When Yiannis Paraskevopoulos first arrived on the island of Santorini to explore its wine scene, he didn’t like what he tasted. As he told me during a tasting at his beachfront wine bar-cum-winery, back then, in 1989, “the wines were shitty”: roughly acidic, rustic, oxidised. “What are we doing here?“, he asked the man who had brought him there, his mentor and employer at the time, Yiannis Boutaris.
Boutaris, one of the key figures in modern Greek wine, didn’t disagree. Despite the island’s 34 centuries of winemaking, the wines themselves were indeed pretty bad, he said. Nevertheless, Boutaris was convinced Santorini was a “paradise for wine”. It was just a matter of time before it took its place on the world stage. “Have patience,” he told his puzzled protege.
Boutaris now seems like a visionary. Santorini’s dry whites have become the first modern Greek wines to capture the imaginations of the sommeliers and cutting-edge merchants who are industry’s most important tastemakers.
Working with the zeal of the convert, Paraskevopoulos was a key figure in this change of status. Along with adventurous peers such as Paris Sigalas and the late Haridimos Hatzidakis, he applied modern winemaking techniques to the island’s great asset: the assyrtiko grapes yielded by the low, plaited bushes of astonishingly old vines that grow in seemingly haphazard fashion in the black, volcanic soil. Rootstocks can be up to 400 years old. I think of these thrilling wines as Aegean chablis, thanks to the way they combine the fine steel thread of acidity found in the best examples of that northerly chardonnay with Greek flavours of preserved lemon and camomile and a distinctly mineral, mouthwatering quality.
They are just the most celebrated examples of a wider renaissance across the country, which has recently begun to trickle into supermarkets in the UK. It’s a revival that has taken longer to get going than similar developments elsewhere in southern Europe (such as Puglia and Sicily, or Spain beyond Rioja). Novelty is undeniably a part of its appeal. Greek wines tend to be made from grape varieties barely planted elsewhere. For whites, that might mean malagousia, with its stone-fruited fleshiness, or the floral bloom and piney freshness of moschofilero. For reds, there’s agiorgitiko’s supple berry fruitiness and the herbs and tang of xinomavro. These ancient varieties make wines that couldn’t come from anywhere else but their specific homes. That’s now an entirely good thing.
Six of the best Greek wines
M&S Found Agiorgitiko
Peloponnese, Greece 2021 (£8, Marks & Spencer)
M&S’s fun Found range of lesser-spotted wines features two great-value wines from the Peloponnese. Both the breezily aromatic dry white Found Moschofilero-Roditis 2022 (£8.50) and this berry-juicy red agiorgitiko are great places to begin exploring Greek wine.
Chosen by Majestic Greek White
Peloponnese, Greece 2022 (£9.99, or £8.99 as part of a mixed case of six, majestic.co.uk)
Another reliable own-label range and another highly attractive, and good value blend from the Peloponnese of, in this case, malagousia, roditis and assyrtiko. As is the case with so many Greek whites, there’s a winning aromatic freshness and a versatile way with food.
Atma Zinomavro
Northern Greece, 2021 (£12.49, Waitrose)
No article about Greek wine can go without a mention of Apostolos Thymiopoulos, the modern master of Greece’s best red grape variety, xinomavro, in Naoussa in Macedonia. This is an attractively chillable summer red with a tangy red-fruited quality.
Domaine Douloufakis Dafnios Vidiano
Crete, Greece 2021 (from £14.95, thewinesociety.com; wineandgreene.com; maltbyandgreek.com)
Rather in the same way that Sicily’s wine culture stands apart from the rest of Italy, so winemakers on Greece’s largest island, Crete, have their own way of doing things. The island’s own cluster of grape varieties can lead to utterly distinctive lemon-oily, white peach fleshy whites such as this vidiano.
Domaine Gerovassiliou Malagousia
Epanomi 2022 (from £19.75, strictlywine.co.uk; nywines.co.uk; allaboutwine.co.uk)
The malagousia grape variety was all-but extinct before Vangelis Gerovassiliou began his winemaking project in Epanomi just south-east of Thessaloniki in the 1980s. Today he uses it to make gorgeously exotic, viognier-like whites with a freshening twist of herbs and white pepper.
BEST BUY
Gaia Estate Thalassitis Assyrtiko
Santorini, Greece 2022 (from £27.25, strictlywine.co.uk; nywines.co.uk; hic-winemerchants.com)
A benchmark expression of unoaked Santorini assyrtiko, made from 80-year-old vines. It has wonderful intensity and vibrancy, pristine lemon and grapefruit, a nibble of tannic texture and a lingering, salty, mineral finish that is just crying out for oysters or other shellfish.
