Aivalis Tessera Red 2011
£60.00
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Aivalis Tessera Red 2011
£60.00
Description
From 100% Agiorgitiko. Truly exclusive label from 150-year-old vines, with single plot provenance and a total yearly production of 600 bottles. Long maceration period with natural yeasts and three-year barrel maturation in a combination of French and American oak. Bottled unfined and unfiltered and destined to live for at least 15-20 years.
At a glance
Grape
Agiorgitiko
Region
Peloponnese
Vintage
2011
ABV
14.4%
Sweetness
Dry
Body
Full Bodied
Grape
Agiorgitiko
Agiorgitiko is the quiet power grape of the Greek vineyard and of yet unexplored potential. It is not only the PDO grape of Nemea, the largest region with such status but has the fame that spreads throughout Greece and so does its cultivation. It is also the most marketed grape domestically, to the extent that one can find agents selling wines of Nemea anywhere in Greece, even in the heart of other dedicated wine-producing regions. It performs well in hot climates and gives a variety of styles. Thick-skinned of variable size, depending on the clone and with around 8 clones available commercially today. It is potentially high yielding, late budding and late ripening.
Producer
Aivalis Winery is a small family estate in Nemea, Peloponnese, built around a deliberately hands-off approach to farming: no irrigation and no fertilization, so vines are forced to root deep into the region's rocky, calcareous soil in search of water and nutrients, concentrating the fruit. Yields are kept extremely low, and each vineyard plot is harvested and vinified separately rather than blended together — an approach closer to Burgundian practice than typical Nemea winemaking. The wines are bottled without stabilization or filtration. Christos Aivalis founded the estate, and his son Sotiris, who trained in Burgundy, now plays a growing role in the winemaking, working almost exclusively with the Agiorgitiko grape that defines the Nemea appellation.