We visited the island of Tinos, during one of our Greek Cycladic island travels and tasted a variety of the local wine. This mountainous island is noted for its marble sculptors, its architectural dovecotes, and over 700 churches, including the Church of Panagia Evangelistria, Greece’s most important Marian pilgrimage site and a central sanctuary of Greek Orthodoxy.
Every day you see ‘pilgrims’ crawling the 800m on their hands and knees, from the port up the hill over the marbled, cobbled streets. This is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
We instead opted to visit some of the local vineyards. The mineral, rich granite soil, rugged terrain, and high-altitude vineyards are evident in the local wine. Signature white grape varieties on the island include Assyrtiko (mineral, crisp style), Malagouzia, and the local, indigenous Potamisi.
Tinos is more noted for its red grape variety of Mavrotragano that has a distinct minerality and is powerful, structured and age-worthy, alongside Avgoustiatis that is used in Rose’.
We visited Vaptistis winery, high up in the village of Steni, where we tasted wines paired with local cheeses whilst looking out at the incredible view over the Aegean Sea towards Mykonos.
The local indigenous varieties pair perfectly with the locally made cheeses of Graviera (slightly ‘nutty’); Kopanisti (spicy, fermented); Volaki (cow cheese, peppery when aged); Kariki Blue Cheese (it is rare to have blue cheese on the Greek Islands).
T-Oinos is regarded as the flagship estate of Tinos and is located near the village of Falatados. It’s high-vine density Clos Stegasta vineyard (10,000 plants/hectare) is planted around massive granite boulders and sits at an altitude of up to 450 metres. The extreme weather conditions and shallow sandy soil over a bedrock of granite, produce low yields that intensify the flavours, leading to the production of world-class organic Assyrtiko and Mavrotragano.
