Hatzidakis wines - You can taste the vulcanicity

Last week Haridimos Hatzidakis was in London to meet customers and journalists, present his wines and talk about Santorini.

“Few wines taste of disaster and catastrophe… (one of the most evocative] was born of a volcanic explosion, many times more powerful than Krakatau, which blew the heart out of one of Greece’s Cycladic islands. The exact moment remains conjectural, but recent radiocarbon dating of a buried olive branch suggests sometime around 1614 BC: the wine is the Assyrtiko-based white of Santorini. It is, for me, the most pronounced vin de terroir in the world. In no other wine can you smell and taste with such clarity the mineral soup and bright sunlight which, gene-guided, structures the grape and its juice. As an unmasked terroiriste, there was no vineyard I was keener to visit…

“Santorini has some of the world’s oldest vine roots…in the world’s youngest soils. When you taste a Santorini white, you are tasting a collision in plate tectonics…Like a geological slipped disc, Santorini is where the pain keeps erupting…

(It can only be) Andrew Jefford

Santorini is the southernmost island of the Cycladic group in the Aegean Sea, and is located 63 nautical miles north of Crete. Its surface area is 73 sq. km. and its population, distributed among thirteen villages, just exceeds thirteen thousand six hundred souls (as the guide book quaintly puts it), according to the census of 2001.

The present-day crescent shape of the island is a consequence of the activity of the volcano in prehistoric times. The island itself owes its very existence to the volcano. The last huge eruption of the volcano dates back 3,600 years, in the late Bronze Age. Thirty million cubic metres of magma in the form of pumice and ash were blown to a height of up to 36 kilometres above the island. Pumice deposits, dozens of metres thick, buried the ancient city at Akrotiri, one of the most prosperous pre-historic settlements of that period, feeding the myth of lost Atlantis.

Santorini, therefore, owes its uniqueness to the peculiar ecosystem that was created due to these successive volcanic explosions and lava that burnt rocks and formed a porous terrain of porcelain slabs. The composition of this terrain combined with drought and the island’s microclimate, which is a result of territorial humidity and the morning coolness caused by sea vaporization at the point where the caldera is located, give the produce of this land an extra special taste.

Haridimos produced his first wine back in 1997, and since then he has put his name squarely on the Santorini and Greek wine map. The Santorini vineyard provided a challenge. Most of his vineyards are on the outskirts of the village of Pyrgos Kallistis at a height of 150-300 metres facing north to north-east. He renovated an old ‘canava’, near the village of Pyrgos (the ‘canava’ is a type of building unique to Santorini.. It is built below ground, the roof has the shape of a dome and the building has all the necessary climatic characteristics for the vinification, storing and aging of wines). He has worked organically from the beginning and since then he has managed to apply organic viticulture to every plot of land.

Vines dot the slopes and plains that skirt down from the crater. The soil is a powdery volcanic ash peppered with chunks of pumice stone and black lava. The strong winds which are typical to the island whip up the dust. The resulting sand-blasting effect can so badly damage the grapes that farmers have developed a form of vine training that serves as protection. They wind and tie together several years’ growth of canes into what appears to be a wreath. The wreath lies on the ground. The grape bunches form inside the leaf studded wreath where they are protected from the wind-blown sand. During the harvest, vineyard workers, as if collecting eggs in a henhouse, lift up the wreaths and collect the bunches.

In vinous cloud-cuckoo-land birds lay grapes

The vines are sparsely planted, about eight feet apart. Closer planting would create too much competition for available moisture of which there is little. Throughout the year, rainfall is a rare occurrence. Moist Mediterranean winds lay down a blanket of mist on the ashen soil. The absorbent soil delivers the water to the vine roots. The soil contains very little organic matter. The vines as a result are very small, with tiny yields (15 to 28 hectolitres per hectare). One is struck by the haphazardness of the plantings (haphazidakness?) with these little bushes scattered unevenly across the land. Dotted amongst the Assyrtiko is the odd nubbly Athiri and Voudomato (pronounced Vu-domm-etto vine.

Hatzidakis produces the classic range of Santorini wines and styles: Assyrtiko, the Nykteri, the aged Assyrtiko, the organic Aidani-Assyrtiko, the rare red Mavrotragano, and the all-classic Vinsanto of Santorini dessert wine, the last two in limited quantities.

Making great wines on volcanic plugs is not child’s play...

The first Hatzidakis wine contains Aidani with a little bit of Assyrtiko from non-irrigated, ungrafted, organic old vines. Fermented and matured in stainless steel this appealing white has pale yellow colour with a delicate nose of muscat, roses and apricots with a medium body and that warm fleshy apricot fruit. It is a dry wine (one can sense the puncturing Assyrtiko) but the aromatic Aidani seems to provide a mellow mouthfeel.

Assyrtiko Cuvée 15 is pure organic Assyrtiko, a mixture of old and new vines. After wild yeast ferment the wine is briefly matured in tank. Bone dry with hints of apple skin and notes of melon, long and intense with lemony minerality, terrific acidity and salty nuances, a very pure, uncompromising, but rather wonderful Assyrtiko that relishes chargrilled baby octopus or red mullet. Pronouncing this wine is guaranteed to harden your arteries. Drinking it will unblock them.

Santorini Cuvée 17 is Assyrtiko 90% with a little Aidani and Athiri to soften it from 300+ year old vines (single vineyard with very low yields (12 hl/ha in a good year) grown on volcanic ash soils.
Very dry but also full in the mouth. Pearskin bite, smoky-rubbery aromas rounded out by the softer fruits of the Aidani. This is a classic Santorini blend and Hatzidakis to create a special selection from the best vineyards.

Assyrtiko is one of Greece’s finest multi purpose white grape varieties. It was first cultivated on the island of Santorini, where it has developed a unique character producing excellent AOC wines. Assyrtiko has the ability to maintain its acidity as it ripens. It yields a bone-dry wine that has citrus aromas mixed with an earthy, mineral aftertaste due to the volcanic soil of Santorini. In the last 25 years Assyrtiko has been planted throughout Greece including Macedonia and Attica where it expresses a milder, fruitier character. Assyrtiko can also be used together with the aromatic Aidani and Athiri grapes for the production of the unique, naturally sweet wines called VINSANTO (wine from SANTOrini), well known since Byzantine times.

Historically, the grapes for another wine, called Nykteri, were harvested during the day and then trodden at night. The free run juice was drained into barrels where fermentation completed. Maturation in barrel lasted for several years. Miles Lambert-Gocs, in The Wines of Greece, wrote that the wines were pale in colour and usually reached 15% alcohol. Hatzidakis harvests the grape late and allows low-temperature skin contact with the grape juice for 6 hours. After pressing and clarification, he conducts a classic white wine fermentation. He then matures the Nykteri in five-year-use barrels for six months. The oak does not obscure the fruit, but the wine is somewhat different to the spikier versions of Assyrtiko, being resinous in texture, and suggestive of honey and dried fruits on the nose.

Santorini specials include white aubergines, fava beans and tiny sweet tomatoes. Yiorgos Hatziyannakis’s Selene is one of the best restaurants in Greece. His caviar of white aubergines covered with thin, lightly marinated slices of octopus is apparently a marvel of elegance, as are his little miniature tomato salads served in bowls like sorbets. His cod with saffron and pistachio, and his smoked sardines served with lentils and an orange jelly glorify the minerality and roundness of the white wines of Santorini.

One of the true glories of Santorini is the wine made from sun-dried grapes without any added sugar or alcohol, and aged for at least two years in oak barrels. It is the most authentic continuation of ‘passos’ sweet wine as the ancients used to call it. During the Middle Ages merchant, crusader and pilgrim ships on their way to Constantinople, to the ports of the White Sea, the Venetian markets and to the Holy Land, supplied themselves with this sweet wine by stopping off at Santo Erini-Santorini, as the ancient volcanic island of Thera had been baptized, most likely by Italian sailors, during the Dark Ages. The ‘passos’ of Thera took the name Santo from the first component of the island’s new name. This name became vino di Santorini - vino Santo, Vinsanto during the years of the Frankish occupation in the Venetian markets and across the eastern Mediterranean. This name - in Greek ‘Βινσάντο’ - has survived until today. It simply means: wine of Santorini, and stands for the island’s traditional sun-dried wine. And so it is a ‘historical name of origin’ and one of the very few that have remained ‘alive’ and is now protected in Greece.

It is a naturally sweet VQPRD (vin de qualité produit dans une region determinée) of Santorini and, in other words, is produced from the island’s white varieties Assyrtiko, Aidani and Athiri. The wine owes its colour to the grapes’ exposure to the sun for 12 to 15 days and also to its ageing in oak barrels. That Hatzidakis’s version has terrific freshness on the palate of such a sweet wine is testament to the skill with which this wine has been made. Nuts, apricots, candied fruits are all held together by a fine bolt of acidity.

Finally, the Voudomato (the name of the grape means bull’s eye) is a red sweet wine made from 500 year old ungrafted vines grown on sand and volcanic ash. After harvesting the grapes are laid out to raisin in the sun, before undergoing a slow 60-day fermentation in stainless steel tanks and subsequent five year ageing in old barrels. The colour of the wine is oxblood, the nose reminiscent of liqueur cherries and balsam.