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By Lynn Alley, Wine Spectator
Nearly 3,000 years ago, the Greek poet Hesiod sang the praises of
Greek wine made from a grape variety referred to as "Biblio." Back
then, Greek wines were the toast of the Mediterranean world, and
Greek grapevines were planted as far away as Massilia (which is now
known as Marseille).
Biblio may be extinct, but its descendants, indigenous grape
varieties such as Robola, Savatiano, Xinómavro and Agiorgitiko, are
producing interesting and unique wines that are little known outside
their native land. For most American wine drinkers, Greek wine is
still largely exemplified by retsina, the rustic, resinated white
wine served chilled in tavernas throughout the Greek mainland and
islands, as well as in Greek restaurants in America.
Yet today Greece is home to much more than retsina. With its
rugged mountains, fertile valleys, windswept islands and rocky
coastline, Greece's geography provides dramatic settings for its
vineyards and wineries. It's also a land steeped in history, where a
new generation of cutting-edge vintners is pursuing modern visions
of winemaking. They face immense challenges, from pressure to make
wines using international grape varieties such as Cabernet Sauvignon
and Chardonnay, to the decline of the traditional village life that
has for so long nurtured Greece's unique grapes. In addition, some
are women, a rarity in the male-dominated wine industry.
One of the most ambitious is Marianna Markantonatos, co-owner of
Gentilini Winery on Cephalonia, one of the Ionian Islands off the
coast of western Greece. Her wines are made from Robola, a white
grape indigenous to the Ionians. Her yearly foray into Cephalonia's
mountain villages to buy grapes from small, independent growers is
an example of the enduring power of tradition in this proud land.
"Every year, we have to negotiate for the Robola," says
Markantonatos. "Even though our core group of growers has been the
same for the last 16 years, the ritual must be observed."
As harvest approaches, she travels with her husband and partner,
Petros, and their English-born winemaker, Gabrielle Beamish, to meet
with the head of the mountain growers' co-op at his home. "We call
him the Robola King, because without his blessing, no one will sell
grapes," says Markantonatos. "He is a fiercely proud man of the
soil, and great care must be taken not to offend him."
Respecting the ways of Greece's still-vibrant agrarian culture is
an important part of the negotiation process. It's a world apart
from the bulk markets of California or France, where thousands of
gallons of wine can be purchased sight unseen. "Sickly sweet Greek
coffee and the customary preserved fruits must be downed," explains
Markantonatos. "Then the dance begins. Each side takes turn wailing
their woes and airing problems, even though the end result is a
foregone conclusion.
"In the end, he will give us his best grapes, just as in previous
years. Then we are escorted around to the other growers to announce
the successful negotiations."
Until the 1970s, Greece lagged far behind other European
wine-producing nations. Growers' cooperatives developed a reputation
for making poor quality wines, which were usually sold from the
barrel in Greek wine shops and restaurants. Political instability
and the lack of financial resources and technological know-how
perpetuated the production of low quality wines.
But in 1981, Greece joined the European Community, a move that
led to economic stabilization and set the stage for the development
of a truly modern wine industry.
Leading the way was Yiannis Boutaris, a member of one of Greece's
oldest and most powerful winemaking dynasties and the founder and
president of Ktima Kir-Yianni winery. Beginning in the 1970s,
Boutaris and his brother, Constantine, current head of J. Boutari
and Son Wineries, invested years of research in the indigenous grape
varieties found in four different regions of the country: Naoussa
and Goumenissa in the mountainous north, and the islands of
Santorini and Crete. Boutari's Cretan estate manager, Yannis
Kostantakikis, reputedly rescued the rarest of the many Muscat
varieties, Muscat Spinas, from near-certain extinction.
"Our central idea was to establish a core of indigenous varieties
in each appellation," says Boutaris. "If all vineyards were
established with the noble international grape varieties, we would
end up with one or two similar styles of wine: like Coca-Cola and
Coca-Cola light."
In 1996, Yiannis Boutaris left J. Boutari and Son Wineries to
found Ktima Kir-Yianni winery in Naoussa, which is on the forefront
of viticultural and enological research today. Boutaris' elder son,
Stellios, runs the marketing and financial aspects of the winery;
his younger son, Mihalis, has recently completed a master's degree
in the department of viticulture and enology at University of
California, Davis, in 2000, where his thesis centered on a study of
indigenous Greek varieties.
For Yiannis Boutaris, the connection between wine and culture is
fundamental. "Growing and developing local grape varieties, not only
in Greece but also in every wine-producing country, highlights local
cultural identities," he says. "The constant investigation and
evolution of the local varieties and their wines is a vital part of
the concept of terroir, and feeds the creative powers of the
region's cultural identity."
Many have equated Boutaris' influence on the Greek wine industry
with that of Robert Mondavi on Napa Valley's. Boutaris has worked
tirelessly for the common good of the Greek wine business, and many
of Greece's most important young winemakers have come through the
ranks of the Boutari wineries.
Bordeaux-trained Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, for example, began his
career as a winemaker for Boutari in 1989 and is now a rising star
in the Greek wine industry. In 1992, Paraskevopoulos left Boutari to
found Gaia, which now has wineries in Nemea and on the volcanic
island of Santorini. Like many of Greece's cutting-edge winemakers,
Paraskevopoulos, who has a doctorate in enology from the University
of Bordeaux, applies modern French winemaking technology to the
production of wines from Greek grape varieties. Unfiltered, unfined
Gaia Estate wine, for instance, is aged in new oak for 12 months and
is designed to last for as long as 10 to 15 years.
At the Gaia winery he and partner Leon Karatsalos built in Nemea
in early 1997, Paraskevopoulos works almost exclusively with
Agiorgitiko (known in English as St.-George), the native red grape
variety of the Peloponnesian peninsula. In the hands of a skilled
winemaker, Agiorgitiko produces a dark, full-bodied, complex red
wine with soft tannins.
Paraskevopoulos also makes a white wine from Assyrtiko grapes on
Santorini. Considered by many to be Greece's best white grape,
Assyrtiko is capable of maintaining its acidity while ripening under
the blistering Mediterranean sun.
"When I first began working on Santorini 10 years ago," says
Paraskevopoulos, "I thought the issue was technology. Now I believe
the real issue is how to convince people to continue to grow their
vines. We are in danger of losing a historic, rare and unique grape
variety.
"The old vineyards of Santorini are being ripped up for hotels,
and, of course, the more they rip up, the less natural beauty there
is to attract tourists. The locals are abandoning their vineyards
because it is no longer a profitable business for them. The younger
people are not interested, and the average age of the vigneron here
is 65. I just don't think the locals have caught on yet," says
Paraskevopoulos, who is working to have the island's vineyards
declared a world heritage site by UNESCO.
Bordeaux-trained Yannis Voyatzis also began his career with
Boutari. Voyatzis, who still works as chief enologist for Boutari,
decided to pick up the thread of traditional winemaking in his
native village of Velvendos. In 1997, Voyatzis opened Ktima
Voyatzis, located in the rugged mountains of western Macedonia. In
addition to small plantings of international varieties used for
blending purposes, Voyatzis has about 20 acres of Xin-mavro, the
dominant red grape variety of northern Greece.
A light snow fell outside Velvendos' one café as Voyatzis drew a
diagram of his vineyard on a paper napkin. "Half of my vineyard is
devoted to white varieties, and half to red," he said. "In addition
to the Xinómavro and some Cabernet and Merlot for blending, I've got
an experimental vineyard of local red and white varieties." Small
squares on the napkin marked off the experimental blocks.
"Ten years ago, my father, who owned a small tavern over the
mountains, visited vineyards all around Velvendos," Voyatzis
continued. "There's a strong tradition of home winemaking in this
region, and the theory has always been that more is better. The more
varieties packed into your vineyard, the better your wine will be.
"My father gathered cuttings from as many different local red and
white varieties as he could find. And today, those cuttings
constitute the population of our experimental vineyards," says
Voyatzis.
A few moments later, steaming platters of slow-cooked goat and
lamb stew arrive at the table, and a round of tannic, inky-black
Tsapournaki, one of Voyatzis' experimental varieties, virtually
unheard of outside of Velvendos, gets poured into simple taverna
glasses. "If I could do something else with my life, it would be to
devote it to probing the history of Greece's grape varieties," he
says.
Haroula Spinthiropoulou also started her career with Boutari,
where she experimented with selections of Xinómavro.
Spinthiropoulou, now in her early forties, has devoted much of her
life to the study of Greek grape varieties. Several years ago, she
temporarily left her husband and son in their village just north of
Thessaloniki to complete a master's degree at Montpellier under one
of France's preeminent authorities on grapevine identification,
Jean-Michel Boursiquot.
Spinthiropoulou has walked through many of the vineyards of her
homeland, studying and cataloging indigenous Greek grape varieties
for the past seven years. In 2000, she produced the country's first
modern compendium of grape varieties, complete with illustrations
and descriptions of the economically viable indigenous grapes, as
well as more obscure varieties. The book, Wine Varieties of the
Greek Vineyard (Olive Press), with entries on 199 grapes, is
considered a landmark reference in the industry.
Upon her return from Montpellier, Spinthiropoulou joined forces
with Vitro Hellas, an agricultural production and trade company
located near Thessaloniki. Says Spinthiropoulou, "When I started
here, Vitro was [using] only foreign grape varieties, but I managed
to convince them of the need to focus on our Greek varieties. Such
work had never before been done on an organized basis."
After years of work with Greek grapes, Vitro has become the first
nursery facility in Greece to offer virus-free, superior vines of
native origin. (Vitro may soon be exporting some of its indigenous
Greek grapes to California, where a group of researchers from UC,
Davis, is searching for new varieties that may do well in
California's hot spots.)
Another woman who owes much to Boutari is winemaker Roxane Matsa,
daughter of a one-time Greek ambassador to the United States. Matsa
makes wine under the Domaine Matsa label from her 7.5 acres of
60-year-old Savatiano vines and her small plots of Assyrtiko and
Malagousia in Kanza, not far from Athens. Savatiano, Greece's most
widely planted white grape variety, provides the basis for much of
the country's white table wine, as well as for retsina. But Matsa's
old-vine estate Savatiano, harvested early to keep acid intact, is
the country's first nonresinated quality wine made from Savatiano.
Says Matsa, "I inherited my property in Attica when I was very
young. We had always covered our expenses by selling grapes from our
vineyards, but after '75, we actually started losing money on the
land. I was finishing school, and in the back of my mind I was
searching for ways to keep this property." She eventually hooked up
with Boutari, which wanted vineyard sources in central Greece.
"Boutari literally saved both me and my land. I had the use of
the Boutari agronomist and enologist. There was no way I could have
paid for such advice myself. And if I had been standing by myself, I
would have had to be out pounding the pavement and selling my wine
instead of tending my vineyards, which is what I love to do."
Matsa echoes the sentiments of Greece's new wave of winemakers in
her conviction that her nation can carve a role for itself in the
modern wine world. "After all, the Italians have been doing it for
years, and doing it well. Why shouldn't we?" she says. To do so,
Greece must honor the past while keeping an eye on what lies over
the horizon. It's an outlook that the ancient Greeks would have
found familiar. "Our only way to stand out in the international
market is through the use of indigenous Greek grape varieties," she
proclaims.
Lynn Alley is a freelance writer based in Southern
California.
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