In June 2026, two bottles of the same wine stood side by side on the table. One is the first Retsina ever to achieve Best in Show at the Decanter World Wine Awards: 2024, with 97 points, as one of 50 out of 18,143 wines entered. The other is barely known outside Greece. By the end of the evening, the famous vintage stood at 91 points, the unknown one at 93. This is not a provocation, nor a quarrel over categories. It is the result of a direct comparison, and it runs counter t

Messenia is close to my heart, and I am often in the area. One estate I have followed for years without ever having been there: Ktima Oinotropai in Zevgolatio, a few kilometres outside Kalamata. Vasilis and Maria Kapopoulos make around thirty thousand bottles a year there, on the Messenian plain, a place hardly anyone associates with great wine. My engagement with the estate began in 2022, with the first bottle in the glass. The Roditis 2019 stood at 93 points - quite a state

This is how they tell it at La Tour Melas: at a dinner in Zurich, sometime around the turn of the millennium, Kyros Melas made a bet with a Swiss banking colleague. Melas, a businessman and lover of Château Lafleur, claimed he could produce a wine in Greece to rival the Pomerol star. From 2000 onward he planted French vines in Achinos, in Fthiotida - in a region without any winegrowing tradition whatsoever. To this day the Swiss man has not paid - his argument being: French w

Agiorgitiko from Nemea: how it tastes, which styles exist and what it pairs with – plus 39 of our own tasting notes and our best-of list.

Which Greek red grape variety do you suppose sits in most of the bottles in my collection? No, not Xinomavro (in German) – I own that mostly as a single-varietal wine, which limits the number. No, not Agiorgitiko (in German) either, which is also often used as a blending partner – though then rather in cuvées with international varieties, usually more as a small addition to Bordeaux blends with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. (For how it tastes as a single varietal, see our Ag

Four-decade-old legends alongside wines that have only just reached the shelves; monastery wines from Mount Athos next to a Tuscan that lined up as the benchmark: in the first half of 2026, 62 new tasting notes appeared on griechische-weine.info – 60 reds, two whites, among them a striking number of vertical tastings. We didn't drink all of it this spring: many of the wines come from tastings in 2024 and 2025 and have only now been digitised. So this is less a diary of the se

Three Syrahs, one vintage, two climate worlds: Penfolds St Henri meets Lacules and Manousakis Nostos. Why Australia's cool dream vintage produced the most powerful wine – and Greece's fire vintage the more elegant ones.

Assyrtiko is Greece's most famous white grape – mineral, citrus-fresh, remarkably age-worthy. Santorini vs. the mainland, taste, food pairings, and our top-rated Assyrtikos.

We've already talked about Agiorgitiko on this blog at length – though as a blending partner for international varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Syrah. As a single varietal? Nowhere to be found. And yet we long ago devoted a whole masterclass to the other Greek variety that lays claim to being king among the red grapes – Xinomavro. So Agiorgitiko gets somewhat short shrift here, and that isn't entirely fair. Because according to the official ELSTAT data for 2020

Greek Merlot 2021 in an international line-up: how do Greece's best compare with Pomerol, Tuscany and friends? All scores and verdicts from our blind tasting.