Assyrtiko

Assyrtiko is the white grape of Santorini and one of very few varieties that keeps high acidity in a hot climate. Most grapes lose their acid as sugar rises. Assyrtiko holds it, so the wine can reach fourteen percent alcohol and still taste sharp and taut. That single trait has taken it from a Greek island speciality to one of the most exported white grapes in the Mediterranean.

Santorini has no rain to speak of and constant wind, so the vines are trained into a low basket called a kouloura, coiled on the ground with the fruit sheltered inside. The soil is volcanic ash and pumice with no clay, and it was never reached by phylloxera, so the vines grow on their own roots and some root systems are centuries old.

The wine is dry, firm, citrus and stone fruit with a distinctly smoky, saline, flinty finish that growers attribute to the volcanic ground. It ages well for a white, ten years or more, and some is fermented in oak. Santorini also makes Vinsanto, a sweet wine from sun-dried assyrtiko. Plantings have spread to the Greek mainland and to Australia.