Angus Walton

Cala Falcone Puglia

Angus is originally from Australia but has spent a large part of his life in Italy. “I like to pretend I’m Italian,” he says.

His Cala Falcone project in Puglia is producing limited-edition premium rosato with a distinctive golden hue.

What makes Cala Falcone different to any rosé is its iconic golden hue. It’s like you're drinking liquid gold in a glass. It really is something you have to experience for yourself.

Even now, after having consumed more Cala Falcone than I care to admit, when I pour myself a glass my reaction is always “holy shit, that’s good!” And then somehow the wine disappears rather quickly after that. One of life’s mysteries.

Southern Wine Roads has a simple enough origin story. As Maria Moutsou, the company’s founder and driving force, puts it: “I founded SWR in 2014 because I couldn’t find enough Greek wine around, and I thought there was something missing.”

In the eight years since Moutsou began trading in earnest, much has changed, she says, with Greek wines now much closer to the mainstream in the UK. What hasn’t changed is Moutsou’s mission, which is all about working with “family wineries who see the process from the roots of the vine to the bottle, people who tend the vineyards, grow the fruit, and press and elaborate the wine.”

Moutsou, a Greek-British who has has strong personal connections to the producers in her portfolio, decided to show off the enormous variety in both Greece and her range through a focus on the country’s three best-known grape varieties: the white Assyrtiko, and the reds Xinomavro and Mavrodaphne. She picked out two very different wines to represent each variety, which led to a flight that spanned everything from a zingy dry white to an orange wine, a blanc de noir, and a trio of very different reds.

As Moutsou points out, Greece’s appellations were created in the early 1970s and based on local traditions, which means they don’t always reflect modern trends.

That means, for example, that Assyrtiko has only one appellation in which it is required to be the main grape (85%, in PDO Santorini).

Xinomavro has four, all in central and western Macedonia; Mavrodaphne has three, but only for sweet wine. Faced with changing habits, Mavrodaphne producers are turning to more approachable styles, suitable for everyday drinking.