Great Greek Grapes

David Williams presents a brief guide to an interesting country’s most interesting varieties, and the wines they produce

Assyrtiko

Gaia Estate Wild Ferment Assyrtiko, Santorini

2021 (Hallgarten & Novum Wines)

Easily the best known of Greece’s grape varieties, Assyrtiko is also one of very few found outside the archipelago, albeit in tiny (Australian, Lebanese and Californian) quantities so far.

It is widely planted in Greece these days, too, although its renown is principally based on one of the wine world’s great combinations of variety and terroir: the volcanic soils of Santorini are where the most thrilling Assyrtiko is made, with producers on the island able to capture a thrilling salty minerality from what are often very old vines, alongside the characteristic lemon pithiness and racy acidity.

As its name suggests, Gaia Estate’s Wild Ferment is fermented using indigenous yeasts, part of a winemaking regimen that sees the juice of the 80-year-old vines fermented in a mix of French and American oak and acacia barrels and stainless steel and ceramic tanks, with four to six months of lees ageing and frequent bâtonnage. It’s a serious wine with a quality of nervy concentration that has led more than one critic to describe it as a Greek answer to top white Burgundy.

Moschofilero

Bosinakis Moschofilero, Mantinia, Peloponnese

2021 (Maltby & Greek)

If Assyrtiko at its best is all about energy, nerve and minerals, then the other of Greece’s biggest white varietal names, Moschofilero, is defined by its distinctive fragrance: this is an aromatic variety par excellence, with something of the rose, honeysuckle or jasmine floral splendour of Gewürztraminer, Muscat or Torrontés, but combined with an effortless lightness of touch (and, generally speaking, of alcohol), a lemon-grove freshness, and a citrussy zip on the palate.

Pink-skinned and generally made with little or no oak or leesy influence to obscure its aromatic charms, Moschofilero is widely planted in the Peloponnese, where it is strongly associated with the Mantinia PDO, home of Katerina and Sotiris Bosinakis’ family affair, which operates from vineyards at 700m altitude.

Bosinakis makes a fine orange bottling from the variety, with a 45-day maceration bringing plenty of textural and exotic interest; the cold-fermented Mantinia PDO white is a precise expression of Moschofilero’s brisk, aromatic delights.

MALAGOUSIA

Domaine Gerovasilliou Malagousia, Epanomi 2021 (Hallgarten & Novum Wines)

The great Malagousia renaissance is one of the more heartwarming stories in the contemporary wine world. A grape variety that was all but extinct by the 1980s was brought back from the brink largely thanks to the tender ministrations of a group of university professors and a handful of growers.

Among those growers, it was Evangelos Gerovasilliou who gave Malagousia its biggest early boost, giving the variety a central, starring role when he replanted his family’s vineyards in Epanomi in Macedonia in 1981.

In the years since, Malagousia has spread its wings, with plantings in several Greek PDOs.

But Gerovasilliou remains the master of Malagousia, with its single-varietal bottling (the winery also bottles a 50/50 Assyrtiko Malagousia blend) a stand-out modern Greek white with a large and loyal cult following thanks to its pristine, fluent expression of fleshy, peachy stone-fruit, beguiling floral tones (jasmine, honeysuckle, orange blossom) and subtle peppery freshness.

Dafni And Vidiano

Domaine Lyrarakis Dafni White Psarades Vineyard, Crete 2021 (Thorman Hunt) and Diamantakis Vidiano, Crete 2022 (Vindependents)

Rather as the wine culture (culture full stop) of Sicily is so utterly different from that of the Italian mainland, so Greece’s equivalent large southern island, Crete, has its own unique way of doing things.

Bisected by a succession of towering mountain ranges, it has a plethora of indigenous varieties, many of which have only recently been brought back to full commercial life, and with each having its own distinctive personality.

Among the varietal names making a splash in recent years are reds Mandilari and Liatiko, and the white Thrapsathiri, but here we’re focusing on two Cretan whites that offer different but complementary qualities: the intensely aromatic Dafni and the soft, languid Vidiano.

Dafni’s signature is also what gives the variety its name – dafni is the Greek for laurel and the wines often exhibit an aroma of laurel (aka bay leaf), along with other Mediterranean herbs and a dainty trickle of citrus in wines such as the Psarades single-vineyard bottling from Domaine Lyrarakis, the producer that has done more than any other to revive its fortunes.

Much more widely planted, Vidiano brings a lovely cushiony feel and

Roditis

AOTON Roditis, Attica 2020 (Southern Wine Roads)

From País to Bobal, and from Cinsault to Carignan, one of the most intriguing features of 21st-century winemaking all over the world has been the kind of reputational makeover that turns a formerly derided, workhorse variety into a fashionable thoroughbred responsible for seriously fine wine.

Given how under-rated Greek wine has been outside its own shores until very recently, you could argue that all of the country’s varieties have benefited from the world’s willingness to give recidivist grape varieties another go of it. But, within the country itself, one candidate presents itself above all the others: Roditis.

Greece’s most widely planted white variety has been – and still is – responsible for some rather mediocre wines (and an awful lot of very average retsina). But, provided yields of this pink-skinned grape are kept to a minimum, the flat and the bland can become something full of intrigue and personality, not least in the example produced by the AOTON winery in Attica, central Greece. Made in stainless steel with 10 days’ pre-fermentation maceration and aged on the lees with plenty of bâtonnage for 11 months, it’s an arrestingly textured, nuanced show of faith and a deserved Greek star in this year’s Wine Merchant Top 100 competition.

Xinomavro

Thymiopoulos Earth & Sky Xinomavro, Naoussa, 2021 (Eclectic Wines/ Berkmann Wine Cellars)

Pinot Noir, Nebbiolo, Sangiovese, Nerello Mascalese … these are just some of the varieties that critics tend to reach for when they’re trying to get across the character of Xinomavro. In part, that’s a matter of style. Xinomavro does indeed have elements of each of those varieties: thin-skinned and therefore rather pale of hue; tangy, cherry-ish or rosehip-like acidity, and lots of it; wiry, chewy tannin (and plenty of it); a hard-to-define ethereal quality; intensely savoury … but it’s also a matter of cultural importance. Xinomavro is the base of the vast majority of Greece’s finest and most interesting reds: wines of expressive beauty that can improve for many years in the cellar.

Without doubt, the leading exponent of the variety is the prolific Apostolos Thymiopoulos, who has played the role of ambassador for Xinomavro, and specifically Xinomavro from the Naoussa region of Macedonia in northern Greece, since he oversaw the family’s transition from grape grower to estate winery in the early 2000s.

Thymiopoulos’ Earth & Sky cuvée remains a Xinomavro benchmark for winery, region, and country: a hugely evocative red that combines fine red fruit, warm earthy tones, and aniseed with surging redcurranty acidity and sinewy tannins.

Agiorgitiko

Kokotos Agiorgitiko, Stamata, Attica 2020 (Maltby & Greek)

The Barbera to Xinomavro’s Nebbiolo? Or the Gamay to Xinomavro’s Pinot Noir? Both of these questions imply a certain secondary status for Agiorgitiko, suggesting that it falls some way behind Greece’s currently fashionable big gun in the pecking order.

That the points of comparison are somewhat different is illustrative of another of Agiorgitiko’s qualities/problems (delete according to temperament): it’s highly versatile and stylistically varied, with producers making both juicy, succulent, often carbonically macerated southern European takes on Beaujolais and intense, spicy, chewy, oakaged reds in a style more akin to southern Italy, Priorat or southern France.

Still, for all that it might live in Xinomavro’s shadow when it comes to awards and media coverage, Agiorgitiko’s versatility (it also makes some excellent rosé and sweet reds) has helped it become Greece’s most widely planted red grape variety.

No matter the style, the best – whether soft and vividly juicy, like Kokotos’s from Attica, or complex and silky, like Gaia Estate’s from Nemea – are undeniably worthy of a place at southern European red wine’s top table.

Mavrodaphne

Papargyriou The Black Daphne, Korinthos 2021 (Southern Wine Roads)

There was a time, and it really isn’t all that long ago, when the only Greek wines you’d be likely to find in most retailers were the pine-resin reminders of holiday good times known as retsina, or the sicklysweet Greek Port-alikes of Mavrodaphne of Patras.

Both styles have been through a renaissance of late, with a new wave of modern producers thinking in terms of quality over quantity. But it’s the dry wines made from the grape varieties used for both styles that are perhaps most interesting.

When it comes to Mavrodaphne, it’s a development that the Greek wine authorities have yet to catch up with. As Southern Wine Roads’ Maria Moutsou pointed out during a recent Wine Merchant tasting, dry wines made from Mavrodaphne still can’t put the grape variety on the label – only sweet reds have that privilege.

Moutsou’s own portfolio shows the folly of this position, with producers such as Papargyriou, from Korinthos in the northern Peloponnese, using an English translation of the variety in their wine’s brand name. Sourced from vineyards at 800m above sea level overlooking Corinthian Bay, it’s deep, dark, full, rich and full of sweet (but not “sweet”) dark fruit.