Thiasos White, Peloponnese, Greece 2013 (£7.99, Wine Rack) Amid the unceasingly distressing headlines coming out of Greece, it’s not surprising that some modestly good news about the country’s wine industry has struggled to get much air-time. After all, a story along the lines of “small European country’s wines show steady improvement and increasing acceptance overseas” is never going to compete for drama with the high-stakes realpolitik and socially corrosive effects of the Grexit saga. But it would take the heart of a victim of Medusa not to be cheered by the idea that Greek wines are both better and easier to find in the UK than they’ve ever been. And the Thiasos unoaked blend of white Greek varieties roditis and moschofilero is a breezy, floral, gently spicy, modestly priced way of showing some fellow feeling.
Hatzidakis Nikteri, Santorini, Greece 2012 (£22.50, Berry Bros & Rudd) One thing I like about the Greek wines I’ve tasted recently is the way their producers draw deep on tradition without being slavishly in hoc to it. A wine such as Domaine Gerovassiliou’s Malagousia 2013, (also at Wine Rack, £16.99), for example, is made from a rediscovered ancient, local grape variety (malagousia) in Epanomi near the city of Thessaloniki. But it’s made in a particularly clean, pure modern way that makes for a quite thrilling dry white mix of citrusy tang and plumper apricot fleshiness. Similarly, with Nikteri, top producer Hatzidakis harks back to the night-harvested white wines of Santorini’s past, cold-fermenting the island’s intense lemon-and-mineral-flavoured assyrtiko variety in temperature-controlled tanks, and then ageing it in barrel to add a touch of savoury richness.
Thymiopoulos Jeunes Vignes, Naoussa, Greece 2013 (from £10.50, The Wine Society; Vinoteca; Theatre of Wine) Greece’s white wines, both dry and sweet, have so far left the most memorable mark on my palate (the golden Samos Nectar 2009, available for £10.60 at London independent Theatre of Wine, is an exquisite, aptly named example of the latter). I’ve found less finesse in the reds, but that’s not to say they can’t be attractively vibrant and – with their grip and acidity – food-friendly in a way that resembles many Italian wines. Marks & Spencer has a good example of what I mean, in the vivid cherry of Mitravelas Estate Red on Black Agiorgitiko 2013 (£9). Even better is Thymiopoulos’ “young vines” xynomavro, which adds a bit of dried herb, spice and grit to the succulent mix.
