Greece

Greece has been making wine for over six thousand years, but modern Greek wine is about forty years old. Through most of the twentieth century the industry ran on cooperatives and bulk production, and retsina, a pine-resin flavoured white, was almost the only Greek wine anyone abroad could name. A generation of estate producers from the 1980s onward changed that by taking native grapes seriously.

Assyrtiko from Santorini is the wine that made the case. It grows on a volcanic island with almost no rainfall, on ungrafted vines trained into a low basket called a kouloura that shelters the fruit from wind and salt, and it produces a white of high acidity, low pH and a distinct saline bite. Phylloxera never took hold in the sandy volcanic soil, so many vines are on their own roots and the root systems are extremely old.

On the mainland the two important reds are xinomavro and agiorgitiko. Xinomavro, from Naoussa in Macedonia, is high in both acid and tannin, pale in colour, and often compared to nebbiolo. Agiorgitiko, from Nemea in the Peloponnese, is softer and darker, and covers a wide range from light to fully structured. Moschofilero and roditis are the everyday whites.

Greek labels put the grape on the front more often than French or Italian ones do, which makes the country easier to shop than its unfamiliar alphabet suggests. The obstacle is transliteration: the same wine may be spelled several ways in Latin script.