Panagiotopoulos Wines – Cabernet Sauvignon Bio 2010

At Panagiotopoulos in Trifilia, in the western Peloponnese, Cabernet Sauvignon was the flagship variety from the very beginning: Dimitris Panagiotopoulos planted his first vines in the Pachimari area near Pyrgos Trifilias in 1982, long before today's winery was completed in 2005. This organically produced Cabernet stands squarely in that founding tradition and is built for long ageing like virtually no other Greek example of the variety: 24 months in French oak, followed by more than ten years of bottle ageing in the estate's cellar before the 12,000 bottles were even released. This organic bottling must be kept strictly distinct from the house's more affordable, conventionally produced Cabernet Sauvignon; from the 2013 vintage onwards it goes by the premium name "Tomos I," the first volume in a three-part organic series of the French varieties alongside Tomos II (Merlot) and Tomos III (Syrah). On today's market it sells for around €25 to €30.

The 2010 vintage brought Trifilia a warm, sunny and very dry summer, ideal for colour, tannin and dark fruit, followed by a markedly wetter September and October that demanded late harvesting, canopy work and rigorous selection. It is precisely this two-part character that explains the wine's unusual profile, which Simos Georgopoulos already noted in 2018: despite their identical age, he found the organic 2010 fresher, more tannic and less developed than its conventional sibling bottling, and gave it at least five more years in the cellar. The wine does indeed seem to have had that reserve, for in 2024, at fourteen years of age, it still took Gold at the Sakura Awards in Japan. Among the Panagiotopoulos Cabernets, then, 2010 is less the early award-winning vintage than the idiosyncratic long-distance runner. It was with correspondingly high expectations that I have now tasted it.

On the nose, a great deal of inviting toffee, a little eucalyptus, a touch of undergrowth, but not much. On the palate still with plenty of fruit, red-fruited, then cocoa-like tannin. Good acidity on the attack, but flavour and tannin fall away relatively quickly. The alcohol stays unobtrusive at 14%, and the finish does in fact hold quite long. Only the structure on the back end is a little lacking, so that the acidity, too, somewhat fizzles out.

A good wine, to which I give 90 points. At this level it should hold for the next five years, until 2031, and probably still be drinkable in ten years' time.