When you organise plenty of tastings for others and then watch them struggle blind while you yourself have long known what is in the glass, a false sense of security sets in over time. I recently had to learn this again, rather painfully, at first hand. We were invited to friends who know Greek wine very well, and I wanted to bring some wine along for the games evening. Looking at the shelf of bottles still to be tasted, three Xinomavro from Kir-Yianni caught my eye: three wi

Two bottles from the same estate, two price brackets, one score. The Clos Stegasta Rosé 2023, the top rosé from T-Oinos on Tinos, costs around €60 in Greece. The Mavrosé 2025, the house's second rosé, costs around €35 in Greece. In May 2026 both stood side by side in the glass, and in the end the same number stood behind both: 91 points. In direct comparison, the Mavrosé was actually the more supple of the two on the palate. Part of the explanation lies in the vintages. The E

In June 2026, five red wines from Trifilia stood side by side in the glass: the three wines of the Tomos series from the Panagiotopoulos winery, their predecessor, the Cabernet Sauvignon Bio 2010, and, as a neighbourhood comparison, the equally old Anny's Animus Merlot 2014 from the Tsolis winery. The youngest of these wines was twelve years old, the oldest sixteen, and not one of them was tired. That alone is remarkable for a region that hardly anyone has on the map internat

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.