Pollux Membership June 2023: At the Edge of the Earth and First of Its Name
Trained low to avoid the prevailing winds, Assyrtiko vines huddle together in the shadow of the crystal blue Aegean Sea-Santorini (Thira) Island, Cyclades, Greece.
“At the Edge of the Earth”
Hatzidakis Assyrtiko “Familia”, Santorini, Greece 2021
Of his visit to Sardinia, D. H. Lawrence once wrote that the island felt “left outside of time and history.” The potential for isolation when surrounded by a limitless sea can certainly bring a sense of antiquity. We wine professionals, in particular, love island wines. Quite often, we are able to simultaneously satisfy our inner wine geek in studying an isle’s soils, rich in unique mineral elements (more on those in a moment), its indigenous grape varieties that have both withstood the test of time and also frequently NOT withstood the mainland-heavy exposure to the louse phylloxera, meaning the vines are ungrafted and “pure”, and the often spirited winemakers who are content to be out of step with modernity in exchange for a singular kinship with their land. These “Edge of the Earth” qualities cement our sense of Bacchanalian wanderlust that for many of us is the seed of our desire to be in the business in the first place.
For Greece’s Santorini (the actual name of the island is Thira, though Santorini has become nearly universal), discovery is no longer in doubt: for some time now, this member of the Cyclades Islands to the southeast of mainland Athens has beenrenowned for its evocative images of cloudless skies, bright white buildings (many featuring cobalt blue rooftops or domes), and stunning cliffsides, where one is equally likely to find both pristine chapels and gnarled vineyards holding on above the crystalline waters of the Aegean Sea. For some time now, Santorini’s main economic driver has been tourism, so featuring wines from the island is not reinventing the wheel (or even inventing it to begin with), but despite the millions of annual visitors, our exposure to Santorini’s potential reflects the timelessness with which the island as a whole is associated-in short, the wines from Santorini that reach the US market are a bit jet-lagged when compared to other global wine regions. Largely correct but safely unexciting, much of Santorini’s representation here in the States lacks ambition beyond being something vaguely refreshing, a wine to be mindlessly quaffed under a scorching summer sun, and while there’s certainly nothing wrong with that notion conceptually, Santorini’s story thankfully has so much more in the telling, largely due to one couple who arguably created artisanal winemaking here at “the edge of the Earth”.
Hatzidakis Winery’s late co-founder and winemaker, Haridimos Hatzidakis.
In the early 1990s, the Boutari family established a winery on the island of Santorini, and the large commercial producer began to take advantage of the island’s principal white grape varietal, Assyrtiko. Known for thriving in high-mineral or volcanic soils, bringing beautiful citrus and marine qualities to the glass, Assyrtiko has a long history on Santorini, and the unique qualities of the island blessed the Assyrtiko grapes planted there with conditions that make sommeliers salivate: own-grafted vines, largely unexposed to the plague of phylloxera (the volcanic pumice soil, called “Aspa” locally, has a notoriously light, porous quality, with a low clay content that has largely made it immune to the vine-killing louse), hot, rainless summers, and most importantly, a native grape varietal in Assyrtiko that has had millennia to refine its presence in the unique terroir; in short, Assyrtiko was giving winemakers an expert treatise on which sites and what refined growing techniques worked best for it. The only trouble seemed to be that no one was listening-wineries were simply cranking out as much wine as possible to cater to the demand for inexpensive, easy-drinking fare. At the new Boutari winery, taking all of this in, was their young chief winemaker, Haridimos Hatzidakis, charged with being the chief oenologist of Boutari’s operation. A native of another Greek island, the much larger Crete, Hatzidakis immediately saw the potential Santorini offered, but also the need to refine and shape the overall vision for Santorini wines if in fact that potential was going to be realized. Winemaking aside, Haridimos’ gaze was also drawn to the winery’s tasting room, where a young woman named Konstantina Chryssos was working as the hospitality manager. The two soon were married; Konstantina was a Santorini native whose family offered what would prove to be a life-changing direction for them both: a collection of inherited, largely derelict vineyards further inland near the town of Pyrgos. By 1997, the couple was ready to bring their vision of non-interventist, artisanal winemaking to the world, and they founded their eponymous winery that year. The Hatzidakis’ production methods and emphasis on small-quantity bottlings brought forth a set of wines that were universally noted for their structure and power, augmenting Assyrtiko’s already substantial mineral texture with rounded, polished body, and it’s not hyperbole to say that Haridimos and Konstantina started a qualitative renaissance in their revitalized homeland, paving the way for other smaller producers to follow suit. Their winery, literally carved into an existing system of caves on the side of one of Santorini’s rolling hills, became a symbol of the shifting attitudes towards viticulture on the island; at last, Assyrtiko’s siren song, composed over thousands of years, was being heard.
The Hatzidakis winery, carved out of a cave further inland on the island.
Timelessness, sadly, is not without its counterpart, and time’s cruel limitations came to Hatzidakis winery in 2017, when Haridimos suddenly and unexpectedly passed away. Befitting the vanguard spirit of their journey in life and wine together, Konstantina decided to continue operations, and the family was rewarded for their persistence by the emergence of daughter Stella, who has brought the winery into a new era, honoring her father’s legacy while being at the helm of an all-female oenology team, one whose wines have garnered even more praise in the years following Haridimos’ passing.
Produced in minute quantities, Hatzidakis’ upper-level wines, which include several single-vineyard Ayssrtikos that reflect their ongoing commitment to the expression of terroir on Santorini, are equal parts compelling to taste and infuriating to source. Happily, the still-limited cuvee (I was offered the last 18 bottles on the market!) that is appropriately named “Familia” occasionally makes its way to the DC/VA area, and it is my pleasure to introduce you to the marriage of Santorini and Assyrtiko from a family who have mastered this relationship. From the “Edge of the Earth” to your glass, one sip of “Familia” is proof that for Santorini wine, the time is now-D.
Hatzidakis Assyrtiko “Familia”, Santorini 2021
Country of Origin: Greece.
Places and People: Haridimos Hatzidakis was a native of the island of Crete, who came to Santorini originally to work at the Boutari family’s Santorini estate. After meeting his wife Konstantina, Haridimos decided to stay on the island and, together with Konstantina, founded Hatzidakis Winery in 1997, using Konstantina’s family land that had been abandoned following the 1956 earthquake. Known for crafting powerful wines that nevertheless express minute details of different terroir, Haridimos passed away tragically in 2017. The family estate has been carried on by his daughter Stella and their all-female oenology team. The “Familia” is produced from the estate vineyards in Pyrgos at an altitude of 100-300 meters with south/southeast exposure.
Soil: Santorini’s famous soil is called “Aspa”, a volcanic pumice that is light, porous, and with a low clay content that has largely made it immune to phylloxera.
Grape Varieties: 100% Assyrtiko.
Winemaking: The grapes are fermented at a controlled temperature of 17-18 degrees C, using indigenous yeasts.
Aging: The “Familia” is aged briefly for five months in stainless steel tanks prior to bottling.
Flavors and Foods: The typical pale straw color of Assyrtiko greets you in the glass of “Familia”. The nose is a checklist of Santorini “island” characteristics: aquamarine, sea foam, salt, and wet rock. The palate also brings a sense of place and typicity, but on leapers; what wonderful depth of flavor and texture for Assyrtiko! If you have ever tasted Assyrtiko, the “Familia” opens you up to what’s possible if taken to a different, more ambitious level (if you haven’t, the best comparison may be the finest examples of white grapes from the similarly volcanic region of Campania in Italy such as Greco and Fiano). Volcanic mineral notes, smoke. Lovely melon, Pineapple, and lemon confit mingle with fresh parsley, basil, and mineral notes of smoke and volcanic rock. The rich, round texture of “Familia” is balanced with ample acidity, which lingers on the front of the palate long after your sip is finished. Pair with lemon pasta, monkfish grilled or pan-seared with fresh herbs, grilled octopus, smoked crudo, and the freshest of garlic, sauteed in good quality olive oil.
Service and Cellar: To get the most enjoyment out of the Familia’s rounded body, serve the wine at the upper end of white wine cellar temperature (50-52 degrees); the interplay of rich texture and dynamic acidity brings great aging potential; I could see the 2021 drinking well until the latter half of the 2020s.
The sprawling landscape of the mainland Greece Naoussa region.
“First of Its Name”
Elinos Xinomavro “Taralas Vineyard”, Naoussa, Greece 2007
“I’d love to chat with you again; I’m actually in Greece right now but you can call me at 3pm your time, which is 10pm my time, if that works for you!” Such is the generosity of Greek native and NYC-based wine importer/broker Dionysi Greventitis; in preparation for writing these features and hosting an event based on his selections, I wanted to pick his brain a bit more about the evolution of Greek wine from the latter half of the 20th century to the present, and also about its place in the US market. What follows is a condensed version of some points we discussed while we, as Dionysi would say, “riffed” on that history, a great analogy of his that I received permission to steal, and the analogy’s principles coming to fruition in a delicious library offering, made by a twin brother and sister team in Dionysi’s home region of Naoussa, Greece’s very first official appellation.
Xinomavro vines on the estate of Elinos.
First, a “Fractured Fairy Tale” version of Greek wine in the US:
In the 1960s and 1970s, Greek immigrants to the US were busy building a community. They had arrived en masse thanks to, among other factors, political instability, island earthquakes, and economic hardship. In addition to foodstuffs and clothing, the first imports of Greek sundries included wine, but in a reflection of the period, the offerings did not showcase a desire for real quality and weren’t actively presented to those outside their own immigrant community.
Upon the arrival of the 1980s, Greek wineries realized that their presence in the west was marginalized by this insular attitude; the perception of Greek wines in the marketplace was (and in many ways still is) a few decades behind their European counterparts such as France, Italy, and Spain. The need to make up for this lost time was interwoven with an emphasis on the planting and production of internationally recognized grape varieties in order to obtain a market foothold, which of course came at the expense of indigenous grapes; in short, Greek wineries sacrificed both a truer sense of Greek terroir and the historic timeline that those native grapes represented, all to participate in some vinous contest of “Keeping Up with the Joneses” they had no chance of winning.
The 1990s and early 2000s finally saw a reversal in form for Greece; many established wineries began once again to feature and champion the country’s own grapes. While we certainly can give these producers credit for reestablishing Greek wines in the marketplace, this time period was arguably the peak of influence of the Wine Critic and his all-important Scores and Ratings, and so the bottlings that came to the US market were what Dionysi terms the “Safe Zone”; reliably unassuming versions of the native Assyrtiko, Moschofilero, Xinomavro, and Agiorgitiko that would be accessible, drinkable, and…well…boring.
Finally, the 2010s brought a refined vision of the wines of Greece. Producers who had started small and grown into conglomerates (Boutari, Sigalas, Alpha Estate, Kir-Yanni, Skouras) were now being joined by artisans, many of whom brought generations of familial experience as growers and who now through technology and the proliferation of information were able to stop selling their fruit to the “big boys” and strike out on their own. Along the way, they scoured their country’s mind-boggling timeline and revived traditional, ecologically sound winemaking techniques and unique styles of wine production, resurrected more ancient indigenous varieties, and modernized their winemaking, to complete what Dionysi calls “The 3-Legged Stool”. These “legs” of fine wine production in a given region rest upon principles of equal importance that both he and I share: grape varietals that contribute typicity and character, established terroir that carries with it a singular expressiveness (i.e. the wine tastes like its from somewhere in particular), and sound, knowledgeable winemaking. In Dionysi’s view, Greece has long had the first two legs of the stool; it’s this latter one, winemaking, that has truly turned the corner in the last couple of decades.
Neighbors making their morning commute near the Taralas vineyard, Naoussa.
Despite being behind the times when it came to marketing and exposing the world to their wines, when it came to appellation bureaucracy, Greece was right on schedule. They introduced their appellation designation system in 1971 (2 years before Italy); specified areas were called PDOs (Protected Designation of Origin), and larger regional catch-alls were given the name PGI (Protected Geographical Indication). The first PDO handed out was to a sparsely populated area in the north of Greece’s mainland, in the region of Macedonia. Bordering the country of North Macedonia, the Greek region of the same name sported rolling hills and agriculturally rich land. In the Macedonian area of Imathia, which the town and PDO of Naoussa lie in, the soil types become a bit harder for traditional farming and are famously varied (with even single vineyards passing from clay to sand to harder, rocky elemental ground). It was here in Naoussa that Greece’s ability to produce ageworthy red wines that could compete with other greats on a global scale was first recognized; the local red variety of Xinomavro, whose name roughly translates to “sour black grape” and references the varietal’s considerable acidity level, was found to produce highly tannic, structured reds that required years to open up. Researching Xinomavro, one is struck by the litany of comparisons to the famed red grape of Italy’s Piemonte region, Nebbiolo. In point of fact, the two are not genetically related but, like Nebbiolo, Xinomavro at its best has tannins leading that pronounced acidity along the palate, and both acid and tannin content give it the ability to cellar extremely well.
The Tarala family is certainly well versed in the particulars of Xinomavro; as winegrowers whose history in the Naoussa region dates to the 19th century, and who by the early 1900s were some of the predominant vineyard owners in the area, the Tarala’s suffered enormously in the aftereffects of World War II and Greece’s subsequent tumult, losing nearly all of their holdings. Undaunted, the family shifted gears to the merchant trade for wine and built a successful business that allowed current patriarch Dimitrios Tarala to re-acquire vineyards on a much smaller scale in the early 2000s. A few years later, Dimitrios’ twin children, brother Christos and sister Nikoletta, joined the enterprise and moved it further away from a negociant mentality, contributing the “third leg” of their family’s fine wine stool by getting their scant 7 hectares of vines certified organic and employing a more rigorous harvest selection. They made their Elinos brand wines from their family’s vineyard from the Imathia region, on the eastern side of Mount Vermion. The site of the vineyard is within the Naoussa PDO as long as 100% Xinomavro is used (Naoussa requires this for appellation certification). Pressing and fermenting with whole clusters for two weeks before destemming and moving the juice to large older barrels, the Elinos Xinomavro burns with all of the hallmark traits of the grape: Sour red cherries, pomegranate, and non-fruits of black tea, sage, and a savory meatiness that still shines well for a wine that has 15 years in the bottle. The 2007 “Taralas Vineyard” is one of those great wines to come across as a buyer, because the quality is excellent and an excellent relative value, while the cellaring work, that often today comes at too great an expense for most, has here been done for us. If you are looking to learn more about Elinos, you will be stymied in your quest; the winery no longer exists, and Christos and Nikoletta have now spearheaded the reformation of their family’s operation into Taralas Estates, growing the winery in a measured fashion. It is only appropriate, I think, that to celebrate Greece in our Pollux membership we have a wine that represents the country’s first appellation, produced from a grape that first won the international wine community’s hearts, and made well enough that it has outlasted the very winery it originally came from. I’m no carpenter, but a bottle of Elinos in the decanter has me feeling like I could build a 3-legged stool with the best of them-D.
Elinos Xinomavro “Taralas Vineyards”, Naoussa, 2007
Country of Origin: Greece.
Places and People: Twin brother and sister Christos and Nikoletta Tarala began their journey with Elinos in 2006. Members of the Tarala family, whose history in the wine trade dates to the 1800s, Christos and Nikoletta farm their father Dimitrios’ vineyard at the eastern end of Mount Vermion in the Imathia region, producing both international varieties and Xinomavro from the famous Naoussa PDO, the first PDO in Greece (1971). Certified organic viticulture.
Soil: The soil of Imathia and the Naoussa PDOs are fantastically varied, even within single vineyards. Elinos has deposits of sand, clay, and larger rocks.
Grape Varieties: 100% Xinomavro.
Winemaking: The Xinomavro grapes are pressed whole-cluster, with cryo-extraction for 4-5 days at 10°C, followed by a 14-18 day fermentation with native yeasts at 22°C. The must is then destemmed, and the wine is transferred with the lees to barrel.
Aging: In what is almost a prerequisite to soften the Xinomavro grape’s characteristic acidity and tannic backbone, the Elinos matures for 2-4 years in second-use barrels (large).
Flavors and Foods: A wealth of complexity awaits you in this bottle; there is, simply put, a new descriptor or flavor profile to be had with each passing moment. A ruby color with rim moving to orange (a characteristic of both aged red wines in general and the Xinomavro grape in particular) gives way to scents of red cherries, pomegranate, dried roses and violets, hay, tea leaves, and a distinct gamey meatiness. The palate is chock-full also, with the above fruits, tea, and savory qualities showing up in the mouth. The wine’s dusty tannins are present for structural purposes and, while they remain coarse (you’ll never confuse Xinomavro for Cabernet), they have softened sufficiently to allow this wine to excel, particularly with food. Grilled, butterflied lamb leg with a pastiche of fresh herbs courtesy of a mortar and pestle will seem as though it was invented for this wine rather than the other way around, and the Elinos’s earthiness will accomodate roast chicken with tomato and mushrooms or a grilled mixed vegetable platter (eggplant, yellow squash) nicely. Outside the box? Consider a hard, salty Greek cheese, such as the famed Kefalotyri variety, made from either sheep or goat’s milk.
Service and Cellar: This 2007, even with the dusty notes mentioned above, still has good primary fruit after 15 years in the bottle, and will hold up to a decanting and lengthy aeration session (I recently had one opened and decanted for two hours for an event and found that it was still holding its fruit well upon being served in the party’s latter stages). The Elinos has its feet firmly planted in the “ready to drink” window, but I also believe that the wine has 3-5 more years of excellence under its belt before the fruit will begin to dissipate, so cellar away (if you’ve the discipline).