AMYNDEON, Greece — The landscape of the Macedonian region in northern Greece is tapestried with vineyards. They supply wineries that are producing some of the best red wines Greece has to offer.
The Alpha Estate here in the northwestern corner of Macedonia is a fine example. In a tasting of Greek reds by the wine panel of The Times last August, its 2016 xinomavro, from the Hedgehog Vineyard, came out on top.
That wine tasting covered only wines made from indigenous grapes, notably xinomavro (zee-no-MAHV-ro), the grape used to make the Alpha Estate wine. It’s a name that should become increasingly familiar to wine lovers willing to explore the wines of Greece.
While high-profile Greek winemakers are busy cultivating international varietals like merlot and sauvignon blanc, the spotlight is starting to shine on some of the hundreds of the country’s native grapes, many of which have probably existed since the days of Homer.
Angelos Iatrides, an owner and the winemaker of Alpha Estate, whom I met on a visit to Macedonia and several of the region’s wineries this year, is convinced of the value of Greek varietals, and hopes the rest of the wine world will come around. “Xinomavro is very important,” he said. “We have to understand the purity of these varietals and learn about them.”
His Alpha Estate, established in 1997 on a high plateau surrounded by mountains on three sides (and not far from a ski resort), produces 650,000 bottles annually, 35 percent of them for export.
“It’s a trade-off when it comes to getting publicity for Greek wines,” he said. “It’s a question of who, outside Greece, would buy xinomavro over merlot?”
In the 1980s, exports of Greek wines picked up after decades in the shadows. Poorly made retsina, tasting of turpentine, hadn’t helped Greece’s wine reputation. Scores of new Greek winemakers trained their sights on the international market. They planted well-known European varietals like merlot and sauvignon blanc, often to use in blends, offering a veneer of familiarity to consumers who had no idea what to expect from a bottle of assyrtiko or limnia.
Some wines are 100 percent French varietal, and even win prizes at international wine fairs. Michel Rolland, a French wine consultant who is known to favor assertive, fruit-forward wines, has advised a few of the winemakers favoring international varietals.
On a number of occasions during my recent trip to Greece, I tasted whites made from assyrtiko, a grape indigenous to the island of Santorini that has become increasing familiar outside Greece. Many assyrtikos were blended with sauvignon blanc, but I preferred those made without the French grape; they had more character and richness, balanced by refreshing citric acidity. As a wine-loving Greek friend said over dinner in Athens, “pure assyrtiko is the best white wine made in Greece.”
Across Greece, grapes are grown and wine is made in just about every region including the islands, with about 152 million acres of vineyards planted mostly with indigenous varieties. New respect is being accorded those native grapes in the all-important export market, which accounts for only 13 percent of production but is worth about 82.6 million euros (about $91 million).
It’s a reaction to the global standardization of wines with well-known grape varietals. After the wine panel tasting, it was clear that many of the wines expressed the terroir of their home and could appeal to the wine world that, increasingly, was interested in discovering those characteristics and traditions.
Now wines made from Greece’s own grapes, in bottles with corks and screw caps, are filling the bins and racks of restaurants in Athens, on magnet islands like Mykonos and Santorini, and elsewhere in Europe and the United States.
At Alpha Estate, Mr. Latrides, 52, a chemist by training who studied at the University of Bordeaux, has great respect for the old. But he doesn’t hesitate to take advantage of new technology. He uses satellite surveillance, controlled with his smartphone, to determine when each block of vineyard is ready for picking. There’s nothing newfangled about the harvest; it’s done entirely by hand.
In the winery, a stately building finished in red terra cotta, he has installed a system for refreshing the air in the underground cellars three times a day, and has stones under the barrels to help control the humidity. Sustainability is a focus; 65 percent of the energy used by the winery is solar. The estate does not apply chemicals in the vineyards, nor use them during winemaking to produce its full-bodied yet elegant red xinomavros or other wines, including those made from French grapes like syrah.
The winery is lucky to be in a microclimate that enjoys fairly stable weather with cool nights, two large lakes nearby to temper Macedonia’s summer heat and dry conditions as the grapes ripen — conditions that assure good acidity for the wines.
But Mr. Latrides takes nothing for granted. “Many of the Greek grapes have existed for thousands of years, through climate fluctuations that have forced them to adapt,” he said. “It might make them suited to the weather conditions that wine growers are facing now.”
With that in mind, Greek winemakers are paying increasing attention to relatively obscure native grapes, rescuing them from obscurity, defining their potential and putting them into commercial production.
One example is the white debina grape, now cultivated at the Zoinos Winery in the Epirus region, just west of Macedonia, and even used to make an orange wine. There’s also the aromatic white grape, malagousia, another rarity. It was first rehabilitated staring in 1981 by Ktima Gerovassiliou, an important winery with a wine museum just south of Thessaloniki, the capital of Macedonia. Records show that winemaking in that region goes back 1,500 years.
Debina has not caught on elsewhere in Greece, but malagousia has, along with others, like limniona and mavrotragano. If you have an interest in fine Greek wines, it may also be time to add these, along with xinomavro, to your vocabulary.
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