Alpha Estate Single Vineyard Hedgehog Xinomavro 2023
£19.45
The wine
A wonderful example of Xinomavro, with a complex bouquet of small berried red fruits, leather, pepper, clove and vanilla spice showing great typicity. Structured and beautifully balanced, with rounded tannins, well-integrated oak and a touch of quince on the finish.
Varietal Xinomavro from a single vineyard, named for the hedgehogs found in it. The grape is often compared to Nebbiolo for its pale colour, high acidity, formidable tannin and long life, and its markers of sun-dried tomato, olive and leather are unlike anything else. Amyndeon gives a lighter, more aromatic version than Naoussa.
The producer
Alpha Estate
View all Alpha Estate winesAlpha Estate was founded in 1997 at Amyndeon in the cool highlands of north-western Greece, by second-generation grower Makis Mavridis and Bordeaux-trained winemaker Angelos Iatridis.
Amyndeon is Greece's coldest wine region, a high plateau at around 650 metres ringed by lakes and mountains, with snow in winter and sharp temperature swings through the growing season. It is the only Greek appellation permitted to make sparkling wine from Xinomavro, and it produces a lighter, more aromatic version of the grape than Naoussa to the east.
The estate's greatest asset is a block of ungrafted Xinomavro planted in 1919, growing on sandy soils that phylloxera never colonised. Vines of that age crop almost nothing and the concentration is exceptional. Alpha now farms 220 hectares of certified sustainable single-block vineyards, and the single-vineyard wines are named for the creatures found in each parcel: turtles, hedgehogs.
