Vintage 2016
a white wine year · frost in April · rain during the red harvest
Nationwide 6.5 out of 10 · Confidence of rating: medium
Macedonia
Naoussa · PDO – Red 7.0 · White 7.0 (Confidence: medium)
Thessaloniki · PGI – Red 7.0 · White 7.0 (Confidence: low)
Goumenissa · PDO – Red 6.0 · White 6.5 (Confidence: low)
Amyndeon · PDO – Red 5.0 (Confidence: medium)
Thrace
Maroneia · PDO – Red 8.0 · White 8.0 (Confidence: medium)
Epirus
Zitsa · PDO – Red 5.5 · White 5.5 (Confidence: low)
Thessaly
Rapsani · PDO – Red 6.5 (Confidence: low)
Karditsa · PGI – Red 6.5 · White 6.5 (Confidence: low)
Central Greece
Attika · PGI – Red 6.0 · White 7.5 (Confidence: medium)
Atalanti and Opountia Lokridas · PGI – Red 6.5 · White 6.5 (Confidence: medium)
Peloponnese
Nemea · PDO – Red 5.5 · White 6.0 (Confidence: high)
Mantinia · PDO – Red 5.0 · White 5.5 (Confidence: high)
Cyclades
Santorini and Cyclades · PDO/PGI – Red 7.0 · White 8.5 (Confidence: medium)
Crete 8.0 · Drama 7.5 · Pangeon 7.5 · Epanomi 7.5 · Peloponnese outside Nemea and Mantinia 6.0 (each as an overall value without separation by color)
Epanomi lies within the regional unit of Thessaloniki; both carry their own value for this vintage.
The Attika value applies to the plain around Athens, not to Lokris in Phthiotis; that carries its own.
On April 27, in the middle of the Orthodox Easter week, a severe late frost struck the valley of Nemea and Asprokampos. Depending on the vineyard, 20 to 100 percent of the shoots were lost, and on the high plateau of Mantinia about a fifth of the harvest. It was the same European frost spring that hit Burgundy that same month.
After that, everything was heading toward a great vintage. The summer was dry and hot, in places over 40 degrees, and the early varieties came in healthy and aromatic. Then, in the last days of August and the first days of September, the skies opened over the Peloponnese and over Macedonia. Those who had harvested by then had their vintage in the cellar. Those still out in the vineyard had a problem.
That is why 2016 does not divide north and south, but early and late – and thus, almost exactly, white and red. Santorini's Assyrtiko stands at 8.5, the highest white value on this page; Nemea's Agiorgitiko at 5.5, and even Mantinia's Moschofilero does not get past 5.5 – on the high plateau, frost and June rain had already decided matters before the harvest. Between the highest and the lowest value lie three and a half points, and almost all of them lie between two colors.
Santorini – White 8.5
The vintage of the year. The island had a decidedly dry year with smaller water reserves than the year before, no frost worth mentioning, and an advanced vegetation cycle – harvest took place around July 27, roughly ten days earlier than usual. That put the crop safely in long before the mainland was even thinking about harvest.
What came in was healthy, powerful and yet balanced, and it was plentiful: 20 to 30 percent above the normal quantity, around 2,600 tons in total. Among the later years, when quantities on Santorini collapsed, that seems almost luxurious. The Vinsanto of this vintage is considered one of the strongest in a long time. Sunburn remained an issue in the low-lying sites; at altitude, ripening was more even.
Crete – 8.0
The driest year we have on record for the island: 243 millimeters in Heraklion, 99 in Sitia, 504 in Chania. Dryness is no drawback on Crete as long as the reserves are filled and the harvest stays dry, and in 2016 both were the case. There was no storm, hardly any disease pressure, and nothing that fell into the ripening window at the wrong time.
Vidiano, Vilana, Thrapsathiri and Assyrtiko came in clean and ripe; the late-ripening Liatiko, Kotsifali and Mandilaria could ripen fully in the dry season. One winery on the island calls 2016 its milestone year, another speaks of the best grape material since the nineties, and the same critic who calls the vintage difficult for Greece as a whole calls it, for Crete, "one of the best vintages of the last twenty years". The emptied water reserves only became an issue the following winter.
Maroneia – 8.0
In the Thracian coastal plain on the northern Aegean, 2016 passed without any extremes. A mild winter was followed by a summer that was cool for the region, and the grapes reached full ripeness without losing their acidity. Full ripeness with high acidity is the most favorable combination there is, and the region's producers count the year among their best. The value applies to the PDO Maroneia and the neighboring PGI Ismaros, not to the estates further west in the plain.
The Northeast – Drama 7.5 · Pangeon 7.5 · Epanomi 7.5
Three areas, three different landscapes, the same value, each one point above the national average. Pangeon benefits, as in almost every extreme year, from its slopes, altitude and the breeze off the Aegean; Drama from a rainfall surplus that becomes an advantage in dry years.
In Epanomi on the Thermaic Gulf, the sequence is precisely documented: mild winter, bud break on March 20, flowering on May 9, no rain from late May to early August with moderate temperatures. The August rain came where it did no harm at all – it delayed the start of the harvest and improved ripeness, without the vines ever coming under water stress.
Xinomavro – Naoussa 7.0 · Goumenissa 6.0 · Amyndeon 5.0
Two points of difference between the two outer areas, which grow the same leading variety and lie less than 100 kilometers apart. They came about in ten days.
In Naoussa, the September rain was only moderate, and the Xinomavro was harvested around September 14. The wines turned out ripe, round and fleshy, more full-bodied than sternly built – for an appellation whose reputation rests on tannin and structure, that makes for a solid and slightly atypical year. The area's whites stand at the same level.
On the southeastern slopes of Paiko, where Goumenissa blends Xinomavro with Negoska, the year was very dry into high summer. Then, toward the end of August, intense rains arrived, along with a particularly wet first ten days of September. The early varieties were already in by then, a week ahead of the usual date and under good conditions, with sugar and acidity at good levels. The late varieties stood in the wet; producers hoped for an improvement over the previous year, but it is not documented.
The highlands of Amyndeon at 600 to 750 meters, later in any case, were hit much harder by the heavy rain at the turn of the month. The late Xinomavro stood in it, the quantity was large, and selection made the difference. What ripened earlier – the area's international varieties – came through well. The following year, the relationship reverses: then Amyndeon stands two points above Naoussa.
Rapsani – Red 6.5
On the eastern slope of Mount Olympus it was a year without extremes. Until the end of August, Xinomavro, Krassato and Stavroto ripened harmoniously and with very good phenolic ripeness. The rain did not set in until after the first week of September – a different window from the heavy rain that Amyndeon suffered under, and therefore without a deduction. It nevertheless fell during the harvest of three late-ripening varieties, and opinions diverge on that. The value does not apply to Thessaly's other appellations.
Attika – Red 6.0 · White 7.5
The third-highest white value of the vintage, behind Santorini and Maroneia, and for the same reason as on the island: Savatiano copes with drought better than almost any other white variety in the country, and it had been harvested before the rain came. The Easter frost was milder here than on the Peloponnese.
The reds stand a point and a half lower. They were still out when the moisture set in, and had to be selected.
Lokris
In the landscape on the North Euboean Gulf, the year got going early: a mild, dry winter and a warm spring brought bud break forward, July and August became very hot and drove sugar formation, and September stayed cool with little rain. Harvest began with the whites in the first days of August, followed by the reds, and ripening proceeded faster than in the preceding years; by mid-September everything was in the cellar. The grapes came in very healthy, and yields were lower than the year before – 400 to 600 kilograms per stremma at altitude, 700 to 1,000 in the plain.
Unlike in Attika, the colors do not diverge here; both stand at the national value.
Peloponnese – Nemea 5.5 · Mantinia 5.0
The peninsula bore both of the year's blows. First the April frost, then, at the end of June, heavy rain over Tegea and Zeugolatio, which cut Moschofilero yields by 30 to 40 percent, and finally the rain at harvest with botrytis in the lower-lying parcels around Ancient Nemea and Leondio.
Agiorgitiko is thin-skinned, susceptible to frost and rot, and here everything came together. Those who had planted on slopes and at altitude could make very good wines; on the valley floor, only rigorous selection in the vineyard helped. In Mantinia, after frost and June rain, there was simply little left. For the rest of the peninsula, the vintage stands at 6.0.
Our wines
We have tasted eleven Greek wines from 2016, from eleven producers, each only once. The median stands at 90 points.
Of what made this vintage great, nothing sits in our cellar: not a single white wine, no bottle from Santorini, none from Crete. Ten reds and one rosé, and the reds come almost entirely from the areas that stood above the national value.
At the top stands the Epifanis from Metochi Mylopotamos on Mount Athos, probably a single-variety Limnio. We do not keep a separate vintage value for Athos: the peninsula is monastic land with its own administration, and what happens in the vineyards there appears in no harvest report. Just behind it, from Pangeon, with 91 points, the Areti from Ktima Biblia Chora, the first Agiorgitiko ever produced outside Nemea.
This Areti is the only wine of the vintage for which we have a real comparison. We had the 2013 in the glass eight years after harvest at 94 points; the 2016 at the same age at 91, with plenty of juniper and a slightly greenish note. Pangeon stands half a point higher in 2013 than in 2016. One bottle does not prove a vintage, but the direction agrees.
Our two Xinomavro of the vintage are the two weakest wines in the collection: the Merhali from Kelesidi from the PDO Naoussa with 86 points, whose tannin and alcoholic warmth dominated, and, with 88, the SI-LA-VIE from Aidarini, a single-variety Xinomavro from the slopes of Paiko that would qualify for the PDO Goumenissa if it contained the required Negoska. Its vineyards lie higher than those of the appellation, for which we list 6.0.
Four wines come from the Peloponnese, all from origins to which the peninsula-wide value of 6.0 applies, and three of them are Bordeaux varieties. The Pheidias from Olympia Land Estate is a half-and-half blend of Merlot and Agiorgitiko from the PGI Ilia; we tasted it in the same year as the 2015, and the younger one was the fresher and more layered – 90 points, while the 2015 seemed to have passed its peak. For the peninsula, the 2015 vintage value stands higher than 2016. The wine is deliberately held on the bottle for several years before it goes on sale.
The third-highest wine in our 2016 collection comes, of all places, from the Arcadian high plateau, the area with the lowest value of this vintage: the Kalos Agros from Ktima Kalogri with 92 points, a blend of 80 percent Cabernet Sauvignon and 20 percent Moschofilero. After six years it came into the glass rust-brown and smelled of dried fruit, but on the palate it tasted like a crisp white wine. The 5.0 for Mantinia is the area's red value, and with 80 percent Cabernet Sauvignon this wine does indeed fall under it; the appellation's Moschofilero stands at 5.5 and makes up the smaller part here.
Top 3 of our own tastings
Rank 1 – 93 points Metochi Mylopotamos Epifanis
Rank 2 – 92+ points Nadir Winery Avus
Rank 3 – 92 points Ktima Kalogri Kalos Agros
All tasting notes from 2016
· Aidarini SI-LA-VIE · 88
· Astir X Winery Mati Fortuna red · 89
· Avantis Estate Princess · 91
· Dionysos Winery Orama red · 89
· Kelesidi Merhali · 86
· Ktima Biblia Chora Areti red · 91
· Ktima Kalogri Kalos Agros · 92
· Ktima Pavlidis Emphasis Agiorgitiko · 87
· Metochi Mylopotamos Epifanis · 93
· Nadir Winery Avus · 92
· Olympia Land Estate Pheidias · 90
Vintage 2015 · 2016 · Vintage 2017 | All vintages