Gaia S
While tasting at Gaia’s Nemea-Koutsi winery a few years back, I was looking out of their tasting room. Staring at me, amongst their Aghiorghitiko vineyard, was a patch of young vines. I asked what clones and rootstock they were using. I got a very different answer from the usually humdrum numbered codes and the like. “It is Syrah. As the soil is marl, it is a gamble,” replied Yianni Paraskevopoulos. That’s news, I said to myself. Since Gaia’s inception in 1994, they have devoted their energies only to indigenous varieties.
Syrah thrives on granitic slopes dusted with mica. It does rather well on schist at various sites in the Iberian peninsula. In Greece’s fragmented vineyard, this sun and wind grape has been taken to a variety of different latitudes, microclimates and soil types. With promising, to very good, results so far, easily outperforming the darling of the 1980s and 1990s, the ubiquitous Cabernet Sauvignon.
Central Crete, the red soils of Maronia on the northern Aegean shoreline, and the sandy-limestone bedrock of cooler-climate Amyndeon are three top-performing Syrah sites that spring to mind. These early (since the 1990s) Syrahs display lovely aromatic complexity and flavours. So, you may ask, how is this incomer adapting on a hillside in Nemea? Having tasted ‘06-’07-’08 vintages in cask solo, it does not thrill me. Muted aroma, “sweeter” than Aghiorghitiko. As they say, it is no great shakes. Thus far it is of mild interest – a work in progress. The answer lies in the cellar and not in the vineyard. This Franco-Hellenic marriage does become something rather different when blended and in bottle. The Koutsi terroir dominates the Syrah, packing it with finesse and toning down the pepper and other usual Syrah aromatics fireworks. It is a clever blend. With 70% of Aghiorghitiko, it essentially becomes a new type of wine. Think of it as a mixed-blood well-mannered cosmopolitan. Does it have a raison d’être? Unreservedly yes. Are we witnessing the birth of a super Nemea as Tuscany experienced in the 1970s? Quite possibly, but only time will tell. So far, the all-indigenous Gaia Estate is superior. That Syrah patch yielded enough in 2007 to produce 7,614 numbered unfiltered bottles. Price-wise, Gaia S sits just below Gaia Estate. As the first two vintages sold out within 48 hours even with the current economic downturn, there seems to be a demand for the new and unusual.
Youthful purple rim. Medium dark. Seductive floral aroma with “sweet” berry notes. Round and juicy. Warm fruited. Long and intensely flavoured, oozing black cherries. Bold but soft tannins. Vanilla notes meshed with Koutsi signature limestone mineral. Still raw. Worth decanting. Best 2011-17.
Score: 17.5/20
For more information, please visit www.gaia-wines.gr
3.06.2009
