WELCOME TO GREEK WINES

The red-skinned grape variety Roditis has been on an upward trend in recent years, and is increasingly leaving behind gruesome memories of dreadful retsina. In many places the variety still delivers mostly bulk wine – but more and more estates are taking creative paths to explore this grape's potential entirely anew (see, for instance, also here)). The Roditis 2019 from Ktima Oinotropai now makes a truly tremendous contribution toward getting sceptics to give Roditis a new ch

Sauvignon Blanc is, famously, the second most important white variety internationally after Chardonnay. Among wine lovers, though, it's fairly controversial. Some are put off by the grassy notes, the famous cat's pee, of early-picked vines; others find the combination of substantial tannin and almost kitschy exotic fruit ill-fitting – and then find added oak treatment completely wrong on top of that. I'm not entirely free of such prejudices myself either, even though in an ea

While this website is dedicated specifically to wine from Greece, the long shared history alone means we naturally want to cast a side glance at Cyprus every now and then. And the first thing we set our eyes on today is a rosé from the native varieties Lefkada (80%) and Mavro (20%), the Akti 2021 from Kyperounda Winery. The name of the first variety is misleading - one immediately thinks of white wine (cf. λευκός = "white"). This blend, however, is not a mix of red and white

Sometimes the best tastings just happen on their own. So it was recently that, after a small tasting of Agiorgitiko, we were still sitting around, still in a drinking mood, when I had to pull the bottles in question out of circulation, to keep a sip back for the obligatory re-tasting. Not wanting to be a bad host, I went purposefully to my shelf reserved specifically for such occasions, where, given the late hour and the wine's effects already setting in, there's no longer ro

Agiorgitiko won't let go of us. Just recently we discussed wines from various corners of Greece. (You'll find that post here.) A post on the increasingly important cuvées made with this variety is coming soon too. For now, though, we want to go back briefly to the varietal wines once more. Why? We simply wanted to compare, in real focus, a properly classic Nemea – from the eponymous PDO Nemea – against a well-travelled offshoot, and recently took our time doing just that, wit

A sunny evening in March finally gave us the chance to open the tasting year outdoors with Greek rosé. Moschofilero is a red-skinned variety, much like, say, Pinot Gris, which we know here. Under German wine law, such grapes always yield white wine. In Greece, though, as also for instance in Italy, it's very common to call the sometimes genuinely quite colourful resulting wine a rosé – or rather, what you often even get served in tavernas as κόκκινο κρασί (red wine) belongs i