With the fourth wave winding down, I celebrated by emerging from the safety of my wine cellar with a bottle of Greek wine to enjoy with Greek take-out for dinner. Coincidentally, it happened to be International Xinomavro Day, the jewel in the crown of the Greek wine industry.
I have always found it odd that the Ancient Greeks, the historic party monsters that they were, with their deity Dionysus, basically the Greek God of frat parties, is not widely known as a wine-producing country in these modern times.
Although the names of the Greek grape varietals are unfamiliar when compared to their French or Italian cousins, Greece has been producing wine for six millennia, and definitely learned a few things along the way.
If wine is your tipple of choice, you have ancient Greece to thank for the contents of your glass today, due to Greece introducing winemaking techniques to neighbouring Italy close to 4000 years ago. It was the Mycenaean Greeks who brought winemaking techniques to the Italian island of Sicily, which then fanned out over the entire Roman Empire from there.
Today, Greece is but the 17th-largest wine producing country, squeezed in between New Zealand and Austria, and is barely a rounding error when compared to neighbouring Italy, its ancient rival in the days of empire.
I recall my first visit to the Greek Isles more than a decade ago, which is where I first learned that the common French and Italian grape varietals like Merlot and Cab Sauv were nowhere to be found, as I stared at the café menu with a long and unpronounceable list of Greek wines. That fateful day in a sidewalk café on the island of Mykonos was my first taste of the Xinomavro grape, one of the premier red wines produced in Greece.
Xinomavro is sometimes compared to the Nebbiolo grape from neighbouring Italy, used to make the famed Barolo and Barbaresco wines. With flavours bursting with dark cherry, black licorice, and old leather, Xinomavro is a highly tannic grape that can be aged for many years.
For the benefit of those readers who do not understand Greek, Xinomavro roughly translates to black and acidic, a description of the inky dark skins of the grape, as well as its high levels of acidity that make it possibly the biggest and boldest of the Greek reds. When enjoyed young, the full-bodied wine bursts with flavours of lush fruit, which turn to more subtle and complex notes of prune, raspberry, and sundried tomato after extended aging.
Fans of the big and bold flavour prefer a single varietal bottling of Xinomavro to let the true nature of the grape shine through, but winemakers have found it easier to sell to international palates by blending with Merlot and Syrah to soften the sharp tannins. I was lucky enough to find a nearly-forgotten single varietal bottling of Xinomavro in a dusty corner of the wine cellar while I was waiting out the pandemic in solitude, which paired well with the hearty lamb shank and moussaka that I picked up from Plaka Greek Taverna on the west side of Chestermere Lake.
Should highly tannic wines not be your preferred tipple, the Agiorgitiko grape has more mass market appeal, and is the most widely planted red wine in Greece, and is often compared to Cabernet Sauvignon, with the same notes of dark fruit, leather, and tar. Despite its unpronounceable name, this wine is much easier to find in Canada than the more exclusive Xinomavro, and is often a reasonably priced house wine at your favourite Greek restaurant, or at your local wine shop in the $20-$25 range.
I must confess that my first experience with Greek wine was as a naïve tourist, who picked up a bottle of Retsina for the equivalent of 3 dollars at a cruise ship port, which is when I learned that Retsina follows the ancient preservation method that prevented wine spoilage in clay amphorae by sealing the lids with pine resin, making the wine taste very much like Buckley’s cough medicine. While I have never been able to acquire a taste for Retsina, I encourage you to throw caution to the wind if offered a small glass at a Greek restaurant. Otherwise, stick to the classic reds like Xinomavro and Agiorgitiko!
