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With notes of Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir but an essence all its own, Mavrotragano might be Greece’s most interesting heirloom grape
Haridimos Hatzidakis may well represent the future of the wine industry on the picturesque Greek island of Santorini. He was the first to see the potential in dry wine made from the red Mavrotragano grape, the first to bottle Mavrotragano, the first in perhaps a century to plant it in a vineyard of its own. Yet when Hatzidakis pulls up to his ramshackle winery – near Pyrgos, on Santorini’s west coast – in a battered truck, with unkempt hair and a stained shirt, he issues a preemptive warning. "We don’t often invite people to come here," he says. It soon becomes evident why. Aboveground, Hatzidakis Winery is a cluster of shacks with mismatched walls. Below, rank smells permeate a cave filled with a jumble of winemaking equipment. "Moisture," says Hatzidakis as he pushes through to a small tasting room carved deep into the volcanic rock. Somehow, the 45-year-old Hatzidakis and his wife, Konstantina, manage to make 50,000 bottles a year of export-caliber wine in the semi-darkness.That includes nearly 5,000 bottles – the largest production by any winery – of the mysterious Mavrotragano, a red grape of unknown origin. "There’s no DNA information on Mavrotragano at all," says Mihalis Boutaris, an Americantrained viticulturist and winemaker who works with the Kir-Yianni winery on research and development. "Scientifically, all we can really say is that here is a red wine from Santorini. Beyond that, we don’t know." Found sparingly on Santorini and nowhere else in the world, Mavrotragano had never been sold as a dry wine before Hatzidakis attempted it in 1999 with wine from the 1997 vintage. Making a wine from such an untested commodity would be difficult enough in a modern winery, with clean floors and the latest monitoring equipment. In this setting, Hatzidakis might as well be boiling a potion in a witches’ cauldron. Konstantina shrugs. "Two crazy people," she says. "But we started without money.What could we do?" Yet since the 1997 vintage, when Hatzidakis’ experiment began, Mavrotragano has managed to attract interest from around the world. After tasting the wine’s singular flavor, with notes of Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir but an essence all its own, the Italian Slow Food organization officially recognized the grape as worthy of protection. Enologists and journalists have made pilgrimages to the dank cave. "It’s definitely the buzzword in Greece," says Boutaris. And on the island, which has heretofore been known only for white wines, it has helped to start a trend. "Now everyone has started to plant Mavrotragano," says Paris Sigalas, who was one of the first. A renowned enologist with far better distribution for his wines than Hatzidakis has, his sanction helped validate the Mavrotragano movement. On the northeast corner of Santorini, where the trappings of tourism haven’t penetrated and the island retains an austere beauty, Sigalas sits on his patio, surrounded by a vineyard of experimental Mavrotragano. His vines are planted not close to the ground in a nest or basket formation as is usual on the island, but upright, attached to posts. "I don’t think the traditional way is the best way to grow red grapes," he says. Sigalas experimented with sweet Mavrotragno as early as 1982. Since 1998, he has been producing small quantities of dry wine from the grape.The vines in his own vineyard only started
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