Peloponnese | Greek Wine World

2006
Nemea Mitravelas Estate

This centenarian negociant, vineyard owner and, more recently, bottler is one of Nemea’s top addresses. There are no secrets to their success. Intimate knowledge of the valley-floor best-draining name places. Equally at home with which hillside performs best in a given vintage. Their long-established contacts with some of the best farmers add to a considerable deck of cards. Managing all this is Kostas Mitravelas, a straight-talking and low-key member of Nemea’s younger generation of historic wine families. The oenologist Gregory Vrettos, whose dark handsome good looks would not be out of place in an Armani advertisement, is another asset to this going places estate. Behind his boyish charm lies one of the better talents to graduate from the Athens University. This busy 26-year-old also manages to find time to run a full-time agricultural laboratory in his home town of Thiva. Vrettos also handles the estate’s exports and travels extensively to open new markets. The year 2006 was a pretty vintage in Nemea. Most of the old-vine Aghiorghitiko was safely picked before the last 20% of the harvest was hit by heavy rains.
Medium dark. Blue rim. Broadly fruited. Black cherries. Round palate with melt-in-mouth suave tannins. Succulent supple finish. Still more to come. Could not be more appellation-true. If you are new to the elegant charms of Nemea, this is one of the best introductions to old-vine (+35-year-old bush vines) examples now on the scene. Best 2010-2015.

Score: 17.5/20

See review of another wine by this Estate: Kokkino se Mavro

For more details, please visit: www.mitravelas.com
Greece distributor: www.cavahalari.gr
UK: www.bibendum-wine.co.uk

10.03.2010

2009
Malagousia Antonopoulos Vineyards

malagou09 Anything with the word Malagousia on the label seems much in demand. Apparently, exports are up in the U.S., and interest is growing in Northern Europe. Despite new plantings, so far, demand far outstrips supply. Are all Malagousias that worthy? The short answer is no. With the sudden weather changes of the more recent vintages, I find this ultrafashionable grape has an increasingly less uniform quality about it. The worst – oily and blowsy– manage caricature expressions of this fragrant dry, ideal as an aperitif, wine. The chief suspect: vineyard management. There is a strong quality correlation between addresses who are pro-active in the vineyard and ones who still hang on to a bygone happy-go-lucky route. Let’s face it: The last exceptional across the board white wine vintage was back in 2005. With the climate change, now even white wine farming is more demanding. To paraphrase a real-estate term, the new mantra is irrigation, irrigation, irrigation. More precisely: measured stress, irrigation, measured stress, irrigation, and so on.
The longstanding oenologist and guiding light at Antonopoulos, Michalis Probonas, has always paid attention to nature. Like other stellar colleagues, he spends most of his time amongst the vines. In the Antonopoulos vineyards there is a new factor in the equation: The more recent Demestika 900-m.-high vineyard has been bearing exceptionally balanced fruit. It was first shown to me (the picture on the home page of their website) as a bare knoll in the mid-1990s. It has now grown up, and the breezy qualities in terms of natural freshness end up in several of this pioneering boutique’s innovative and clever blends.
2009 was a difficult vintage. Exceptions are emerging in several delicate and insistent white wines. Yellow, lime tints. Light carbonic gas prickle. Attractive ripe grassy notes. Pit stone (peach) aroma. Crunchy apple- and white pepper-textured mid-palate. Tension and a bone-dry, elegant, mineral finish. Polished. At 12.2% ABV, a strong candidate to welcome spring with al fresco sipping. Best 2010-12.

Score: 16.5/20

For more details please visit: www.antonopoulos-vineyards.com

Greece distributor: www.cavahalari.gr

23.12.2009

2006
Cava Domaine Mercouri

After the autumn rains, the Ionio Pelagos humidity clears up. Almost within reach, the mountain outline of the island of Zakynthos comes into focus. At dusk, visible from the Mercouri Estate gardens, car lights flicker across from the island that the Venetians called the Fioro de Levante. Cava Mercouri is home to the setting of perhaps the prettiest natural outdoor ‘tasting room’ under a corridor of pine trees. It is in this sheltered tranquil oasis that I recently tasted a selection of the older red vintages. For a full progress report you will have to wait for the publication of the forthcoming book. Meanwhile, of the many bottles opened, one stood out: the Cava 2006. This label is a vineyard selection of the finest grapes. Refosco dal Penduncolo Rosso (80%) and Mavrodaphne (20%), the small berried tsingela, though technicians are not in unison that it is a clone per se.

Most of you unfamiliar with Greek and European wine laws must be wondering what the word ‘Cava’ is doing on a still red wine. Simply put, when Spain joined the EU, in 1986, two Southern European wine cultures had different interpretations of the term. Luckily, it concerned very different types of wine. In short, Spain kept Cava for their Catalan sparkling white wine, and Greece kept Cava for still cellar-aged white, to a lesser degree, and mostly red wine.

Dark. Bright fruit. Intense. Refosco freshness and structure. Spicy wood and currant fruit with soft, generous Mavrodaphne tannins. A hint of tobacco on the finish. Very pure. Poised. A more modern, rounder tannin profile than earlier vintages (the stellar 2000 comes to mind). Partly down to malolactic fermentation now taking place in cask. Few wines reflect with such clarity their place of origin – in this case the balmy, warmer maritime Ionian. Recommended in carafe. Best 2010-2020.

Score: 17.5/20

For more information, please visit www.mercouri.gr

28.09.2009

Wine geography