Vintage 2023

late · divided · a quarter less wine

Nationwide 6.0 out of 10 · Confidence of rating: high

Macedonia

Amyndeon · PDO – Red 8.5 · White 7.5 (Confidence: high)

Naoussa · PDO – Red 8.0 · White 6.5 (Confidence: high)

Goumenissa · PDO – Red 7.5 · White 6.5 (Confidence: medium)

Thessaloniki · PGI – Red 5.5 · White 5.5 (Confidence: low)

Epirus

Metsovo · PGI – Red 6.0 · White 6.0 (Confidence: medium)

Thessaly

Meteora · PGI – Red 5.0 · White 6.0 (Confidence: medium)

Central Greece

Attika and Thessaly · PGI – Red 7.0 · White 5.0 (Confidence: high)

Atalanti and Opountia Lokridas · PGI – Red 6.0 · White 6.0 (Confidence: medium)

Peloponnese

Nemea · PDO – Red 6.0 (Confidence: high)

Mantinia · PDO – White 5.0 (Confidence: high)

Cyclades

Santorini and Cyclades · PDO/PGI – Red 6.0 · White 6.0 (Confidence: high)

Crete 7.0 · Pangeon 7.0 · Drama 6.5 · Epanomi 6.0 · Peloponnese outside Nemea and Mantinia 5.5 (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.

Rarely has a single year brought so many extremes across Greece. A winter too warm and too dry, without snow in the north. A cold, wet spring with the latest flowering in decades and an epidemic of downy mildew. One of the longest heatwaves ever measured, lasting two weeks in July, in many places above 43 degrees. Then the fires – Rhodes, Corfu, and in Evros the largest wildfire ever recorded in the European Union up to that point. And finally, in early September, the medicane Daniel: four days of rain, on average 360 millimeters over the Pinios basin, flooded vineyards and cellars, seventeen dead. In the end, the country was missing almost a quarter of its harvest.

And yet this year stands for one of the best Xinomavro vintages in a long time. 2023 was decided at the harvest date. The cold spring phase had pushed everything back. Whatever ripened early ran from the downy mildew straight into the July heat and stood in the September rain with dense, thin-skinned grapes. Whatever ripened late arrived in a window that remained dry and calm after Daniel, with short, cool autumn days.

That is why three and a half points lie between the highest and the lowest value on this page, and they separate not so much north from south as late from early and red from white. In the retrospectives, 2023 is called one of the most challenging vintages of recent decades.

Amyndeon – Red 8.5 · White 7.5

The highest value on this page, and the sharpest positive swing of this vintage. The winter was very dry and remained without snow, which in the highlands, which build up their water reserves in winter, at first looked like a bad omen. There followed a beautiful, cold spring that delayed ripening – and precisely this delay decided the year. The finding from the region: phenolic ripeness without precedent.

The whites stood one point below. They remained fresh and aromatic, but had carried the mildew pressure of early summer with them.

Naoussa – Red 8.0 · White 6.5

Just behind Amyndeon, for the same reason: Xinomavro ripens late anyway, and in 2023 the cold start to spring pushed it even further back, into short, cool autumn days after the passage of Daniel, which left Macedonia to the north untouched. Picking began on September 26, the last blocks around a week later. What came into the cellars was aromatically precise and fresh, with smooth, high-quality tannins, and the verdicts reached as high as "exceptional".

The price was the quantity: 30 to 40 percent less than usual. This did not affect quality, because the remaining fruit was healthy. At Kir-Yianni they say simply that the weather played into Xinomavro's hands, and they place the year alongside 2017.

The whites stood one and a half points below, with the same mildew pressure of early summer as in the rest of the north.

Goumenissa – Red 7.5 · White 6.5

On the southeastern slopes of Paiko the same movement appears, but with an observation that explains the vintage. From April to June there was continuous rain, the vegetation was fifteen days behind, and the downy mildew took hold above all on the leaves. It did not hit everyone equally: the white varieties and the French reds suffered, Xinomavro held firm. In May hail came over the higher sites, from June onwards drought and heatwaves with sunburn, in July around ten days at 43 degrees. In the end, 30 percent of the whites and fifteen percent of the reds were missing.

What remained was unusually good, and for two comprehensible reasons: the berries concentrated, and botrytis stayed away because the vines were not vigorous enough to form dense clusters. The whites came in under 12.5 degrees of alcohol, the reds under 13, both with good acidity. The storm Daniel only grazed the zone with light rainfall.

One and a half points above the national value is the largest premium this region carries in our series. It rests on Xinomavro, for which 2023 was one of the best years ever here.

Attika and Thessaly – Red 7.0 · White 5.0

Two points between the colors, the largest gap on this page. Behind it lies a stretch of land that the same year treated in two different ways.

Over the core zone of Daniel – Thessaly and central Greece – the vineyards stood under water, the cellars likewise, and what still hung on the vine went to botrytis. For everything that was ripe or almost ripe at that point, the vintage was over. The yield loss here was harder than anywhere else in the country.

The late ripeners stood differently. In Rapsani on the eastern slope of Mount Olympus, where Krassato and Stavroto stand alongside Xinomavro, the spared hillside sites had good material; the old Savatiano vines of Attika coped with heat and drought better than almost any other white variety in the country. For the early and mid-early ripening whites, everything the year had to offer came together: first downy mildew, then the July heat, then Daniel.

Lokris, the countryside on the North Euboean Gulf, stands in between with the national value and shows the same course on a smaller scale. A mild winter with a frost wave in early February, a cool, wet spring with late budbreak and high fungal pressure, then the unprecedented July heat, which slowed the vine's metabolism and left the berries lighter. Daniel also reached this coast and brought larger amounts of water, but no flooding. Picking began in the second week of August with Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, finishing at the end of September with the Cabernet Sauvignon.

Crete – 7.0

On Crete, the year met an island that barely knew downy mildew. The high morning humidity of the wet spring led to an outbreak unlike anything in its history, and many estates had no routine with this disease. Then the July heat stopped ripening and pushed the harvest back by around three weeks to the end of August. Production collapsed by 70 percent.

What remained was distributed very unevenly between the colors. The late reds – Liatiko, Kotsifali, Mandilaria – benefited from the delayed ripening and delivered high-quality tannins. Vidiano, Vilana and Thrapsathiri came in reduced in quantity and uneven from site to site. The reds carry the Cretan value of this vintage; the whites lie well below it.

Pangeon 7.0 · Drama 6.5 · Epanomi 6.0

The northeast held its ground. In Pangeon and in Drama, the extremes of the year stayed one level below what they caused elsewhere; both regions stand above the national value, Epanomi exactly on it.

In Epanomi on the Thermaic Gulf, 2023 was a late and, as they say there, very particular vintage: an unusual distribution of temperature and rain that played into the hands of fungal diseases, along with constant vigilance in the vineyard. Picking ran in one continuous stretch from August 21 to the end of September, from the international varieties to the Xinomavro. The verdict in the end: demanding, but very good. Epanomi did not follow the leap that Xinomavro made further north.

Thessaloniki – 5.5

In the regional unit around Thessaloniki, in which Epanomi also lies, spring went particularly badly. In May and the first half of June it rained almost continuously, at temperatures low for the season, and the vines did not dry off in the mornings. The downy mildew took hold above all on the grape stems.

The organically farmed vineyards were hit hardest, since copper is the only permitted treatment against the fungus there; in the end only a minimal part of the harvest could be saved. For the region as a whole, it remained a year under pressure, not a total loss.

Santorini and the Cyclades – Red 6.0 · White 6.0

A quantity catastrophe, not a quality catastrophe. From October to June, around 190 millimeters of rain fell on the island instead of the 320 of the twenty-year average, and for bush vines that work without irrigation at a hard water limit, that is the number everything depends on. On April 23, hail came on top and decimated the southern core zone; the north was spared and had to deal only with the drought and two July heatwaves. There was no rot.

Picking began on August 16, late enough to secure the acidity. What came in was, in the judgment of one of the island's best houses, very good to exceptional, with correct phenolic ripeness. Only there was almost nothing of it: depending on the site, 50 to 90 percent loss, on the island average roughly 30 percent of a normal yield, and prices rose by a quarter. The six therefore does not stand for weak wines, but for the collapse and for the spread between sites. The rest of the Aegean was similar – Kefalonia lost 60 percent of its Robola, Tinos brought in 40 percent of a normal year, while Limnio on Limnos achieved high quality with soft tannins.

Nemea – Red 6.0

The honest weak point among the reds. Agiorgitiko is thin-skinned and grows in dense clusters, and in 2023 that was the wrong constitution. The warm, dry winter had kept the reserves small, the May and June rain brought downy mildew and cost yield, the July heat pushed ripening back, and when the humidity came in September, picking was done quickly for fear of botrytis.

Whoever did not adapt the extraction ends up with green, unripe tannins in the barrel. Great wines emerged where strict selection was carried out in the high-altitude parcels; the valley floor lies clearly below.

Mantinia – White 5.0 · rest of the Peloponnese 5.5

The low point of the vintage, and of all places on the high plateau that usually benefits from difficult years. Budbreak came around ten days too late, in spring there was the fungal pressure, and then a rain and hail event in September destroyed large parts of the northern appellation. Picking did not begin until after mid-October. The Moschofilero from it is slender and light, in part lean; the high plateau's large day-night range preserved the freshness, but the depth of ripeness is missing. Some estates picked early and made rosé from it, just to bring in something at all.

For the rest of the peninsula beyond the two appellations, the vintage stands at 5.5.

Our wines

We tasted twenty-two Greek wines from 2023, from seventeen producers. The median stands at 91 points.

At the top is the Silphium by La Tour Melas from Central Greece, a rosé from Grenache and Syrah. Just behind, tied: the Amethystos red by Domaine Costa Lazaridi from Drama, the Assyrtiko Wild Ferment by GAIA from Santorini, and two whites from Ktima Biblia Chora in the Pangeon, the Plagios and the Sole Vidiano.

From the region that won this vintage, we have not a single red Xinomavro: from Amyndeon we have only two rosés from 2023, both from Ktima Kir-Yianni, the L'Esprit du Lac at 91 and the Akakies Sparkling at 88. From Naoussa, the region just behind in second place, we opened nothing at all from 2023. Both rosés are early-picked wines from a variety whose year was decided at the late harvest date. With the L'Esprit du Lac, this can be cross-checked: we had the same wine from 2021 in the glass on the same day, and it stood at 93 – two points above the 2023, even though the vintage for red Xinomavro in Amyndeon itself lies two points higher.

The Peloponnese behaves in our notes just as the values would lead one to expect. From the appellations of Nemea and Mantinia we have nothing from 2023, but three wines from the rest of the peninsula – 87, 88 and 90 points, all three below the median of this vintage.

One wine goes clearly in the other direction. The Amethystos red from Drama stands at 93, higher than the two older vintages of the same wine that we know, even though Drama lies only half a point above the national value this year.

The Silphium by La Tour Melas stood at 93 as a 2021 and at 94 points as a 2023. The two bottles, however, came into the glass a year apart.

From Ktima Gerovassiliou we tasted the Malagousia from Epanomi twice, at 91 and most recently at 92. It has not declined in the bottle.

Top 3 of our own tastings

Rank 1 – 94 points La Tour Melas Silphium

Rank 2 – 93 points Domaine Costa Lazaridi Amethystos red · GAIA Wines Assyrtiko Wild Ferment · Ktima Biblia Chora Plagios white · Ktima Biblia Chora Sole Vidiano