#assytiko

"Paul Theroux said, 'travel is glamorous only in retrospect.' Clearly Theroux never visited Santorini. I would like to introduce my latest guest blogger, and beautiful friend, Victoria. She just returned from a trip to Santorini, Greece and I am beyond excited to hear about her visit to a local winery."  -- Kelley

Introduction to Santorini

I’m thrilled to write my first guest post as a member of the Molly Pitcher Club! My husband and I honeymooned this past May on the stunningly beautiful island of Santorini, in the Greek Cyclades. I highly recommend visiting this top world destination, and we fortunately chose to spend a week in what turned out to be our favorite place ever. Since this is not a review of Santorini, I won’t go into more detail, but anyway words can barely do justice to this magical and relaxing island.

Santorini, also known as Thira and located in the Aegean Sea, is famous for its wines, so we decided to check out as many of the wineries as possible – for science! I toted a pen and notebook along with my sunhat and shades in order to document what we learned about the island’s wine. We rented a little Yaris, so it was easy to drive along the winding roads and identify where to find wine. Santorini’s “wine trails” are well marked by maroon signs pointing toward the island’s many wineries, and the island itself is completely covered by vineyards, visible as you stand on the top of the cliffs surrounding the caldera and gaze over the small island toward its black sand beaches.

Our current Fodor guidebook only mentioned one winery, which features a wine museum located in an underground cave. We planned on visiting there, but it wouldn’t be our first stop because local tourist brochures provided by our hotel named several wineries on the roads between our hotel and the wine museum. The closest winery to our hotel in Akrotiri was Boutari Winery, located in Megalochori, so we made that our first stop of the day.

It was our last stop of the day, too – and you’re about to find out why.

Upon entering Boutari’s classy tasting room, we were greeted by George, a young chemist from Athens with relatives in Santorini who is working at Boutari for the season. We immediately took a liking to George, whose easygoing nature, smile, and wit made us feel like we were about to have a good time. And we did! For tasting, we elected to go with the Santorini wines – normally 6 wines, but George threw in a seventh, all of which I describe below.

For some quick background, we learned that Boutari has been a “Wine & Spirits Magazine” Winery of the Year for 16 years and is ranked amongst the top three wineries of the world. Boutari was established in 1979 in Naoussa, on the mainland of Greece in Macedonia, and the Santorini location opened in 1989, where it is a gem among the many wineries. However, none of our guidebooks or brochures really called out Boutari as a top winery – all seem to be treated equally by the local adverts. It lives up to its international reputation, though; the wines were excellent.

We learned from George that Santorini is where the Greek wine harvest begins each year. Because of the island’s warm volcanic climate, the sugar levels reach the appropriate point in August, when Santorini wine grapes are harvested. In the rest of Greece, this happens in September. Also, visitors to Santorini will notice that the vineyards appear to be full of small, squat bushes instead of the grapevines they’re used to seeing back home. That’s because on Santorini the vines are bundled as if made into wreaths low on the ground, to escape the heat and wind, and to absorb as much humidity as possible from the soil.

Santorini Wines

We started out with the aptly named Santorini, a dry white wine made from 100% Assyrtiko grapes. The Assyrtiko grape is interesting in that it smells flowery, but tastes citrusy. Because of the soil mix, this wine features big acid and big sugar, not one or the other. Assyrtiko is a famous Greek grape not unique to Santorini, but grows best there, and the grapes for this particular wine come from the Santorini mountaintop rather than the coast. This wine goes straight from fermentation to the bottle. This was a really good wine.

Next, we moved to Kallisti, or “the most beautiful woman,” also a prior name of the island. This white has exactly the same composition as the Santorini, 100% Assyrtiko, but its grapes are grown on the coast near Akrotiri. Therefore, it goes well with fresh fish! The soil by the coast is a bit more volcanic, lending to more minerals and salt in this more balanced wine, which was also not aged before bottling.

Then came Selladia, named after the Boutari vineyard in Akrotiri. It is 30% Assyrtiko, 30% Athiri, and 40% Aidani, giving a flowery, powerful aroma to this very soft white wine. This wine tasted almost like water, and has been dubbed the “female wine” by the male staff of Boutari. You could drink it all day long – at 13% alcohol, it resides on the low end of the alcohol content range of Santorini wines, which reach as high as 17%. It was my husband’s favorite wine (so far).

Our true favorite wine of the trip, the one we bought to take home, was the Nykteri, which means “something done during the night.” This name comes because the grapes are harvested at night and pressed the next day. This aged, dry white wine is the most traditional Santorini wine, along with Vinsanto. Nykteri is at least 75% Assyrtiko, with the rest of the composition coming from Athiri and Aidani grapes. This was the best wine at Boutari, with the best body and a very complex after taste, which did not allow us to distinguish the flavors. It has a strong flavor and tastes best very cold. It is no surprise this was our favorite, as we love weird, strong wines. However, Nykteri is not too strong to enjoy on a hot day with some fresh soil.

Next we sampled the Kallisti Reserve, which unlike the Kallisti, is aged 8 months in the barrel and 7 months in the bottle. This dry wine is also 100% Assyrtiko but this time has the flavor of the oak barrel, vanilla, smoke, and jasmine. It pairs well with meat dishes, unlike most of the others which go better with fish, which made this a popular wine among the island’s poorer population in the olden days. Supposedly, this is one of the best of Boutari’s wines, “a red wine with the wrong color.”

The next wine was “a white wine with the wrong color,” the Vinsanto. This classic Santorini wine was a close second for our favorite. (We were lucky enough to take this home too, as a gift.) This white wine looks red – actually a dark amber-orange – due to drying these late-harvested grapes in the sun for a few weeks. It’s made up of mostly Assyrtiko, supplemented by other local white varieties such as Aidani and Athiri. This excellent wine is sweet like honey, but is apparently the least sweet Vinsanto on the island. Surprisingly, it is so good that it’s actually a sweet wine that I love. The pigs are flying, people. The cows have come home.

Lastly, we tried Ampeliastos, our first and only Santorini red wine, which consists of 100% Mandilaria grapes, bottle aged 5 years. It has cherry notes and tastes thickly of chocolate, has a very dark color, and goes well as a topping on chocolate desserts or vanilla ice cream. Yum!

For more information on these wines, visit Boutari’s website.

The Beauty of the Island

Boutari’s Santorini wines made a white wine girl out of this red wine girl. There was nothing better than these wines on a warm, breezy day on the island! On our designated second day of wine touring, we decided just to go back to Boutari instead of a new winery. George enthusiastically led us through several of Boutari’s Greek mainland wines, which were excellent but are not the topic of this post. He invited us to visit him again on the day before we departed for home, so we went back a third time and just enjoyed an espresso and a great talk between good friends before sadly retreating to the States. All of Boutari’s staff, not only George, was friendly, knowledgeable, and generous, the indoor setting was gorgeous, and the wines were out of this world. I insist that you visit Santorini and this winery… but if you are able to find any Boutari wines in the States, comment on this post, and enjoy!

If you travel to Santorini: extra tips!

We went to Koutsoyannopoulos Winery, home of the wine museum. It was worth the trip, as it was neither far away nor expensive, but the Volcan wines were not as good as those at Boutari, at least according to our inexperienced tongues. It was also a far less personable experience – the staff were nice, but robotic. This place is very touristy, but the authentic 19th-century winemaking elements make up for the creepy animatronics in the museum. We did learn a lot about winemaking specific to Santorini, knowledge of which I’ve incorporated throughout this blog post. I think it is a shame that this was the only winery included in the Fodor guidebook, though it is an easy target for tourists. Boutari is just as tourist-friendly, but not cheesy.

Directly after our second tasting at Boutari, we visited Santo Wines, a co-op. Here, we tasted 12 very full glasses of Santorini wines amongst a large crowd as well as two weddings. Our waiter was friendly, and the caldera view can’t be beat. I recommend a visit here, but once again, neither the wines nor the overall atmosphere beat out Boutari.

The free 15-minute film about Santorini that Boutari will offer to show you in their cool auditorium is neither visually stunning nor educational – as they will admit.  Skip it and try more wine instead.

Be sure while you are at a Santorini winery to try the local signature food, tomato paste with capers, which pairs very well with the wines. Boutari provided this as well as dry bread to accompany the tastings, which were very reasonably priced (a few Euro covered both of us).

Don’t go on a wine tour if you have a rental car, unless you are very short on time – they are expensive, and the experience is far less personable. It is easy enough to find your way from winery to winery on your own, and you could have a more one-on-one relationship with the wine connoisseur behind the counter if you are by yourself or with a friend, rather than a large group.

Buy wine at the supermarkets to enjoy poolside at your hotel. This is a very affordable way to enjoy Santorini wine – but check the label to see where your wine is coming from if this matters to you. Boutari does not sell its Santorini wines on the island except for in its winery. However, we were able to find a Boutari demi sec rosé (from the mainland) for about 6 Euro that we enjoyed very much, as well as some local bottles from Santo Wines.

A previous Molly Pitcher Club post taught me about the famous Greek retsina wine, a white or rosé made with pine resin. I’ve tried it back in the states from a Greek winery in Virginia, and we had plenty of it in Athens prior to hitting the islands. However, it’s not produced on Santorini, so it was not found among the wines we tried at Boutari.