrates’ Greek food experts to create Oikos Organic Greek Yogurt.

Our Oikos yogurt-making is overseen by Euphrates President Hamdi Ulukaya, a third-generation maker of Mediterranean foods, and Euphrates Master Yogurt Maker Mustafa Dogan. Mustafa is well-known overseas, where yogurt connoisseurs will follow a favorite yogurt master from one yogurt company to another, just as one might follow a favorite chef from one restaurant to another.

“The true Greek yogurt is strained,” says Hamdi. “The technique is from Europe and there is a big tradition behind it. To make Greek yogurt, you take something away. You do not add anything to thicken it. It is pure, clean, simple, and has been made this way for hundreds of years.”