Is all Greek wine retsina?

No. Retsina is one traditional style — white wine flavoured with Aleppo pine resin — and it dominated Greece's export image for much of the twentieth century. It still exists, and thoughtful modern versions are made, but it is a small part of the picture today. Most Greek wine is unresinated and made from indigenous grapes.

What does Assyrtiko taste like?

Dry and sharply acidic, with lemon, grapefruit and green apple rather than tropical fruit, finishing chalky or almost salty. Santorini examples add a smoky, mineral character from the volcanic soil. It carries weight without sweetness, so it handles richer food than most crisp whites: grilled fish, but also fried dishes and creamy sauces.

Why are Santorini's vines shaped like baskets?

Wind. The summer meltemi tears across the island, so growers weave the vine's canes into a low circular basket called a kouloura and let the grapes ripen inside it, sheltered from the gusts and the sun. The basket also helps trap the night mist, which supplies most of the water these dry-farmed vines get.

How do you pronounce Xinomavro and Agiorgitiko?

Xinomavro is roughly ksee-NO-mav-ro, and it means "sour black" — a fair description of a grape high in both acid and tannin. Agiorgitiko is roughly ah-yor-YEE-tee-ko, from Agios Georgios, Saint George. Greek wine names look harder than they sound; read them one syllable at a time and they come apart easily.

Greece Wine: Regions, Grapes & Styles

Greece has been making wine for something like four thousand years. In antiquity its wines travelled the Mediterranean in clay amphorae, and bottles from Chios, Thasos and Lesbos were genuinely prized. Then came centuries of foreign rule, phylloxera, war and emigration, and by the middle of the twentieth century Greek wine abroad meant cheap bulk and retsina.

The turnaround began in the 1980s and gathered pace through the 1990s, when a generation of Greek winemakers who had trained in France, Italy and Germany came home and started making estate wine from Greek grapes rather than imported ones. That decision is what makes the country interesting now. Greece has a few hundred indigenous varieties, many of them growing nowhere else on earth, and the best modern Greek wine is built on them. Quality wines are labelled PDO, for protected designation of origin, which works much like the French and Italian systems: a name tied to a place, a set of grapes and a set of rules.

What Greek wine tastes like

Greek wine tastes fresher and more savoury than its warm-sounding address suggests, largely because the best vineyards are at altitude, on islands, or both.

Assyrtiko is the white to know: bone dry, very high in acidity, with lemon and grapefruit rather than tropical fruit, and on Santorini a distinctly salty, smoky mineral edge. It has almost no sweetness and a surprising amount of texture.

The reds split in two. Xinomavro — the name means "sour black" — is pale in colour but tough and tannic, tasting of sour cherry, tomato and olive when young, then drifting towards dried fruit, mushroom and truffle after a decade. Agiorgitiko is the friendlier one: deeper colour, softer tannin, red plum and sweet spice, velvety rather than austere.

Signature grapes of Greece

Three grapes carry these pages. Assyrtiko is remarkable for holding onto sharp acidity even when fully ripe in serious heat, which is why it thrives on Santorini and why growers elsewhere are now planting it; on the island it is blended with small amounts of Aidani and Athiri. Xinomavro is Greece's most demanding red — high in tannin, high in acid, long-lived, and often compared to Nebbiolo. Agiorgitiko, named after Saint George, is the approachable counterweight: deeply coloured, plush and spiced, and perfectly good young.

Wine regions of Greece

Three Greek regions have pages here, one white and two red. Santorini is a volcanic island in the Aegean where ungrafted vines, some sitting on roots centuries old, are woven into low basket shapes to survive the wind; it makes Greece's most celebrated white. Naoussa lies on the slopes of Mount Vermio in the north, at roughly 150 to 400 metres, and is red only and Xinomavro only. Nemea, in the northeastern Peloponnese, is Greece's largest red PDO, running from around 200 up to 850 metres and planted entirely to Agiorgitiko.

Three Greek bottles to start with