Greece has been producing wine for longer even than Italy, though you’d hardly think so, considering its continued absence from most of our supermarket shelves. Mind you, that could soon be about to change due in no small part to the growing popularity of what has become Greece’s signature white grape, assyrtiko. It first took off on the island of Santorini, but the grape is now being planted all over the country, in areas such as the Atalanti Valley in Central Greece and in Macedonia. Happily, it’s a brilliant pairing with all things Greek, including the ubiquitous Greek salad, and goes equally well with seafood from anywhere.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that assyrtiko has got progressively more expensive in recent years, especially examples from Santorini itself, where the growing conditions are exceptionally challenging, from the volcanic soil (the island was ripped apart by a devastating eruption back in 1600BC) to the lack of rain: Santorini gets a fraction of the mainland’s rainfall and instead relies on the moisture from the heavy mist that falls nightly over the island. It’s also subject to violent winds, which accounts for the unique way the vines are trained, coiled around like a woven basket. While the stems are cut back from time to time, the root systems can date back hundreds of years: “When we say old vines here, we don’t mean 40 years old,” explains Yiannis Paraskevopoulous of Gaia Wines. “We mean 400.”
