#Greece

Oct 13, 2022

WINE OF THE WEEK: Troupis Winery Route Gris Moschofilero 2021, Mantinia, Greece

£13.99/£16.99, Naked Wines This is an orange wine made from a pink-skinned grape variety – and it’s superb. Even the hazy pink colour is lovely (and the label's great too) but the taste is something else. Fragrant, succulent and textured, it smells of rose petals and apricots with a wash of fresh ginger and Muscat grapes, and its mouth-filling presence shimmers with dried apricot and vibrant lime-peel acidity. The grape is Greece’s Moschofilero, which, despite the aromas, is

May 6, 2022

WINE OF THE WEEK: Filos Estate Aspri Petra Assyrtiko 2021, Florina, Greece

£6.99, Aldi I know, I know, this week's wine is being posted late but, believe me, it's worth the wait for this terrific value, summery Assyrtiko. It's from a single vineyard, Aspri Petra, at a soaring 625 metres in the IGP of Florina in the Amyndeon region of north west Greece, and it's everything the country's flagship white grape, Assyrtiko, should be when it's grown on the mainland. I stress mainland because it's not trying to be Santorini. Instead, it's zesty and refresh

Mar 17, 2022

WINE OF THE WEEK: The Society's Exhibition Santorini Assyrtiko 2020, Greece

£14.95, The Wine Society Just the sight of the words Santorini and Assyrtiko on the label will be enough for some people to reach straight for their credit cards – and the price of this bottle is even more of an incentive. There's no white wine quite like Assyrtiko from the Aegean island of Santorini. The Assyrtiko grape is now widely grown in Greece, but it produces its highest quality and most distinctive wines in Santorini's exceptional, hot, dry, sunny and windy condition

Aug 20, 2020

WINE OF THE WEEK: Aldi Assyrtiko 2019, Peloponnese, Greece

£9.99, Aldi online To say that Assyrtiko is a stay-at-home grape variety is massively to understate it. If you want to drink wine made from Greece’s flagship white variety, you’re almost without exception limited to Greek wine (not that that’s a hardship). The Barry family has produced one in Australia since 2016 (more about it here) , there’s a smattering grown in California and Cyprus and some recently planted in South Africa, but otherwise it’s the Greek islands and mainl

Jul 29, 2020

Douloufakis Winery Dafnios Liatiko 2017, Dafnes, Crete

£14.50–£16.25, The Daily Drinker, Maltby & Greek, Strictly Wine Let's start by unpacking the name. This is a dry red wine made from the Liatiko grape by Nikos Douloufakis, the leading light in the Dafnes region, a PDO in the middle of Crete, in the Heraklio prefecture. What's interesting about it? Tell me what isn't. It's quite a pale ruby red, medium-bodied and has distinctly fresh acidity and fine, sandy tannins. That's the basic shape that wraps around one beguiling flavou

Nov 16, 2018

WINE OF THE WEEK: Thymiopoulos Atma Xinomavro 2017, Macedonia, Greece

£11.99, Waitrose and waitrosecellar.com If you know that Xinomavro translates as 'acid black' you might be surprised to see the declaration 'smooth and fruity' on this label. You might also think that a wine with a description sounding more like a mass-market Merlot is not for you. Hold on! Atma means soul and the winemaker is Apostolos Thymiopoulos, a master of the Xinomavro grape and creator of the modern, approachable style – a style retaining the character of the grape va

May 30, 2018

The white wine that thinks it's a red: Santorini Assyrtiko

No one knows quite how many indigenous grape varieties Greece has, because so many take different names in different regions and have developed different characteristics even when they share the same DNA. A conservative estimate would be about 180, perhaps 200. Either way it’s nothing like as many as there are in Italy, but Greece has a trump card: the white Assyrtiko grape. Archetypal Santorini: church and vineyard. The 30-square mile volcanic island has 600 churches, it hav

Oct 7, 2016

The Next Big Thing...

This is the sort of piece I normally write at the close of the year, but I have more than enough material and deserving wines to mention already. Who knows how many more I may have by the end of the year? So, the next big thing in wine is? Well, goodness, don’t ask me. If I knew, I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you, I’d be making sure I was in on the action and the rewards. What I can say is that I seem to have had more frontier-breaking wines this year than ever. Admitted