Mavrotragano - Santorini, Greece

It doesn't happen all that often, but it does occasionally happen that I will get an invitation from someone familiar with this site to sample an interesting bottle of wine that I wouldn't ordinarily have access to.  In today's case, what happened was that Joe Godas, the head wine guy over at Curtis Liquors in Weymouth, received a sample bottle of a wine made from the Mavrotragano grape that he invited me to his shop to try out.

Mavrotragano has been on my radar since I picked up a few bottles of wine made from the Mandilaria grape on the island of Santorini in Greece.  In doing the research for those wines, I came across the following passage in Konstantinos Lazarakis' excellent book, The Wines of Greece: "...in terms of quality, it [Mandilaria] is totally eclipsed by the much rarer Mavrotragano...[which] can be Greece's answer to Mourvedre."  I rather enjoyed the Mandilaria that I was able to try, so I was very intrigued by the notion that the little blending partner in the wines I had may be the real star.  I tried to track down a bottle made mostly from Mavrotragano grapes, but it turns out that very few bottles are actually made and not very much of it finds its way to US shores.  The producer for the bottle that I was able to try only makes about 500 cases per year, just to give you an idea.

And, frankly, it's something of a miracle that even that much is made today.  Nearly a century ago, Mavrotragano was relatively common throughout the island of Santorini, but what was grown was typically used to make a sweet red wine for the growers themselves that generally wasn't bottled or sold to the public.  Through the years, a handful of circumstances began to line up that nearly sounded the death knell for the grape.  First of all, Santorini is an absolutely gorgeous place and as the island began to develop something of a reputation amongst tourists, new places for the tourists to stay needed to be built.  Many vineyards were torn up to make way for the hotel building blitz undertaken to keep pace with Santorini's rise in stature as a tourist destination.

This was a problem, but there were still plenty of vineyards around Santorini where Mavrotragano could have been planted.  The trouble was compounded, though, by the belief that Santorini was not an appropriate place to try and make red wine due to its somewhat erratic climate and the incredibly powerful winds that tear across the island's surface.  Historically, the island has been best known for its white wines made from the Assyrtiko grape, and its reputation in the wider wine world has been rising rapidly over the past few decades on the strength of the wines made from that grape (it doesn't hurt anything that it's  usually pretty hot on Santorini and the white wines made from Assyrtiko are very refreshing, much more so than a red wine would be, and a major market for the wines made here are the tourists looking more to unwind than to explore the island's vinous range).  Further, Assyrtiko is easier to grow in the difficult conditions on Santorini than Mavrotragano, and many growers uprooted their Mavrotragano plantings for new Assyrtiko plantings in greater and greater numbers through the years until Mavrotragano occupied less than 2% of the vineyard land by the year 2000. 

As happens in so many places, though, there were a certain number of growers whose curiosity and experimental spirit wouldn't allow them to be content with the one-dimensional view of Santorini wine that had begun to take hold.  A few of them looked to the native red grapes that they had on the island and saw that Mavrotragano might have some potential.  There were some experimental trials run in the late 1990's that began to show promise, and a few estates began to plant over small vineyard sites to the Mavrotragano grape.  Production is still small, but there is a buzz growing about these wines in the international community that seems to indicate that Santorini may have found a red star to complement its already famous Assyrtiko.

As mentioned above, the wine that I was able to try was a sample bottle.  I tasted the wine with Joe and a few other locals in a back room at Curtis Liquors following a public tasting of some Italian wines that the shop had put on.  The wine was from the 2008 vintage and was from the Domaine Sigalas, who apparently has about 8 hectares of land devoted to the Mavrotragano grape. I'm not entirely sure what the SRP is for this bottle, though Decanter has it listed at £12 in the UK market. In the glass, the wine was a deep crimson ruby color that was opaque in the center to a narrow crimson rim. The nose was nicely aromatic with spicy blueberry, blackberry, black cherry and boysenberry fruits with a touch of smoke to them. The nose was very deep with a lot of interesting fruit aromas. On the palate, the wine was on the fuller side of medium with medium acid and medium tannins. The flavors were very ripe with rich black and blue fruit flavors throughout. There were flavors of blueberry pie, black cherry and blackberry with some baking spice and chocolate and a touch of black pepper. The oak influence was incredibly pronounced here, and the back label confirmed what a lot of us in the room were picking up on. The wine spends 18 months in new oak, and it wears it very loudly. The wine wasn't necessarily bad, but I know that I was somewhat disappointed that so much oak was applied to the wine, as it really masked what might exist for varietal character or any real sense of place. Instead, the wine came across as most similar to a California Zinfandel or an Aussie Shiraz, an overripe fruit bomb (14% abv for those interested) slathered in new oak that can be enjoyable in its own way, but which is interchangeable with any number of other bottles.  Oak tastes like oak no matter what and it's disturbing to see something so rare hidden behind all that make-up.

Mandilaria (and a little Kotsifali) - Santorini and Crete, Greece

Mandilaria Grapes

Today's grape finds us once again on the island paradise of Santorini in Greece.  Last time we visited, we took a look at a few white grapes (notably Assyrtiko) made in a variety of styles.  Today we'll look at the most planted red grape on the island (accounting for about 20% of the total vineyard area), Mandilaria.  We'll also make a quick stop on the island of Crete to take a look at a rosé wine made from Mandilaria and Kotsifali.

Mandilaria is one of those grapes that's very popular with growers, but not necessarily with critics.  From a grape grower's perspective, the vine is great because it yields easily and productively.  It does need care in the vineyard as the canopy can get out of control in a hurry, so careful and frequent pruning is necessary as is wide spacing between the vines to avoid overlapping canopies.  The vine is susceptible to rot and various fungal diseases, but is resistant to hot, dry conditions (purportedly as a result of its Cretan heritage).

If you've read the Assyrtiko post above, you may be thinking to yourself that the conditions that this grape seems to need for its greatest success are the very same conditions that you find on the arid, windy island of Santorini, and you'd be absolutely correct.  As mentioned in that post, Santorini is technically a desert, so not only are the dry conditions on the island not a problem, the moisture related maladies that Mandilaria is afflicted by aren't an issue either.  Because of the very dry conditions, vines have to be planted very apart so that they don't compete with one another too much for the meager water supply so the canopy overlap problem is thus solved as well.

Mandilaria generally finds itself in red wine blends thanks to its ability to produce deep, intensely colored wines.  In quantities as low as 10%, Mandilaria is known to deepen the color of wines made from grapes that traditionally don't need much help in the color department like Cabernet Sauvignon.  There are few varietal bottlings of Mandilaria available because, as Konstantinos Lazarakis puts it in his Wines of Greece, "intense color sums up most of its character."  That may be true in areas like Crete, but the conditions of Santorini are very special so I was eager to try two different Mandilaria bottlings from Santorini.

The first wine I tried was the 2007 Argyros "Atlantis" bottling which I picked up for about $20 from Federal Wine and Spirits.  The wine is a blend of 90% Mandilaria and 10% Mavrotragano, a very rare specialty of Santorini.  In the glass, the wine was fairly deeply colored with a purple-ruby hue.  The nose was fairly aromatic with blackberry, black cherry, cola and mushroom aromas.  On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high to high acidity and solid, grippy tannins.  There were flavors of black cherry, sour cherry, tart blackberry, cola and an earthy, raw mushroom kind of flavor.  Right out of the bottle, the wine was very tart but as it opened up, the ripe black fruits started to spread out a bit and the tannins got nice and silky.  It reminded me a lot of a fruity Zinfandel minus the brambly, peppery fruit.

The second wine has me a little confused at the moment.  It is also from the Argyros winery and purports to be 90% Mandilaria and 10% Mavrotragano, but the proprietary name on the bottle is "Aspa," and there's no reference to a bottling series under that name on the Argyros website.  I'm guessing that they changed the name of that particular line at some points between 2005 (this bottle's vintage) and 2007 (the Atlantis bottle's vintage).  In any case, I dug this wine up locally for about $15.  In the glass the wine was a deep purple ruby with a bright lavender rim.  The nose was fairly aromatic with the same ripe black cherry and blackberry fruit and cola notes, but there was a smokiness here and there was a bit of dried cherry fruit and cocoa aromas.  On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity and medium silky tannins.  There were flavors of ripe black cherry, dried chery, blackberry fruit and cola.  The flavors were very intense and concentrated and really made me think about dried cherries soaked over night in Coca-Cola.  Both wines were very ripe and densely flavored, if not extraordinarily complex, and would probably appeal most to fans of California Zinfandel or Australian Shiraz.

Kotsifali Grapes

Today's bonus wine is a rosé that I picked up made from Kotsifali and Mandilaria grapes.  Kotsifali is Mandilaria's nearly constant running mate in wines made on the island of Crete since their strengths and weaknesses line up nearly across the board.  Mandilaria makes intensely colored wines with good tannic and acidic structure, but Kotsifali has pale, thin skins that are difficult to get decent extraction from and suffers from low acidity.  Mandilaria has a fairly simple, fruity aroma and flavor profile while Kotsifali has a spicy, flowery, herbaceous quality to it that accents the primary fruit of Mandilaria.  Mandilaria is fortunate to reach 12.5% alcohol under ideal conditions while Kotsifali easily surpasses this number (whether that's a good thing or not is really up to you, I suppose).  Together, the two grapes can make quite a dynamic duo.

The only wine I've been able to find from these two grapes was a rosé from the Creta Olympias winery (who also made the Vilana that I reviewed here a few months back).  The bottle I found was from the 2007 vintage and it cost me about $10.  I was a little concerned upon purchase that this was a four year old rosé from a producer I'd not had great success with, but the color looked good and I figured it was worth a shot for $10. In the glass, the wine was a medium salmon pink when I had a small pour for tasting purposes, though it had more of a bright, cherry red color in the bottle and in a full glass.  The nose was nicely aromatic with sour cherry, strawberry and tart red berry fruits with just a touch of funk hanging around.   On the palate the wine was medium bodied with fairly high acidity.  There were lively flavors of strawberry,  raspberry and maraschino cherry fruit that faded quickly from the palate and left a kind of funky aftertaste behind.  If I was drinking this with a funky cheese, the aftertaste may have been welcome, but on its own, it was a bit off-putting.  Age could have certainly been a factor here, and I would like to try this in a newer vintage, but my experience with this bottle would have me direct others to any of the wealth of value-priced rosé wines out there these days.

Assyrtiko Two Ways - Santorini, Greece

Santorini seems like kind of an awesome place. It's a little set of islands in the Aegean Sea that is the remnant of a massive volcanic explosion about 3,600 years ago which blew the top off of a volcano, leaving the Santorini caldera behind. There are some people that believe that this explosion and its aftermath were the inspiration for Plato's description of the lost city of Atlantis. On the inside of the curve, there are steep cliff faces that drop as much as 300 meters straight down towards the lagoon. The capital city, Fira, is scattered along a hill top and some of the towns have buildings that seem to be just hanging on the edge of the cliffs. The topsoil is made up of different layers of volcanic ash, which is not necessarily a good thing for agriculture but makes for some pretty stunning black-sanded beaches. The underlying soil is made up of chalk and shale. Miles Lambert-Gocs, in his The Wines of Greece, compares the landscape of Santorini to the surface of the moon with ashy greyness stretching in all directions.

Not only is the soil on Santorini inhospitable to agriculture, but the climate is as well. Santorini and another Greek island called Anafi are the only two areas in all of Europe whose climate can be categorized as "desert" according to the Köppen climate classification system. What this means is that these areas receive fewer than 10 inches of rainfall a year, which is considered too low to sustain any vegetation. In order to combat these arid conditions, the vines are spaced very far apart, in much the same way as in La Mancha, Spain. The distance between vines can be as far as 2.5 meters. The primary source of moisture for these vines is the morning dew and the air moisture captured by some of the clay in the soil. As a result of the spacing and the low moisture, yields here are incredibly small, amounting to 10-20% of the average yields found in France or Italy.

Santorini is very windy due to the fact that the island is basically a big hill in the middle of the ocean and because the land is too dry to support things like trees that might block some of the wind. In order to combat these fierce winds, the vines are trained in unique basket shapes where the stalks of the vines are trained into spirals which the grapes sit in the middle of, protecting both the stalks themselves and the grape clusters from the harsher elements of the weather with the major downside (from a producer's point of view) being that the grapes must all be hand-harvested since you can't get a mechanical harvester into one of those nests. One good outcome of the harsh climate and remote location of the island of Santorini is that phylloxera never made it to the island, or, if it did, it was unable to survive in the harsh conditions. The vines here are ungrafted and can live for over 70 years.

Assyrtiko (and its many synonyms made by substituting "y"s for "i"s and "k"s for "c"s) is the most widely planted grape varietal on the island of Santorini, accounting for 70-80% of vineyard area. It is thought to be native to Santorini, though it is also widely grown throughout the Greek island system and on the mainland. It is perhaps best known as a blending partner with the Savatiano grape in the production of Retsina. It is a hardy grape that is resistant to many diseases and adaptable to different climactic conditions. It is naturally very high in acid and tends to find itself in blends (though there are 100% varietal wines produced) with other grapes either to boost their acid content (such as in Retsina) or to temper its own high acid as in the 2009 Sigalas Assyrtiko/Athiri blend that I tried.

The Sigalas wine ($18 retail) has a mixture of 75% Assyrtiko with 25% Athiri. Athiri is a very old Greek varietal which is named for "Thira" or Thera, which is the name of the largest island comprising Santorini, indicating its historical ties to this region. In the glass, this wine was a very pale, light straw color. It had a moderately open nose with aromas of grapefruit and lemon peel and a kind of clean, rainwater smell. On the palate, the wine was full bodied and kind of oily-textured with high acid. There was a bit of white grapefruit fruit, but there was mostly this very steely minerality that lingered very nicely. This was bright, crisp and very clean that was a much larger mouthful than I was expecting. It cane be tough to balance an oily textured wine, but the acidity here is great and very refreshing, making this a very versatile food wine.

The other Assyrtiko wine I sampled is a bit more complicated. Anyone who has spent a good deal of time around Italian wine, especially Tuscan wine, has probably come across Vin Santo. Italian Vin Santo is made by drying grapes, typically Malvasia or Trebbiano, on straw mats before pressing them and then barrel aging them. The style can vary from a dry sherry-like drink to a syrupy, rich dessert wine depending on the region and the winemaker. Well, it turns out that Greece also has a Vin Santo. My wife was actually shopping for a bottle of the Italian stuff and came home with a 2004 bottling from Boutari ($30 for 500ml) made from Assyrtiko and Aidani grapes instead. She was disappointed in her honest mistake (until we drank the wine), but I was excited since this was something I had never heard of before.

Surely there must be some kind of connection between these two wines, one might think. Well, it doesn't appear so. In an impressive display of wine geekery and scholarship, Jeremy Parzen, over at Do Bianchi, has made a pretty good case for the wines only sharing homonymic resemblance. The name Vin Santo (I tend to see it more commonly printed as vinsanto) for the Greek version probably comes from a contraction of Vino Santorini, whereas in Italy, Vin Santo (or "holy wine") is so named because of its use in church services. In any case, it's fascinating reading for those of a certain geeky persuasion and I encourage you to follow his series of articles provided in the link above.

The Greek vinsanto is made from grapes that are sun-dried (as opposed to indoor mat-drying as is done in Italy). The blend that I picked up was made from 50% Assyrtiko and 50% Aidani, another native Greek varietal found only on the Cyclades islands in the Aegean which is used almost exclusively in blends due to its low acid content. This wine was aged for four years prior to release. In the glass, the wine had a tawny, dark amber/reddish brown coloring. The nose was full of roasted hazelnuts and almonds, raisins and maple syrup. On the palate, the wine was medium bodied with surprisingly high acidity. There were flavors of honey and maple, golden raisins and dried red fruits along with toasted almonds and a kind of spicy orange twist. This wine was sweet, it's definitely a dessert wine, but not syrupy thanks, I think, to the high acid provided by the Assyrtiko grapes. That acid really kept this lively and interesting in the mouth for me. I've had a lot of sweet wines that taste amazing at first but which get old really fast because your palate gets beaten into submission by the relentless sugar assault. The nice acid here keeps this interesting and alive in the glass. This is a wine I will not hesitate to purchase again and I would be very anxious to try it with my southern-style pecan pie.