Santorini and the Cyclades
In the Eastern Mediterranean, in the South Aegean Sea, lies a group of islands known as the Cyclades, because they (roughly) form a circle.
In wine terms, the most famous of these is Santorini, also known as Thira. Santorini’s current appearance is the result of a catastrophic collapse of the volcano below the island in around 1400 BC, which took the centre of the island below the sea, leaving the sickle-shaped part to the East which is now occupied Santorini, and the island of Thirasia in the West. This volcanic activity is likely to have been responsible for the decline of the Minoan civilisation on nearby Crete, such was its ferocity, and thus the later rise of Mycenean Greece.
Today, the results of this activity have left an island which offers highly dramatic sunsets, attracting many many tourists, and deep grey volcanic soil, as a result of the ash deposits. This soil is home to the grape that arguably produces Greece’s greatest expression of white wine, Assyrtiko.
The low fertility and lack of organic matter in the soil also means that the vine disease that plagued almost all of Europe in the late eighteen and early twentieth centuries – phylloxera – has had no effect here. The phylloxera louse cannot survive here, and as a consequence, some of the vines are said to be more than 200 years old, and still produce grapes for wine.
The Cyclades has a long wine making tradition, as indeed do many parts of Greece on other islands and the mainland. But the occupation of Greece by the Muslim Ottoman Turks from the fifteenth century through to the Greek revolution in the early nineteenth century, and the tendency post World War II for Greeks to emigrate in search of a better life, means that many places that were making wine well before Alexander the Great was conceived are either not doing so at all now, or making it on a much smaller scale, and then often for personal consumption rather than on a commercial scale.
Santorini is the clear exception to this, although wine is also made commercially on Paros (principally by Moraitis) and on the small and beautiful island of Sikinos, at the Manalis winery. Sikinos, indeed, was once known of as ‘Oinoe’, the land of wine, and whilst it is sad that so few vines are growing now, thanks are due to George Manalis for setting up his winery there, and providing such a dramatic spot to taste the produce of his island (for more on that see later).
The islands also grow other varieties, principally the red Mandilaria and Mavrotragano, and the white Aidani and Athiri. Mandilaria makes a rather light and fragrant wine, whilst Mavrotragano provides more tannin and structure. Aidani and Athiri are generally blended with Assyrtiko, especially in Santorini’s other great wine, the sweet Vin Santo; although single varietal examples of still whites do exist in small numbers.
Click below to see more about some of the producers and the wines themselves: