For those of you interested in Greek wines, and those from Crete in particular, there is a new film just out on the subject. This documentary, “In the Wine Dark Sea,” is currently featured online at the San Francisco Greek Film Festival. Great cinematography, along with history of indigenous varieties, terroir, etc. Really informative.
Thanks for this post. I rented a villa on Crete in 2018 and a group of 10 others from Europe and the US joined. I arranged a day out for the group to visit Knossos and Domaine Lyrarakis, where we had an incredible tour of the vineyards and the part of the vineyards where they are protecting and nurturing the indigenous varieties. We then had a tasting and “Minoan” lunch at the winery with their wines. I’ll be watching the movie some time later this week, but I assume Domaine Lyrarakis is a featured winery, since they are the primary winery that protected the indigenous varieties for many years. When the world reopens, if you go to Crete, it’s well worth visiting them.
I’ll watch the movie because I love the place and I think it has a great potential in terms of wine which, to a very large extent, remains to be fulfilled. They might be on the right track, though, and I’ll certainly be watching that space, as I have been for many years.
I lived on Crete for a year (2007-2008 at Stavros Beach where Zorba the Greek was filmed) and my recollection of Cretan wine was the home brew stuff my landlord would bring me in old 2 liter water bottles. It was not very good but my neighbor and I would still sit around and drink it anyway. Would be interesting to try some more professionally made Cretan wine. When it comes to olive oil, I will not use anything that doesn’t come from the Chania region.