Merlot 2021: How Does Greece Compare Internationally?

Galatrona 2021 – Petrolo, Tuscany (100% Merlot)

Merlot Alargino 2021 – Ktima Hatzimichalis, Atalanti-Tal (100% Merlot)

Lacules Estate Merlot 2021 – Messinia (100% Merlot)

The Emperor Limited Edition 2021 – Papargyriou Winery, Korinthia (95% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc)

Dame Rouge III 2021 – Jima Winery, Arta (90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc)](wix:74eb3f_ed913a08f96b48788f9b126097d3781e~mv2.jpg|3024x3024)

Merlot doesn't have it easy. The variety that yields some of the world's most expensive wines in Pomerol and Saint-Émilion elsewhere struggles with a reputation for delivering crowd-pleasing rather than great wine. Ever since the film Sideways (2004) – if not before – it has had an image problem, at least in the minds of those who let cinema dictate their wine preferences. I, by contrast, happen to like the film – and the grape as well.

In this article, I want to shine a spotlight on the 2021 vintage and examine in detail how a selection of Greek Merlots measures up against international benchmarks. After all, I believe Greek wine is now good enough to deserve this kind of close scrutiny. In other countries and regions, it has long been standard practice to critically assess quality by terroir, individual vineyard site and vintage. Greece, too, should be held to that standard – and it passes the test. Here, then, is one piece of that puzzle, based on a tasting from February 2025. I hope to retaste some of the wines discussed here soon and report whether my impressions are confirmed – for one of them, I've already done so – you'll find the follow-up note below.

A Difficult Vintage in Bordeaux

2021 was a year Bordeaux's Merlot growers would rather forget. It started promisingly: a mild, wet winter led to early budbreak in late March. But that very precocity proved the vines' undoing. On 7 and 8 April, severe late frosts swept across the entire Bordelais – from the Médoc through Saint-Émilion and Pomerol down to Graves and Pessac-Léognan. The newly burst buds were left completely unprotected. On top of that, millerandage (uneven fruit set / 'hen and chicken') caused significant yield losses, particularly for the early-budding Merlot. Growers battled night after night with frost candles and wind machines to save their crop.

Cool May weather then put the brakes on growth. After flowering, heavy rainstorms from late June into early July created ideal conditions for downy mildew. The top estates responded with intensive spray programmes and labour-intensive canopy management to remove infected bunches and improve airflow. Only in August and early September did warm, dry weather return, halting the rot and driving ripening forward.

Even so, sugar levels remained low. The generally cool growing season meant that many estates had to chaptalize. Alcohol levels are more reminiscent of the 1980s than of the powerful 2018, 2019 and 2020 vintages. Maceration times were kept shorter to avoid extracting unripe, green seed tannins. The harvest began in late September with the Merlot, followed a week later by Cabernet Sauvignon – all under the constraints of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Yields averaged five to ten per cent below the long-term average — in isolated cases considerably more. The information in this section is drawn from the Wine-Searcher Vintage Report 2021.

Here one must differentiate, for the two banks of the Gironde tell very different stories. On the Left Bank, Cabernet Sauvignon was the clear lifeline. Top estates such as Lafite and Latour built their Grand Vins around historically high Cabernet proportions of up to 96 per cent. Merlot played only a supporting role in many 2021 Médoc blends.

On the Right Bank – that is, in Saint-Émilion and Pomerol, Merlot's true heartland – the picture is more complicated. Here, varietal purity is a relative concept to begin with: most wines are Merlot-dominated, complemented by Cabernet Franc as the second lead variety. Merlot thrives on the cooler limestone and clay-limestone soils, while Cabernet Franc prefers the sandier parcels. The 2021 was no great, uniform vintage on the Right Bank – but nor was it simply a weak one. Berry Bros. & Rudd aptly describes it as "extremely heterogeneous" – yet also as a vintage of classic freshness rather than the warmth and opulence of the preceding vintages.

Harvest timing was key: most Merlots were already in the cellar before the tricky October weather set in, while Cabernet Franc enjoyed extra hang time. Where growers pulled that off, the extra ripeness brought perfume, tension and polish to the finished wines. But it would be wrong to write off 2021 on the Right Bank simply as "a Cabernet Franc vintage rather than a Merlot vintage." The majority of the best wines were still Merlot-dominant, especially in the finest terroirs of Pomerol and Saint-Émilion. Cabernet Franc often shone in the details – as a complement, not a stand-in. At the same time, the Right Bank came through the season slightly better overall than the Left, because Saint-Émilion and Pomerol benefit from a slightly warmer mesoclimate and ripened earlier.

Set 2021 alongside its immediate predecessors and the character of the vintage comes into even sharper focus. The 2018 vintage brought opulence and power, 2019 charm and approachability, while 2020 married structure with elegance and is regarded by many as the finest of the three. 2021, by contrast, is clearly the lightest, coolest and least opulent of this quartet. At its best, it can offer a lovely classic line reminiscent of the Bordeaux style of earlier decades. My verdict on 2021, in the box at right: classic, fresh, often elegant, but highly variable – strict selection is essential. Top results only where the terroir is good and the selection rigorous.

A Very Different Vintage in Greece

In Greece, 2021 tells an entirely different story. March was cold, which slowed budbreak – paradoxically an advantage, since the buds were still protected when the few late frosts struck. April and May brought severe drought with wide diurnal temperature swings, delaying flowering by about a week.

The summer that followed was hot and dry – with two marked heatwaves in June and again in late July and early August, but without the disease pressure that so plagued Bordeaux. No downy mildew, no rot. The vines did suffer considerable drought stress, which cut yields by 10 to 15 per cent on 2020, but in return the smaller berries delivered outstanding concentration with deep colour extraction and excellent phenolic ripeness.

The available regional harvest reports point to a clear hierarchy for 2021: red wines benefited more than whites, late-ripening varieties more than early, northern regions more than southern. That is how the 2021 Harvest Report of the Greek Wine Federation (PDF) sums it up. In terms of style, expect many 2021 reds to show deep colour, firm tannins and generous ripeness – with acidity on the moderate-to-low side. Indigenous varieties such as Xinomavro, better adapted to hot, dry conditions, were at an advantage overall. With international varieties like Merlot, 2021 calls for a closer look at the individual region.

Merlot and Syrah in particular benefited from the conditions – though not equally everywhere. The 2021 Harvest Report from Kir-Yianni, one of Northern Greece's leading estates, explicitly states that these two varieties were "favoured" by the summer drought and heat: the grapes came into the winery healthy, aromatic and rich in phenolic compounds. In Amyndeon, Kir-Yianni even scores its 2021 Merlot a perfect 10 out of 10. Producers in Drama, too – a region officially recognised as particularly well suited to international red varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah – report – despite the heat and drought – aromatic intensity, surprising freshness and good acid balance.

In the Peloponnese, 2021 is more interesting but also more challenging. For Nemea, the official report describes deeply coloured, tannic wines with sharply reduced yields – though acidity was often low. The result is powerful, structured wines rather than classically balanced ones. Altitude and water management proved decisive here: vineyards above 600 metres coped with the heat better than lower-lying, unirrigated sites.

To put 2021 in proper context, it helps to look at the neighbouring vintages. In Greece, 2019 and 2020 are regarded as the more "classic" reference years: 2019 with ample water, no extreme heatwaves and unusually high acidity by Mediterranean standards – one of the best harvests of the past twenty years. 2020 was almost a textbook year for varietal typicity, with a mild winter and no heatwave during the ripening phase. 2021, by contrast, is the more demanding, more powerful vintage – not the most harmonious, but often remarkably concentrated in the best sites. Those after the purest, most precise and balanced Merlot are better served by 2019 or 2020. Those looking for powerful, structured wines with depth and ageing potential will find 2021 hugely rewarding – provided the producers knew what they were doing.

How Do the Greeks Fare?

I was curious to see what Greek Merlots were capable of in this exacting vintage – one that rewarded rigorous selection – and whether they could hold their own in international company. So I tasted six wines: a benchmark Pomerol, a world-class Italian Merlot and four Greek contenders from strikingly different regions, from the Atalanti Valley via the Peloponnese to north-western Greece:

• Château La Croix 2021 – Pomerol (90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc)

• Galatrona 2021 – Petrolo, Tuscany (100% Merlot)

• Merlot Alargino 2021 – Ktima Hatzimichalis, Atalanti Valley (100% Merlot)

• Lacules Estate Merlot 2021 – Messinia (100% Merlot)

• The Emperor Limited Edition 2021 – Papargyriou Winery, Korinthia (95% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc)

• Dame Rouge III 2021 – Jima Winery, Arta (90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc)

The result? This much we can say up front: Greece can hold its own.

The Tasting

Château La Croix 2021 – Pomerol

Every tasting needs a reference point. For a Merlot comparison, Pomerol is the obvious choice – the small appellation on Bordeaux's Right Bank that produces some of the world's most expensive Merlot-based wines. Pétrus, Le Pin, Lafleur – the icons, admittedly, are in a league of their own – well beyond the scope of this tasting. Château La Croix, however – a solid, mid-priced Pomerol – offers an honest, realistic benchmark.

The estate sits in Catusseau, right next to Château Beauregard, on sandy gravel terraces with iron-rich soil. This terroir was long considered second-rate in Pomerol – too light, too sandy. It took climate change to show that it is precisely these soils that can produce wines of unusual finesse. The Janoueix family has owned the ten-hectare estate for over 150 years and farms further vineyards on the Right Bank. As for the 2021's composition: the publicly available information is surprisingly inconsistent. Depending on the source, you'll find either 90% Merlot with 10% Cabernet Franc or 95% Merlot with 5% Malbec – and even the stated alcohol ranges from 13.0% to 14.0%. Even Lobenberg's own website gives two different blends for the same wine and vintage on two separate product pages. For the Greek wines in this tasting, the data can usually be verified directly with the producer; with Bordeaux, where information passes through several layers of négociants, that can be trickier. I'm going with 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc at around 13.5% alcohol.

The La Croix 2021 is remarkably dense on the nose, and this density carries straight through onto the palate. Plenty of dark berry fruit, above all sloe, with a fine sandalwood note that spreads out beneath the fruit like a carpet. Then, with some air and time, the wine opens up and reveals quite a different side: juicy, fruity, refreshing – a lovely, classic Pomerol that doesn't try to impress with extraction or heavy-handed oak, but lets grape and terroir do the talking. 92 points.

Around the same time, I tasted the 2015 La Croix – and the comparison brings the difference between the vintages into sharp relief. On the Right Bank, 2015 is regarded as one of the clear counterpoints to 2021: Decanter calls the vintage "seductive" – Merlot was a great success, with plenty of fruit and very fine tannins. My impression of the 2015 bears this out: for me, it merits at least 94 points and shows what this estate can deliver in a great Merlot year. The two-point gap between it and the 2021 may look small on paper, but in the glass it is unmistakable.

Lobenberg gives this wine 97–98+ points; Weinwisser, 95–96. I find that far too generous. The La Croix 2021 is charming and eminently drinkable, no question. But 2021 was a difficult vintage for Bordeaux Merlot, and the wine reflects that. It is lighter and more delicate than La Croix in top vintages – a solid performer, but hardly a revelation. Yet that is precisely what makes it the right reference wine for our purposes: what can an honest Pomerol deliver in a difficult Merlot vintage? The answer: 92 points. That is the benchmark.

Galatrona 2021 – Petrolo, Tuscany

If Château La Croix was the honest benchmark, then Petrolo's Galatrona is the statement of intent. You notice it the moment you pour it: the colour alone is in a different league, and the wine sits strikingly deep and concentrated in the glass. Put the two wines side by side and you don't need a tasting note to know that an altogether different level of ambition is at play here.

Petrolo is a small family estate in the Val d'Arno di Sopra, a subzone east of Chianti that has made a name for itself with international varieties. The Bazzocchi-Sanjust family acquired the property in the 1940s; today Luca Sanjust is the third generation to run it, after abandoning his career as an artist in Rome in 1993 and returning home. Galatrona, the estate's flagship wine, was first bottled in 1994: 100% Merlot from a single vineyard planted between the late 1980s and mid-1990s with low-vigour Bordeaux clones. Some 50,000 vines are planted across roughly ten hectares on southeast-facing slopes at an elevation of around 300 metres. The clay-loam soils, laced with schist, marl and sandstone, retain the moisture Merlot needs in the hot Tuscan summers. The estate has been certified organic since 2016 and is dry-farmed.

In the cellar, Petrolo takes a deliberately restrained approach: hand-picking followed by careful sorting, spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts in glass-lined concrete tanks, gentle extraction by hand, malolactic fermentation in oak, then 18 to 20 months' ageing in French barriques and tonneaux, roughly a third of it new. This is not a wine that sets out to impress with 100% new oak or aggressive extraction, but one built on fruit, precision and terroir.

The 2021 vintage was not an easy one in Tuscany either. Spring frost and summer drought cut production at Petrolo by around 30%. The grapes that made it through to harvest, however, reached optimal ripeness – and the numbers bear this out: 14% alcohol with 5.89 g/l of total acidity and a pH of 3.56. That makes the 2021 actually fresher in its acidity on paper than the 2019 and 2020 vintages – a combination of concentration and freshness that shows immediately in the glass.

And that is exactly how the wine tastes. On the palate it is utterly mouth-filling, with exquisite nougat notes and a delicate touch of juniper that lends the wine an almost Mediterranean herbal quality. The oak is beautifully integrated – present but never dominant, which, given the moderate proportion of new oak, comes as no surprise. The tannins are fine but still youthful, and behind the dense, dark fruit lies a freshness that gives the wine a verticality rarely found in Merlot. 97 points – to my mind, one of the finest single-varietal Merlots in the world.

A few months after the Merlot tasting, in December 2025, I opened another bottle – this time alongside the Fattoria Le Pupille Saffredi 2022, a Bordeaux blend with a slight Cabernet Sauvignon majority. The Galatrona showed superbly, especially early on: so much fruit, so much power, mouth-coating richness and a wonderfully bloody finish. There was also a surprising amount of tannin – more than I remembered. I had given it somewhat less air than the Saffredi, which made it come across as more youthful and powerful at first. With more air and as it warmed up in the glass, the Saffredi then showed its strengths and pulled ahead (98+ for the Saffredi). The Galatrona holds steady at 97 points – but with enormous potential. I would not be surprised if it hits 99 one day.

International critics take a similar view: Falstaff awards 100 points, James Suckling 98, Wine Enthusiast 97, Vinous 98, Decanter 97 and Parker 97+. That this wine can still be had for around €100 feels almost like an oversight, given what comparably rated Bordeaux – or its more famous Tuscan neighbour, Masseto – fetch. So, after the modest Pomerol benchmark, a wine of genuine world class has now entered the picture. The question is no longer whether the Greek Merlots can beat the Pomerol – that would be too easy. The question is how close they come to the Galatrona.

Merlot Alargino 2021 – Ktima Hatzimichalis, Atalanti Valley

If there is one wine that tells the story of Greek Merlot, it is the Merlot Alargino from Domaine Hatzimichalis. In 1973, Dimitris Hatzimichalis founded his winery in the Atalanti Valley in Central Greece – a corridor of land between Mount Parnassus and the Euboean Gulf, whose cooling crosswinds give the vines the respite they need on summer nights in this climate. Domaine Hatzimichalis was one of the first Greek wineries to plant international varieties alongside indigenous grapes, and the very first to bottle a varietal Merlot – starting with the 1989 vintage. That is no mere footnote. It means the story of Greek Merlot begins here.

I have been following the Merlot Alargino for several years, and the resulting vertical is among the most instructive experiences I have had with Greek wine. My first encounter with Hatzimichalis Merlot, though, was rather sobering: the Merlot Yataki 2017, the estate's entry-level bottling, left me unconvinced: 86 points, with a hot, alcoholic finish. Which made it all the more surprising when I discovered the Alargino – a different world entirely. The 1992 – which I first tasted in 2025, more than thirty years after harvest – was reportedly the first Greek wine ever to appear on the IWC Top 100. At just 12% alcohol, it was still fresh and juicy, with dense raspberry aromas interwoven with notes of mushroom and earth, and soft but still perceptible tannins: 93 points and a wine that should hold comfortably through 2030. The 2004 proved the high point of my Alargino experience so far: leather, liquorice, flint, graphite, blackberry, superb acidity – at the peak of its development. 95 points. The 2011 told an entirely different story: initially mushroom and forest floor, but it improved remarkably over several days, with the black olive aromas typical of mature Hatzimichalis Merlot and a complexity that surpassed even the 2020. 94+ points. The 2020, finally, showed a pale colour and recalled a Pomerol from a hot vintage – cherries, marzipan, firm but finely polished tannins, outstanding finish. 93 points, with upside.

What this vertical makes clear: the Alargino Merlot is not a wine that shows its whole hand in its first year. It needs time – and it rewards patience.

Technically, the Alargino has more in common with the Galatrona than one might think: it, too, is a dry-farmed, low-yielding single-vineyard Merlot – the grapes come from the "Alargino" vineyard in Zygos, meaning "the most distant one," at an elevation of 320 to 350 metres, with yields of just 3,500 kg/ha. Its total acidity of 5.8 g/l is virtually identical to the Galatrona's (5.89 g/l), and the altitude is comparable. When it comes to oak, however, the contrast is stark: where Petrolo opts for 18 to 20 months with only one-third new wood, Hatzimichalis chooses 12 months in exclusively new 228-litre French barriques, followed by a further 12 months of bottle ageing in the estate's underground cellars before release. With 100 per cent new oak, it is the vintage's fruit concentration that determines whether the wood overwhelms the wine or provides the right frame.

In the glass, the 2021 is quite expressive on the nose, with plenty of cherry jam – more concentrated and more inviting than the somewhat more reticent 2020 at the same age. On the palate, sea buckthorn and marzipan, with good length, and right at the end a subtle plum note sneaks in behind the sea buckthorn. 93+ points – on the same level as the 2020. Both will reach 95 points one day – I'm convinced of it. Interestingly, though, the 2021, at roughly the same point after harvest, already shows slightly better-integrated oak than the 2020 did at the same stage. For a wine with 100 per cent new oak, that is a good sign. Leonidas Hatzimichalis said in August 2021 that harvest had begun about ten days earlier than usual because of the heat and that 2021 was an excellent vintage – the concentration and ripeness in the glass bear him out.

With a production of just 3,000 bottles and a price well below that of the Galatrona, the Merlot Alargino occupies a singular position in the Greek wine landscape: a pioneering wine with a track record of ageing documented over more than three decades, largely overlooked by international critics to date. The vertical speaks for itself.

Lacules Estate Merlot 2021 – Messinia

Lacules Estate is the kind of winery that, by rights, shouldn't exist. In the mid-1990s, Friedrich Gruber, an Austrian architect who had designed wine cellars from Napa Valley to Monte Carlo, acquired land above Lacules Bay near Koroni on the southwest coast of the Peloponnese – and planted vines. His daughter Barbara interned in Napa Valley; her partner Jörg Salchenegger, a PhD chemist, took over the winemaking. The result bears little resemblance to what you'd expect from the southern Peloponnese.

At the heart of the Merlot are vines planted in 1981 in the Chandrinos vineyard in Messinia – at an elevation of roughly 340 metres, on intensely red, well-drained Terra Rossa. What makes them particularly noteworthy: according to the estate, the vines are own-rooted – that is, they were never grafted onto American rootstocks. For over 40 years, the vines have been sinking their own roots directly into Messinian soil. Such vines are rare in Europe but do survive in a handful of favoured sites. The Lacules Merlot is therefore not a pre-phylloxera museum piece – the vines were planted in 1981, after all – but it is a remarkable example of old, own-rooted Merlot in Messinia. Add to that rigorous dry farming – no irrigation whatsoever – and very low yields – in fact, 2021 was the first year in which the estate forwent a green harvest, as the vintage had reduced yields naturally.

The Merlot's élevage has one unusual feature that is hard to glean from publicly available sources, which is why I asked winemaker Barbara Gruber directly: the grapes are fermented in Greece in small stainless steel tanks, with up to five manual punch-downs (pigeage) a day – an intensive but gentle extraction method. For the 2021 vintage, the finished wine was then transferred to Austria and aged there for 18 months in barriques, 70 per cent new, predominantly French with a small proportion of American oak. Bottling also took place in Austria. This means we now have four fundamentally different approaches to oak side by side: Château La Croix relies on minimal new oak and large-format vessels, Galatrona opts for one-third new oak over 18 to 20 months, Hatzimichalis goes for 100 per cent new French barriques for 12 months, and Lacules uses 70 per cent new oak from mixed origins for 18 months. All three serious single-vineyard Merlots – Galatrona, Alargino, Lacules – are dry-farmed at similar elevations between 300 and 350 metres; what sets them apart in the glass is, above all, the signature of the cellar work. The estate's own winery in Greece is due to be completed shortly; from the 2027 vintage, Lacules Estate plans to handle the entire élevage on site in Messinia. That the wine is currently made in two countries is a pragmatic compromise – and it evidently does the quality no harm.

I had already tasted Lacules Estate's entire 2021 portfolio apart from the Merlot: the Syrah (96 points, one of Greece's finest Syrahs), the Grenache (93 points, the estate's first vintage of this variety) and The Chord (92+ points, the estate's second wine, a blend). René Gabriel has been awarding the Lacules Merlot top-tier scores for years – the 2017 at 19/20, the 2018 and 2021 each at 18/20. As for the Merlot itself, I was already familiar with the 2018 (96 points, exotic and smoky, with candied pineapple on the nose) and the 2019 (94+ points, perfumed and floral, still astringent, but with a concentration next to which a Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Classé seemed positively watery). What sets each of these vintages apart is an aromatic profile entirely its own – no two Lacules Merlots are alike.

The 2021 is no exception. The concentration in the glass alone recalls the Galatrona – at this point the two wines are no longer separated by country of origin, but purely by style. Tasted blind, you could mistake this for an Australian Cabernet on the nose: a full-on eucalyptus blast that clears your sinuses. On the palate, incredibly powerful fruit on the attack, followed by a wallop of clove. You have to like that – it's idiosyncratic. But that very idiosyncrasy is what defines the Lacules Merlot. Each vintage has its own unmistakable aromatic profile, every bit as distinctive as the 2018 and 2019 were in their own way. What's striking is that the 2021 is noticeably more open than the 2019 was at the same stage after the harvest. It's already a great pleasure to drink – provided you enjoy the "freaky" aromatic profile. I do.

96 points – on a par with the legendary 2018 and just one point behind the Galatrona. That makes the Peloponnese – whose 2021 vintage is officially rated as more powerful, with lower acidity – the source of a Merlot that can hold its own against Tuscany's finest. The difference: the Galatrona impresses with its verticality and tension, the Lacules with its sheer concentration and its idiosyncratic aromatic profile. Two philosophies, scaling almost the same heights.

The Emperor Limited Edition 2021 – Papargyriou Winery, Korinthia

Yiannis Papargyriou is known on the Greek wine scene for powerful, concentrated reds – wines that, with their high extract and sweetness, won't win everyone over. The Le Roi des Montagnes Syrah, for instance, divides opinion, even though we rated it a strong 93+ in the 2020 vintage. The Cuvée Espérance 2021, a single-varietal Montepulciano, also won us over, earning 92+ points. The Emperor, the estate's new flagship, is a different beast entirely. The 2021 is the inaugural vintage – and it will be made only in exceptional years. The next, 2023, is slated for release in late 2026.

On paper, the numbers look ambitious: 95% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc, 15% alcohol, PGI Korinthia, just some 2,170 bottles. It's the details that make it interesting. The grapes come from the Rethi / Megalo Livadi site at roughly 800 to 850 metres above sea level – by far the highest vineyard in this entire tasting. Galatrona, Hatzimichalis and Lacules all sit between 300 and 350 metres; the Emperor sits at more than double that elevation. The vines, roughly 20 years old, grow on heavy clay-loam soils. The grapes are picked by hand in late September, at full phenolic ripeness.

In the cellar, the approach again stands out in this lineup: spontaneous fermentation with indigenous yeasts, 30 days of maceration with manual pigeage – considerably longer than for any of the other wines – and 20 per cent saignée, whereby a portion of juice is bled off before fermentation to further increase concentration. And when it comes to the oak regime, a real surprise: while Hatzimichalis works with 100 per cent new barriques and Lacules with 70 per cent new wood, Papargyriou opts for second-fill 500-litre casks, followed by 1,700-litre foudres – 18 months in total, but no new small oak. So the wine with the greatest power and concentration in this tasting is also the one with the most restrained use of oak. That is no accident but a deliberate choice: the density is meant to come from the fruit, not the barrel. The wine is bottled unfiltered.

The available analytical data explain why. Total acidity of 7.4 g/l at a pH of 3.29 – values that are in an entirely different league from the other wines here. The Galatrona comes in at 5.89 g/l and pH 3.56, the Hatzimichalis at 5.8 g/l. So the Emperor has by far the highest acidity and the lowest pH in this tasting – coupled with the highest alcohol level. And it's exactly this combination that explains what you notice straight away in the glass: despite its 15% alcohol, the wine never feels heavy, never cloying, never mushy.

I had already tasted the Emperor in autumn 2023, shortly after its release, and rated it 95+ at the time. Back then, blackberry and vanilla still dominated, and the tertiary aromas were only hinted at. Now, in February 2025, the wine tells a different story. On the nose, very fine but not overripe raspberry, with a hint of blackberry and a touch of seagrass that lends freshness without tipping into heavy iodine. It recalls Pomerol – but no Pomerol I know is this electrifying. On the palate, in both aromatics and tannin, anything but delicate: a real powerhouse. Incredible fruit sweetness on the attack, but then astonishingly refreshing acidity takes over – scarcely believable at 15% alcohol. With plenty of air – and I mean plenty – the wine reveals a cooler character and gives a glimpse of where it's headed.

I'm raising my score from 95+ in 2024 to 96+ now – and there's still plenty of room to go higher. Unfortunately, I've already opened far too many bottles; the wine makes it hard to resist. But you really should – and give the wine time. Bottles from this very limited release are still available in Germany through Wine and Nature for around €60 – for a wine of this calibre, an almost absurdly low price.

Dame Rouge III 2021 – Jima Winery, Arta

After all that concentration and power, a wine that shows Greek Merlot can also take quite a different direction. Jima Winery, in Kalomodia near Arta, just a few kilometres from the Ambracian Gulf, is a family-run winery founded by oenologist Panagiotis Jimas and his wife Kristy Karagiannidou. Jimas holds the WSET Diploma – a rarity among Greek winemakers – and it shows in his wines. The estate produces two very different blends from Merlot and Cabernet Franc: the Odyssey 2021 (85% Merlot, 15% Cabernet Franc, 13.4% alcohol, 90+ points) is the more fruit-forward, more approachable of the two – a wine that in earlier vintages was released under the name Âge d'Or and which I liked slightly better in the 2020 vintage. The Dame Rouge is at the other extreme: more ambitious, more experimental, more uncompromising.

The Dame Rouge III is the outlier of this tasting in several respects. The grapes – 90% Merlot and 10% Cabernet Franc – come from Block 13, a tiny parcel of just 0.45 hectares on calcareous clay soil with marine fossil deposits. Planted in 2013, these are by far the youngest vines in our comparison – just eight years old at the time of the 2021 harvest, while the Lacules vines are over 40 years old and those at Hatzimichalis over 20. And the elevation: 3.3 metres. Practically at sea level. While the Emperor is perched at 850 metres and the other wines lie between 300 and 350 metres, the Jima plot lies practically at the water's edge, cooled only by breezes off the Ambracian Gulf.

What sets Dame Rouge apart from everything else in this tasting is how it is made. A portion of the Merlot grapes is shade-dried after hand-picking on 5 September – appassimento-style, to concentrate flavours, tannins, sugars and acidity. These partially dried grapes are then added to the freshly fermented base wine, setting off a second fermentation. The fermented juice is then pressed off the stems in a vertical basket press; fermentation continues in a new oak barrel until the following February. In December 2022, the wine was bottled without filtration or any other treatment; it then remained at the winery until November 2023. All told, this amounts to an élevage spanning two calendar years – a considerable commitment for a winery of this size.

The numbers bear this out: 14.5% alcohol, 6.4 g/l total acidity at a pH of 3.8. That puts the acidity above the Galatrona and the Hatzimichalis; only the Emperor has more. For a Merlot made partly from dried grapes, this is remarkably taut – what emerges here is not a sweetish, opulent Amarone-style wine, but a wine with an identity all its own.

In the glass, a wine that immediately heads in a different direction. On the nose, an almost startling amount of leather, with ripe cherries and plums underneath. On the palate, very fine tannins that lend the wine elegance and rob it of any brutishness – after the powerhouse performances of Lacules and the Emperor's massive tannins, a welcome change of pace. Plenty of olive tapenade on the mid-palate, long finish. 93+ points. A wine that would probably have shown even better with more air, and that will find its fans especially among those who now and then fancy a more filigree Merlot, even at 14.5%. Anyone who has one of the few hundred bottles should still give it time – from this year on, you can start to approach it – gently.

Conclusion

The results at a glance:

• Château La Croix 2021 (Pomerol) – 92 points

• Galatrona 2021 (Petrolo, Tuscany) – 97 points

• Merlot Alargino 2021 (Hatzimichalis, Atalanti Valley) – 93+ points

• Lacules Estate Merlot 2021 (Messinia) – 96 points

• The Emperor 2021 (Papargyriou, Korinthia) – 96+ points

• Dame Rouge III 2021 (Jima Winery, Arta) – 93+ points

All four Greek wines clearly outperformed the Pomerol that served as our benchmark. One could argue that, given the comparable price but the region's far greater prestige, this was only to be expected. And the fact that 2021 was a difficult Merlot vintage in Bordeaux and a strong one in Greece does indeed explain part of the gap. But not all of it: the Lacules and the Emperor come dangerously close to the Galatrona – and that wine is no casualty of the vintage but one of the finest Merlots in the world.

And yet no one could have predicted this outcome. Vintage reports place Greece's 2021 as a vintage that favoured the north over the south. The Greek Wine Federation's 2021 Harvest Report, for instance, describes Drama as showing aromatic intensity, freshness and good acidity despite heat and hail – and the region is officially recognised as particularly well suited to international red varieties including Merlot. We had rated the Château Julia Merlot 2020 from Costa Lazaridi at 93+ points; we had not yet tasted the 2021 at the time of this session – it would be fascinating to see what Drama did with Merlot in this vintage. Three of the four Greek wines in our lineup, however, come not from the favoured north but from the Peloponnese or Central Greece – regions where 2021 was officially expected to deliver power rather than balance. Even so, they deliver world-class wines. That says less about the region than about the producers, who understood what their terroir and this vintage had to give.

And so to the inevitable question: can the Emperor dethrone the Lacules Estate Merlot 2018 as the finest Greek Merlot? The 2018 remains my benchmark – 96 points, exotic, smoky, complete in itself. The Emperor is an entirely different wine: it impresses not with weight but with restrained power. The Peloponnese now has two outstanding Merlots that could hardly be more different – and that is perhaps the real story.

Which brings me to one final wish. Precisely because at least these Greek wines can hold their own internationally, they deserve the respect that goes with it. And for me, that means giving them adequate bottle age before they reach the market. The Emperor 2021 was released, in my view, at least two years too early – and as a result failed to make the spectacular first impression it deserved. The Dame Rouge, too, needs considerably more time. Last summer I opened the Dame Rouge IV (Day 26) from the 2023 vintage, and it was clearly opened far too soon. The same goes for the Odyssey III (Day 27) and the single-varietal Cabernet Franc 2023 (Day 28) – it felt like a barrel sample, and I was a little annoyed at the money I'd spent – and at my own impatience. This kind of restraint shouldn't be offloaded onto the consumer. Not everyone has a temperature-controlled cellar. And the restaurant trade couldn't care less about bottle age anyway, pulling corks far too soon. The only reason I myself managed to keep my hands off the 2021s for long enough was that I was waiting for the Pomerol release. A wine like this really should be given those three years after the harvest. Of course, there are reasons why this is not yet standard practice. So my hope for Greek producers is that they will soon be achieving sales worthy of the quality of their wines – enough to be able to afford longer bottle ageing before release.