Greek Wines: Santorini and Beyond (A conversation with Yiannis Karakasis MW), Part 1

I held an InstaLive Chat session with Yiannis Karakasis on April 17th, the topic of which was Greek Wines: Santorini and Beyond. Given the wealth of information shared by Yiannis, I thought it important to provide the details of that conversation on this platform.

We began with background information on Yiannis. He was an officer in the Hellenic Navy where he served as a helicopter pilot. He was pursuing his WSET Diploma  while serving and made the decision to leave the military to concentrate on his wine studies. This was a big risk. He was rewarded, though, in that he was able to earn his MW in four years. Since attaining the MW he has been mostly educating, consulting, and writing about Greek and Cypriot wines. The most important thing for him currently is communicating his passion about Greek wines.

In terms of the positioning of Greek wines today, Yiannis sees the industry as being in a better place than it was 10 years ago. We have heard, says Yiannis, the Santorini story, but it is a niche market for initiated people and Somms in fine restaurants to whom Greek wines are important. The industry has a long way to go to attain his goal of it being the first alternative after France, Italy, and Spain in terms of recognition and quality. They will not play in the quantity game because production is 2.1 million hL annually. Greek wine can move towards this point with a lot of work in the vineyard.

Greek wine cannot become mainstream if we cannot expand the discussion beyond Santorini to other terroirs, other varieties. Santorini always works because they produce great wine; but there is more. He thinks that they should be focusing on these new stories, on new terroirs and new varieties. When people taste wines from Naousa, Nemea, or Keffalonia, they are immediately connected to those places.

We are only at the beginning of the terroir discussion in Greece, he said. There is some discussion in Naousa, and the beginning of a discussion in Nemea; but why are there not more single-vineyard offerings in the latter, the largest PDO in Greece. Currently there are only two or three producers crafting single-vineyard offerings in Nemea. Sigalis and a few other winemakers are producing single-vineyard wines in Santorini.

It is important that producers come up with single-vineyard offerings so that they can be sampled over time and see where they are going. Yiannis will be querying the growers in upcoming discussions (the lockdown willing) as to what are the constraints to providing these types of offerings. The single-vineyard discussion, though, is for the "sophisticated" among us. We still need to get people comfortable with three or 4 varieties at the consumer level.

In terms of important terroirs he pointed out the North, with its four PDOs for Xinomavro, the Peloponnese and Assyrtiko, the Mainland for Savatiano, and Crete for Vidiano (white) and Liatiko (red). Further, in Crete we can talk about international varieties becoming local. For example, the Rhone varieties (Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre) have adapted beautifully to the terroir. The Grenache from Manousakis, for example, is a different Grenache, elegant and refined. If you go to Keffalonia, the western portion is prime territory for Robola and Mavrodaphne while Assyrtiko dominates to the east.

There are 230 varieties recorded in the database, according to Yiannis, but there may be 230 more undiscovered. But discussion of new varieties may be complicating things more than they should be at this time. People wanting to begin an exploration of Greek wines should begin with four or so varieties: Assyrtiko, Malagousia (or, maybe, Moschofilero), Agiorgitiko, and Xinomavro. If you go deeper into red wines, there are too many stories. He is finding new discoveries every day in the "Greek wine book."

I will continue with Part 2 of the discussion on the morrow.

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