Vintage 2020

late · healthy · the return to normality

Nationwide 8.0 out of 10 · Confidence of rating: high

Macedonia

Naoussa · PDO – Red 8.0 · White 7.0 (Confidence: high)

Amyndeon · PDO – Red 8.0 (Confidence: high)

Goumenissa · PDO – Red 8.0 · White 8.0 (Confidence: medium)

Thrace

Maroneia · PDO – Red 7.5 · White 7.5 (Confidence: low)

Epirus

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

Thessaly

Rapsani · PDO – Red 8.0 (Confidence: medium)

Karditsa · PGI – Red 8.0 · White 8.0 (Confidence: low)

Central Greece

Atalanti and Opountia Lokridas · PGI – Red 8.0 · White 8.0 (Confidence: medium)

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

Peloponnese

Nemea · PDO – Red 9.0 (Confidence: high)

Mantinia · PDO – White 8.0 (Confidence: high)

Cyclades

Santorini · PDO – White 8.5 (Confidence: high)

Crete 7.5 · Pangeon 8.5 · Drama 8.5 · Epanomi 8.0 (there as an overall value) · Peloponnese outside Nemea and Mantinia 7.5

The Rapsani value applies to the PDO Rapsani on the eastern slope of Mount Olympus, not to the other appellations of Thessaly. The Attika value applies to the plain around Athens, not to Lokris in Phthiotis; that carries its own.

A vintage that stands out above all because nothing extraordinary happened. The harvest began, depending on the variety, seven to ten days later than had recently become usual, and that was precisely the remarkable thing: after a series of years in which heat had pulled ripening forward, the ripening window sat once again where it used to sit. The whites came in with balanced acidity, the late reds with fully ripened tannins. Volumes were ten to fifteen percent below the previous year.

The vintage nevertheless has its catastrophe. It just did not strike the vineyards one would have been watching.

Nemea – 9.0

The highest regional value we award for 2020, and the only red nine in our entire series that stands outside Macedonia. The winter was cold and persistently wet, in Mantinia the frost lasted into March, and the vines started correspondingly late. What followed in summer was heat, but moderate heat: in Mantinia, August temperatures never exceeded 24 degrees on average. Then came a cool, sunny September without any rain worth mentioning.

For Agiorgitiko, that is the rare combination. In hot years, the variety tends to trade fruit for alcohol; here it stayed fresh, with lower yields and impeccable grape health.

The Medicane "Ianos", 17 to 19 September

A Mediterranean cyclone with tropical-like characteristics moved across the west and centre of the country. On Kefalonia, around 760 millimetres fell within 48 hours, on Zakynthos about 250. In Thessaly, around 475 square kilometres of the plain were under water. Four people died, the damage came to around 700 million euros.

For viticulture, what mattered was where the storm went and where it did not. The Ionian Islands and western Thessaly were hit; the southern Aegean, Crete and the northeast were spared. And within Thessaly, the dividing line ran between plain and slope: what flooded the plain of Karditsa was a different story for the hillside sites on Mount Olympus. From one of them, the PGI Krania, comes the highest-rated Thessalian wine we know from this vintage.

Karditsa – 8.0

In the Thessalian plain, little spring rain fell, the summer remained mild and without long temperature swings, and it turned warm for the harvest. The yield was fifteen to twenty percent above the previous year, the sugar levels above that.

Rapsani – Red 8.0

On the eastern slope of Mount Olympus, the harvest began five days after the storm, on 24 September, and it ran in stages across the appellation's three altitude tiers from the coastal plain to above 500 metres. What came in was the cleanest harvest material in years: good ripeness, high must weights, normal depth of colour. The value matches the nationwide one.

It applies to the PDO Rapsani, not to Tyrnavos, Meteora, Karditsa or Magnesia. Krania, too, lies on the same massif, but at around 700 metres it is higher and cooler than the Rapsani zones; no separate number stands for its wines.

Macedonia – Naoussa 8.0 · Amyndeon 8.0 · Goumenissa 8.0

A cooler March drew out budbreak and made it uneven. April and May came warm and dry, with a clear gap between day and night. The summer was xerothermic, with several long heatwaves and the possibility of drought stress, but without any fungal pressure worth mentioning. Autumn brought back the large day-night span that completes ripening; rain did not fall until October and did no more harm.

In Amyndeon, the year can be read from three numbers: 158.8 millimetres of rainfall from April to September, just under 14 degrees of alcohol and 32 hectolitres per hectare. The high-altitude zone that usually worries about full ripening had no trouble with it in 2020.

On the southeastern slopes of Mount Paiko, Goumenissa followed the same course. The winter stayed dry and mild, April and May brought abundant rain, budbreak came ten days later than the year before. The summer ran mild and allowed two short heatwaves without the grapes taking any damage; the weather remained excellent throughout the entire harvest, a small rain delayed it by three days. Volumes were five to ten percent above 2019 – in a year that lost ten to fifteen percent elsewhere.

Epanomi – 8.0

On the peninsula southeast of Thessaloniki, no snow fell in winter, and budbreak here too came around ten days later. Heavy April rains stretched flowering until mid-May and supplied the vines for the rest of the year. July stayed at 28 to 30 degrees by day and 18 to 19 at night – the span that the aromatic whites of this coast live on. The harvest went smoothly, the Xinomavro came in under ideal conditions.

Lokris

On the North Euboean Gulf, 130 kilometres northwest of Athens, winter and spring brought sufficient rain at mild temperatures. Sporadic June rains and a July without great heat pushed ripening back. In the harvest period itself, in August and September, there were normal temperatures with relative dryness, and with the alternating air currents from Parnassus and the gulf, that produced very good sugar and acidity levels. Picking began in the first days of August with the white varieties and ended in the last third of September; the health of the fruit was very good.

The harvest was lost elsewhere: the region's wild boar population once again cost a considerable share, above all among the red varieties. In the higher sites, 300 to 600 kilograms per stremma came in, in the plain 600 to 900.

Maroneia – Red 7.5 · White 7.5

In the Thracian coastal plain south of the Rhodope Mountains, the harvest took place at the normal dates, without any particular plant-protection effort and with roughly the same yields as the year before. Two things shaped the year: there were no heatwaves, and it was dry.

Santorini – White 8.5

The recovery year after the collapse of 2019. Winter brought rain showers, spring stayed mild, and the winds held back; only on 16 April did strong northerly winds brush parts of the northern vineyards. The summer ran typically insular, without extreme heat, with cool nights. Picking began slightly delayed on 4 August.

The decisive figure lies beneath: the island once again brought in around 2,500 tonnes. A year earlier it had been 1,100.

Attika – 7.5

A good winter, a mild spring without frost, then a moderate summer with strikingly cool nights. The dryness pressed down yields, the harvest proceeded normally, and September gave the late reds the phenolic ripeness they needed.

Our wines

We have tasted 97 Greek wines from 2020, from 46 producers. After 2021, that makes this the best-documented vintage in our database. The median sits at 91 points.

The two highest ratings went to the Kokotos Estate from Attika and to the Stella from Ktima Katsarou from Krania in Thessaly. Neither, then, comes from Nemea, the area we rate highest in this vintage. Close behind, each with 95: the Palies Rizes from La Tour Melas, the Malagousia from Ktima Gerovassiliou from Epanomi and two further wines from La Tour Melas, the La Tour Melas itself from Fthiotida and the Cyrus One, a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Agiorgitiko spanning two parts of the country.

From the Kokotos Estate, the 2017 was also in the glass, at almost the same age, and at 98 points it sat even higher – although 2017 is considered the weaker year nationwide. On a single estate, the harvest decides, not the national average.

From Lokris, six wines from four producers stand in the database, led by the La Tour Melas with 95 and the Alepotrypa from Domaine Hatzimichalis with 94 points. From this estate, the vintage can be held against two older ones, and cleanly at that: we tasted the Merlot Alargino from 2004, 2011 and 2020 on the same day, with 95, 94 and 93 points. The series falls towards the youngest vintage. What separates the three glasses is sixteen years of bottle age, not the weather.

Epanomi is a single estate for us: all four wines of the vintage come from Ktima Gerovassiliou, between 92 and 95 points. From Thrace came two bottles from Passas Winery with 89 and 85; their sites lie in the same coastal plain as Maroneia but carry no appellation that exactly matches the regional value.

Top 3 of our own tastings

Rank 1 – 96 points Kokotos Estate Kokotos Estate · Ktima Katsarou Stella

Rank 3 – 95+ points La Tour Melas Palies Rizes