Yorgos Korres was born on the island of Naxos, where his grandfather's version of rakomelo — the warming honey-and-spirit drink of the Cyclades — was a household remedy before it was a recipe. He moved to Athens to study pharmacy at the University of Athens, and while still a student began working at the oldest herbal-homeopathic pharmacy in Greece. In 1992 he took it over.
“I started working at Greece’s oldest herbal-homeopathic pharmacy while still a student. I took over in 1992. Within five years I had built a lab. That experience has shaped my beliefs ever since.”
He spent the next five years building something that didn't exist in Greece: a laboratory for the production of homeopathic remedies to European standards. The pharmacy became a reference point for homeopathy doctors and patients from across the country. Through that work he developed a working knowledge of over 3,000 herbal remedies and their applications — not theoretical knowledge, but the accumulated understanding of someone who was dispensing them to real people, watching what worked, learning why.
In 1996, with his wife Lena Filipou Korres — a chemical engineer whose commitment to applied research and transparent formulation would become the other half of the KORRES identity — he founded KORRES Natural Products. The ambition was specific and, for Athens at the time, almost eccentric: natural skincare products that were clinically effective and designed with the same rigour applied to pharmaceuticals, made in Greece, using Greek plants. The first product was a throat syrup with honey and aniseed, its recipe a formalised version of his grandfather's remedy from Naxos. The first skincare product was the Wild Rose Moisturizer, derived from the pharmacy's most requested item: a Wild Rose oil that customers were queuing for because it visibly worked. Twenty-five years later the Wild Rose line is still a global bestseller.
KORRES mapped the entire Greek endemic flora in collaboration with the Agricultural University of Athens. It built the first fully green and zero-waste extraction unit in Greece. It has won 87 global awards for innovation, entrepreneurship, and design. The products are now sold in forty countries, in airports and department stores from Nolita in New York to Le Marais in Paris. The pharmacy on Eratosthenous Street in Pangrati — the original one, still operating — remains the production laboratory.
Decades after KORRES went global, Yorgos and his brother Andonis opened The Naxos Apothecary on Kolokotroni Street in central Athens. The name is the island they came from. The concept is an open laboratory lined with wooden shelves and white tiles, where visitors can book a consultation and have a product formulated for their specific skin type on the spot, choosing from 54 ingredients harvested from Naxos — amaranth, sea lilies, wild pear, among others. Each product leaves with a personalised label listing every ingredient and its properties. The shelf alongside carries homeopathic remedies, five fragrances each named for a Naxian village, healing herbs, and organic tisanes sourced from across Greece.
In his own description, the world outside the lab includes books, chess, design, films, basketball, and every opportunity to return to Naxos. The island is still the source.