Grape

Muscat Blanc

Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains is a white wine grape of Greek origin that is a member of the Muscat family of Vitis vinifera. Its name comes from its characteristic small berry size and tight clusters. It is known under a variety of local names such as Moscato Bianco, Muscat Blanc, Muscat Canelli, Muscat de Frontignan, Muscat de Lunel, Muscat d’Alsace, Muskateller, Moscatel de Grano Menudo, Moscatel rosé and Sárgamuskotály.

While technically a white grape, there are strains of Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains vines that produce berries that are pink or reddish-brown. The same vine could potentially produce berries of one colour one year and a different colour the next. Variants, where the differing grape colour is stable, are typically classified as separate grape varieties Muscat Rouge à Petit Grains for red skin colour and Muscat Rose à Petit Grains for pink skin colour.

Assyrtiko

Assyrtiko is by far Greece’s most renowned white grape variety, associated most famously with the volcanic island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. Following its notable success, it is now grown successfully all over Greece and beyond in Clare Valley, Australia, South Africa and California, being the first Greek grape to become international. It has developed a reputation as being a versatile grape variety, producing wines in a multitude of styles, from fresh, mineral white wines to oaked, worth keeping ones and from bold complex reds to rıch matured dessert wines, such as Vinsanto. Compact clusters of large, moderately thick-skinned berries, late budding and late ripening. Vigorous and productive, resistant to drought, disease and wind and capable of maintaining high acidity up to the final stages of the ripening period. In Santorini it is trained in the characteristic baskets, sitting close to the ground and named “kouloures” by the locals.

Producer

Vakakis

Nikos Vakakis has been one of the most important and largest viticulturists on the island of Samos with 3 hectares of the privately-owned vineyard and another 3 hectares belonging to the extended family. He owns some of the oldest vine plots in the entire Aegean region with autochthonous pre-phylloxera plants of Muscat a Petits Grains reaching the age of centenarians, whilst the altitude of the plots, ranging between 250 to 1050m above sea levels and the very low yields of 5t/ha are unique and impressive. His youngest vineyard is planted with the red variety Avgoustiatis, brought from the Western Peloponnese, and is now 15 years old. Viticulture on the island of Samos is very much traditional, with the vines growing in “masies” or terraces, very much in Oporto’s style and manual harvest together with the employment of mules for the transportation of the harvested fruit is the rule here.