Estate Manolesakis – EXIS Vidiano 2025

The wine explains its own name, on the back label. EXIS refers to the Greek ἕξις, an acquired disposition, a capacity one develops through practice and experience. Estate Manolesakis lies in Adriani in Drama, in northeastern Macedonia. Within the house's EXIS line, the Vidiano sits above the white EXIS made from Malagouzia and Assyrtiko in price. It is a young bottling. Vidiano is the estate's most recent new planting. When Giannis Mouratidis wrote about the operation for Grape in October 2024, a Vidiano bottling from the house was still an experiment. In the glass is 100 percent Vidiano at 12 percent alcohol. The wine carries no protected designation of origin. The back label reads ΠΟΙΚΙΛΙΑΚΟΣ ΟΙΝΟΣ, varietal wine.

Giorgos Manolesakis has been growing vines in Adriani since 1989, and the winery building was completed in 1998. Today he works together with his son Stavros on around 20 hectares of their own vines, with Katerina Karampatea as the estate's oenologist. The family comes from Crete. In April 2024, speaking with Angelos N. Vassos for Citymag, Stavros described his close ties to the island. In Drama the family now makes a Vidiano, a northern Greek Vidiano from a family of Cretan origin. It grows on their own 0.27-hectare parcel, on clay-rich soil with small limestone pieces and good drainage. The harvest is done by hand and at night. In the cellar it undergoes a pre-fermentation cold maceration and a temperature-controlled fermentation with graduated temperatures, using exclusively the free-run must. After that the wine rests four months on the fine lees.

I tasted it in October 2026 as a sample, roughly a year after the harvest, in a white wine tasting of Vidiano and Assyrtiko. The Vidianos opened proceedings, first the oak-aged wine, the Passas Bidiano 2024 from Xanthi, whose fine-lees ageing takes place in wood. Then it was Crete versus northern Greece with the Diamantakis Vidiano 2025 and the Diamantopetra White 2025 from the same Cretan estate. On the Assyrtiko side stood the Diamantakis Petali Assyrtiko 2025, the Kir-Yianni Assyrtiko The North 2025 and the Kir-Yianni Single Block Tarsanas 2023, and at the end the question of acidity was to be settled. The EXIS Vidiano was the only wine from Drama in this field. At 12 percent it also had the lowest alcohol, the other wines ranging between 12.5 and 14 percent.

It came into the glass with laurels already won. At the Berliner Wein Trophy 2026 it was awarded gold, and according to the winery it also took silver at the Mondial des Vins Blancs Strasbourg 2026.

On the nose this is a decidedly aromatic Vidiano, quite international, quite exotic in its fruit, with a touch of peach as well. On the palate too the wine is very good. The problem with this wine is somewhat the imbalance between that entry on the palate and the slightly metallic finish. With enough chilling, though, the metallic note is held in check. This wine must not be drunk too warm. The estate recommends 8 to 10 degrees, and one should stick to that.

Within the Vidiano block of the tasting it therefore sits at the lower end. The Passas Bidiano earned 92 points from me, the Diamantakis Vidiano 90. It stands level with the Kir-Yianni Assyrtiko The North. Within its own house it takes its place in the EXIS line. I had the EXIS white 2025 and the EXIS red 2025 in the glass in August 2026, and both came in at 88 points. The varietal Malagouzia 2025 from the same month reached 92. The EXIS Vidiano costs around 10 euros in Greece, and with the refrigerator at your back you get a decidedly aromatic Vidiano for the money. For me this is 88 points.