Greek wine goes back to basics

Athens, Greece (AFP) — Thirty-eight years after he revived his family’s small vineyard in northern Greece, Vangelis Gerovassiliou proudly gazes on his property that grows one of the country’s most popular wines.

And after 45 years in the business, Gerovassiliou says that with a little local savvy, there are answers even to global warming.

“It’s an opportunity for Greek winemakers to return to the original grape varieties, and to carefully choose the location of the vines on suitable land,” he told AFP, adding that until recently, vineyards were planted “everywhere.”

Growers in northern Greece, one of the country’s top wine-producing areas, have been among the first nationally to be interested in the consequences of rising temperatures.

Consequently, it has been a good year — possibly the best this decade, according to a recent statement from their local association.

With the rise in temperatures, grape maturity “has accelerated by two to three weeks,” says Gerovassiliou, whose vineyard is located 25 kilometers (16 miles) south of Thessaloniki, on the northern shores of the Aegean Sea.

“We used to harvest at the beginning of September, now the harvest takes place around August 10 or 15,” he adds, shortly before leading prospective buyers from Germany on a site tour.

For over four decades, this oenologist and wine producer has worked with Malagousia, a long-forgotten Greek grape variety that he strives to bring up to date.

Greek local grape varieties “do not undergo global warming — they adapt,” he notes.

“Local grape varieties, like Xinomavro or Limnio, which have existed for 3,000 years, resist very well,” Gerovassiliou argues.

The grapes ripen more slowly than “foreign” grape varieties like Merlot, whose early maturity causes an undesirable increase in alcohol content, he says.

“Climate change constitutes a defeat for imported varieties,” he concludes.

It is also the path favored by Angelos Iatridis.

When this oenologist decided to invest in a vineyard in the mid-1990s, he first set his sights on Amyntaio near the town of Florina, a few kilometers from the border with North Macedonia.

At an altitude of between 620 and 710 meters, his vineyards are surrounded by three mountains and two rivers.