Diofili — Pinot Noir 2019

Pinot Noir from Greece is a rarity – and one that succeeds even more rarely. The Dio Fili winery (‘Two Friends’) in Siatista (Kozani, Western Macedonia), founded in 2006 out of the friendship between winemaker Yiannis Boutaris and the couple Georgia Goutziamani and Yiannis Polizos, has for years been attempting a single-varietal Pinot Noir. The conditions are better than one might at first assume: the estate’s own vineyards sit at around 650 m altitude, with cool nights, strong air currents and stony, limestone-influenced soils. According to the winery the yield is very low at 500 kg per stremma (roughly 5 t/ha); the English back label states ‘500 kg per acre’, probably a mix-up of στρέμμα (0.1 ha) and acre (0.4 ha) in translation (an understandable one, at that: both units were historically defined identically, as the area a team of oxen can plough in a day).

As a PGI Siatista wine it may not label itself, despite its unambiguous origin: the official technical dossier of the appellation permits only Xinomavro, Moschomavro, Chondromavro, Merlot, Cinsault and Cabernet Sauvignon among the red varieties – Pinot Noir is missing. It therefore runs as a simple varietal wine (Poikiliakos Oinos). Of all parties, it was Dio Fili itself – as the Goutziamani–Boutaris company – that was among the applicants for this very PGI back then. Maturation – according to the cellar data documented for the following vintage – takes place in oak barrels of up to 300 l with up to twelve months of ageing before bottling; a production of 12,000 bottles is also noted there. In the Greek market the wine costs around 13 to 16 €. The 2019 vintage is regarded as one of the best of the decade in Northern Greece: a late, rain-rich start, then from mid-July a long, dry ripening phase that yielded concentrated, healthy grapes.

The bar was set high: Simos Georgopoulos celebrated the 2017 in the FNL Guide with 8/10 as an exemplary Greek Pinot Noir – violet, blackberry, dried tarragon, a medium body that places freshness ahead of a leathery foundation – and elevated it into the pantheon of the best domestic representatives of the variety, side by side with the Sole from Biblia Chora. With the 2019, however, it became apparent early on that something was off: at the International Wine Competition Thessaloniki 2023 it got no further than 84 points and went without a medal – at a competition that awards a good three quarters of the wines entered. The glass confirms the suspicion.

On the nose the unfiltered wine comes across as nutty – as though it had ten more years on its back. What the winery advertises as a stylistic hallmark (nuts, dried fruit) turns out in the glass to be ripeness of the unwelcome kind: on the palate oxidative without end, mineral – no, not mineral: metallic. On top of that, a sobering lack of substance – water with tannin. 81 points.

One clue at least is offered by the cellar data of the following vintage, which show a total acidity of 4.27 g/l. That is strikingly little for Pinot Noir: Alpha Estate’s Amyndeon Pinot, likewise from the Western Macedonian highlands, came in at 5.58 g/l in 2020 and held even 5.90 g/l in the hot 2019 vintage. That fits the picture of ageing in fast-forward all too well.

Greece will never produce the most elegant Pinot Noirs, but with a bit of extract some lovely bottles can certainly be obtained. This one goes entirely in the wrong direction.