La Tour Melas – Palies Rizes 2020

Palies Rizes means "old roots," and with this wine the name is meant literally. The plot lies near Floiountas in Nemea, at around 400 metres, heavily exposed to the wind, and bears over hundred-year-old, own-rooted vines – phylloxera never reached them. It was never cleared, and archaeological remains lie beneath the vineyard.

Single-varietal Agiorgitiko at 14%, trained in Guyot, harvested at 15 hl/ha, hand-picked and selected plot by plot. Vinification and malolactic fermentation take place 80% in stainless steel and 20% in barrel, with wild yeasts; afterwards 15 months in 400-litre barrels of Austrian oak, bottled unfined. Around 1,800 bottles from just under a hectare.

The label lists only "Dry Red Wine of Greece" as its category – no protected origin. There is no other way: a PDO Nemea requires the wine to be vinified within the zone, and it is vinified and bottled in Achinos near Stylida, in Fthiotida, well outside it. The PGI Fthiotida, in turn, which all the estate's other wines carry, is ruled out for the opposite reason: the grapes do not come from there. For hundred-year-old own-rooted vines from Nemea, that leaves the plainest category wine law knows.

For Nemea, 2020 was an outstanding red-wine year, the strongest of the recent run. Even so, it did not fall into this vineyard's lap: the estate reports a difficult summer with rain in July and heat in August, physiological ripeness came late and was only reached at the end of September.

I had already had this wine in the glass once, in June 2024, and rated it 94 points. Now, a good two years later, it stands at 95+. With a little more age it shows itself rounder, and the aromatics have shifted most clearly: in 2024 there was an expressive nose with plenty of dark fruit and juniper berry, now it tends distinctly towards the red-fruited, the dark having receded into the background.

On the nose a little plum, a little bloody. On the palate wonderfully soft, chocolatey, inky, with cocoa and earthy notes coming through. The finish is very, very long – as I write these lines, it is still there.

One can wait until 2030, and then I would credit it with 96 points or more, and I see no reason why it should not still be playing at this level in 2040 or 2050. Ageing over ten years will be no problem. Of course it has yet to prove this, but the potential is clearly there. For an Agiorgitiko this is very, very grand cinema.

Around 149 euros. For me this is 95+ points.