Vintage 2017

hot · saved in September · a vintage of selection

Nationwide 6.5 out of 10 · Confidence of rating: medium

Macedonia

Amyndeon · PDO – Red 9.0 (Confidence: medium)

Thessaloniki · PGI – Red 7.5 · White 6.5 (Confidence: low)

Naoussa · PDO – Red 7.0 · White 7.5 (Confidence: high / low)

Goumenissa · PDO – Red 7.0 · White 5.5 (Confidence: low / medium)

Thrace

Maroneia · PDO – Red 7.0 · White 7.0 (Confidence: low)

Epirus

Metsovo · PGI – Red 6.5 · White 6.5 (Confidence: medium)

Thessaly

Rapsani · PDO – Red 7.5 (Confidence: medium)

Meteora · PGI – Red 7.5 · White 7.5 (Confidence: medium)

Karditsa · PGI – Red 7.0 · White 7.0 (Confidence: low)

Central Greece

Attika · PGI – Red 6.5 · White 6.5 (Confidence: low / medium)

Atalanti and Opountia Lokridas · PGI – Red 6.5 · White 6.5 (Confidence: medium)

Peloponnese

Mantinia · PDO – White 8.0 (Confidence: high)

Nemea · PDO – Red 6.0 (Confidence: high)

Cyclades

Santorini · PDO – White 6.5 (Confidence: medium)

Crete 8.0 · Drama 8.0 · Pangeon 8.0 · Epanomi 7.0 · Peloponnese outside Nemea and Mantinia 7.0 (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.

For Santorini red, no reliable value is available. The Attika value applies to the plain around Athens, not to Lokris in Phthiotis; that carries its own.

Twice this summer, the thermometer stood at a point where winegrowing stops being a craft. At the end of June, the first heatwave reached 44 degrees; in mid-July, Heraklion measured 45.9 – the highest value in 13 years –, and in early August, the wave that is remembered in southern Europe under the name Lucifer swept across half the Mediterranean. In the end, the country lost 30 percent of its harvest.

And yet 2017 is not a bad vintage, but a contradictory one. What saved it came in September: dry, sunny, with cool nights and without a drop at the wrong time. Rot was practically a non-issue nationwide that autumn. The late-ripening varieties caught up on what the heat had taken from them, and those who had held out until then could pick at their leisure.

The price had been set beforehand. The heat had brought the berries of a single vine to different stages: raisins next to pink, still-green berries in the same block. That is why 2017 is above all a vintage of selection. Between the highest and the lowest value on this page lie three and a half points, and they are decided less by region than by elevation above sea level and by how strictly someone sorted.

Amyndeon – Red 9.0

The coldest winegrowing highland in Greece, 600 to 750 meters above sea level, regularly delivers in hot years the opposite of what the rest of the country reports – and 2017 is the clearest case in that series. What burned the south gave here only the warmth that Xinomavro otherwise lacks at this elevation.

Yields were small and concentrated, the autumn dry and cool, and the grapes came in fully ripened – all varieties, not just the early ones. For the late, thick-skinned Xinomavro, that is the constellation people there wait years for: ripe tannins with retained acidity, without a rain event forcing the harvest.

Two and a half points above the national value – the 9.0 is the highest value we award in this vintage, and it rests on the elevation, not on the country's weather report.

Mantinia – White 8.0

The second winner also lies high: around 650 meters, a plateau in the middle of the Peloponnese, where the nights cool down even in the hottest summer. It is exactly this span between day and night that Moschofilero needs to keep its terpenes.

It was preceded by a difficult spring. A late frost pushed down the quantity considerably, and what remained grew into a very hot summer. But the alcohol did not fall below 12 degrees, which regularly happens to Moschofilero in cool years, and the wines turned out concentrated and aromatic at the same time. In Mantinia, the comparison drawn is with 1994.

Crete – 8.0

On Crete, it started with water. After the dry year 2016 came a wet, cold winter with snow that refilled the reserves, then a moderate spring and a late start to the season. When the extreme heat arrived – up to 45.9 degrees in the hottest part of the country –, the vines stood on full reserves.

After that, it stayed dry into the harvest, and without rain there was no rot. Vidiano and Vilana came in healthy and concentrated and produced one of the finer white wine vintages of the decade, despite a yield that was 30 percent below the usual. The late-ripening reds – Liatiko, Kotsifali, Mandilaria – benefited from the dry autumn; in the hot valley, overripeness loomed, at elevation, freshness remained.

Rapsani – Red 7.5

On the eastern slope of Mount Olympus, the harvest began staggered by elevation: from September 23 in the lowest zone, from the 28th in the middle one, from October 1 in the highest – altogether five days earlier than usual. The grapes were among the cleanest of several years, ripeness was good, the alcohol level high, the color normally pronounced.

For the red cuvée of Xinomavro, Krassato and Stavroto, 2017 was thus a year above the national average, but below the highland: half a point above Naoussa, one and a half below Amyndeon. This value does not apply to the other appellations of Thessaly.

Naoussa – Red 7.0 · White 7.5

Here, 2017 was a year in two halves. Until March, around 200 millimeters fell, then the moisture broke off and it stayed dry into May; after a single July day with rain, dryness and heat took over again. This alternation stressed the vines and cut the ripening apart: shriveled berries and still-unripe ones in the same block.

September saved it. The sun was perfect, it stayed warm, and the bulk of the Xinomavro was in the cellar by the 25th. What promised to become a late-harvest year ended slightly early. The wines were made in the traditional style, tannin-driven and structured, and they need time in the bottle.

Sorting was still necessary, berry by berry. In Naoussa, 2017 separates more clearly than other vintages those who looked closely in the vineyard from those who brought in everything.

The whites of the area stand half a point above that. April was dry and cool, so without downy mildew pressure, fruit set was complete by the end of May, the summer stayed warm without ever exceeding 37 degrees, and throughout the whole ripening phase the nights cooled down noticeably. Aromatic white varieties need exactly that. The appellation itself knows only red wine.

Goumenissa – Red 7.0 · White 5.5

One and a half points between the two colors of one area: on the southeastern slopes of Paiko, 2017 separates more sharply than anywhere else in this vintage, and both sides are documented. Around 17 days in June and July were above 37 degrees, and over 30 to 35 days in July and August the day-night difference fell below 8 degrees – for aromatic whites, the most unfavorable combination a summer can offer. The white international varieties accordingly came in low in acidity and with 10 to 15 percent less yield; the Greek varieties of the area did not show these losses.

The late reds benefited from the same weather: very high sunshine hours over the ripening phase, ten days of delay, in the end a result half a point above the national average and on a level with Naoussa. The value applies to the PDO Goumenissa and the Paiko flank, not to the other sites of Kilkis.

Santorini – White 6.5

The island began with what one producer there called the best spring of the decade. At the end of June, it tipped over. The heatwaves quite literally scorched the exposed grapes: 40 to 60 percent of the yield was affected by sunburn, and the persistent drought intensified the stress. Gaia Wines described it as catastrophe having knocked at the door.

Harvest was early, from the beginning to the middle of August, without rain and without a rot problem – it was purely a heat year. What remained hinged on selection: in the cellars, in some cases half the must was discarded, and those who worked that way got powerful, in some cases outstanding wines. Those who did not sort got broad, alcohol-heavy Assyrtiko with little freshness.

The damage at the end of June hit above all the quantity: 30 percent below the previous year and half the island average. What made it into the bottle showed intense fruit, good acidity and a balanced palate. For the island's red varieties, Mavrotragano and Mandilaria, no reliable value is available.

Attika – Red 6.5 · White 6.5

The advantage of the early varieties. Savatiano, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Malagousia were harvested before the hot September even became a question, and the old Savatiano vines of Attika cope with drought better than almost any other white variety in the country anyway. The grapes were healthy and ripe, the quantities small.

A single event was responsible for that. At the end of June, the thermometer stood at 43 degrees for three days, and the sun burned leaves and grapes alike. Savatiano, with its thin canopy, was hit hardest – around half the yield –, the varieties with dense foliage got away with 10 to 15 percent.

For the late reds, the year fell back to the national average. The winter was rainy, the spring wet enough, and unlike in the rest of the country, the vines here stood on full reserves; harvest was four to five days earlier than the previous year and without rot. What was missing was the foliage that the long ripening phase would have needed.

Lokris

130 kilometers northwest of Athens, on the North Euboean Gulf between Parnassus and the strait, lies Opuntian Lokris. In a year of extremes, it came through unusually calmly. A cold winter and a rainy, cool spring slightly delayed budbreak. June and July then brought abrupt changes – rainfalls with short heat spikes in between –, and what absorbed them was the microclimate of the landscape: the interplay of air currents from Parnassus and from the gulf, which caps the daily peaks above these slopes. In August and September, no more rain fell. The grapes came in healthy, the ripening conditions remained favorable.

This year's loss had four legs: the landscape's wild boar population grew strongly and ate a considerable quantity of grapes – an occurrence that reminded the local producers of the Homeric descriptions of their region.

Nemea – Red 6.0

The weak point of the year. Agiorgitiko is thin-skinned and heat-sensitive, and the July and August heat hit it in the most unfavorable phase: ripening stalled instead of running to completion. The spring frost had already pushed down the quantity beforehand.

What the valley basin produced was aromatically fine, but without the color and structure of a good Agiorgitiko year. Things looked different on heavier, water-retaining soils – parts of Koutsi, Leontio, Asprokampos – and at the higher elevations: there, the soil buffers, and ripening ran through. Thanks to the dry autumn, there was no rot anywhere.

North and East – Drama 8.0 · Pangeon 8.0 · Epanomi 7.0 · Maroneia 7.0

Drama and Pangeon belong to the areas that tend to benefit from a hot year: both stand one and a half points above the national value, Pangeon thanks to its hillside sites, elevation and the breeze from the Aegean, Drama thanks to a rainfall surplus that becomes an advantage in dry years.

In Epanomi on the Thermaic Gulf, the year began with an unusually long, hard winter; for around a month and a half, the temperature stayed below zero. The cycle was correspondingly delayed; harvest began on August 13 for whites and on the 20th for reds, with 10 to 15 percent less quantity.

Far in the east, in the Thracian coastal plain around Maroneia, the vintage stands half a point above the national average, for red as for white. The value applies to the PDO Maroneia and the neighboring PGI Ismaros, not to the estates of the plain further west.

Our wines

We tasted 49 Greek wines from 2017, from 31 producers. The median stands at 92 points.

At the top stands the wine with the highest rating in our entire database: the Vrana Petra from Thymiopoulos Vineyards in Naoussa, a single-varietal Xinomavro. Behind it follows the red Kokotos Estate from Attika, a cuvée of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, then, tied, two very different wines: the Sole from Ktima Biblia Chora, a Sémillon with Gewürztraminer from Pangeon, and the Nostos Syrah from Manousakis in Chania.

From Amyndeon, the highest-rated area of this vintage, three Xinomavro stand in the database, all from Alpha Estate: the Hedgehog and the Barba Yannis Reserve with 93 each, plus the Barba Yannis Reserve from a second tasting with 90. No Amyndeon vintage we have otherwise had in the glass stands higher in our own notes.

From Thrace, one wine stands in the database: the Mavroudi from Tsantali from the PGI Ismaros, with 92 points, from an indigenous variety that hardly anyone grows outside this corner of the country.

From Lokris, four wines stand with us, all red and all from Domaine Hatzimichalis: the Aglianico with 92, the Cabernet Sauvignon with 91, the Alfega with 89 and the Merlot from the Yataki vineyard with 86 points. The four bottles show how evenly this one estate came through a year that produced outliers in both directions elsewhere. From Goumenissa, we opened nothing from 2017.

From Mantinia, the strongest white wine area of this year, no bottle stands with us. The Avlotopi from Ktima Tselepos with 92 points comes from the same plateau, but is a Cabernet Sauvignon. From the PDO Nemea and from Santorini, we also opened nothing from 2017; from the Cyclades, two Mavrotragano stand in the database, the one from Hatzidakis with 93 and the one from Estate Argyros with 90.

Four wines of this vintage we tasted multiple times, all from two estates. The S.M.X. from Alpha Estate, a cuvée of Syrah, Merlot and Xinomavro, we had in the glass in 2021 with 95, in 2024 with 92 and again in 2026 with 92; the Axia from the same address in 2021 with 92, in 2024 with 90 and in 2026 with 89; the Barba Yannis Reserve in 2021 with 93 and in 2024 with 90. The Avaton from Ktima Gerovassiliou stood at 94 in 2021 and at 92 in 2026. All four series point downward, none is rising. Anyone with these bottles in the cellar should not leave them lying indefinitely.

Top 3 of our own tastings

Rank 1 – 99+ points Thymiopoulos Vineyards Vrana Petra

Rank 2 – 98+ points Kokotos Estate Kokotos Estate

Rank 3 – 96 points Ktima Biblia Chora Sole Semillon · Manousakis Winery Nostos Syrah