Diamantakis Winery – Prinos Red 2024

The Prinos red is Diamantakis's entry into their red range, a single-varietal Syrah from PGI Crete, positioned clearly below the barrel-aged Diamantopetra line. It was first bottled in 2008; today the three brothers Ioannis, Michalis and Zacharias Diamantakis, who founded the family estate in 2007, farm 15 hectares across 30 parcels near Kato Assites in the regional unit of Heraklion, with Zacharias, trained in oenology in Athens, serving as head winemaker. The grapes for this wine come from the Livadia and Sinani Cambos parcels. Vinification is deliberately lean, with a short extraction of two to two and a half days, fermentation in stainless steel at 14 to 18 degrees and no barrel contact. Some 12,000 bottles of the 2024 were filled, declared at 12.5 % alcohol, while the official analysis sheet indicates 12.7 %. In Greece it costs around 10.40 euros.

As a vintage, 2024 was the hottest year in the recent record on Crete, with the earliest harvest ever documented at the end of July. For the Prinos, this shows up above all in the analytics. The 4.3 g/l total acidity at pH 3.82 compares with 5.5 g/l and pH 3.56 in the 2022 vintage, distinctly lower in acidity and flatter in build. This is precisely the axis along which a light entry-level Syrah from a hot year loses its tension.

On the nose this is a genuinely attractive wine that, through its rather fruity aromatics with a small peppery note, presents itself as the lighter representative of its variety. On the palate there is really a lot of tannin on the attack, yet immediately afterwards the wine lacks acidity, and it remains somewhat tensionless and flat. At 12.5 % this is a very soft wine without great complexity or resonance – not bad with a cheese platter or with Cretan lamb dishes, as long as you're not reliant on much acidity. For red wines from Crete, 2024 is for me simply a difficult vintage.

The wine is nonetheless very properly made, and what lies within it shows in better years – Greg Sherwood MW rated the 2022 at 90+ points. This 2024 stays below that. For me these are 86 points.