Gaia Wines Monograph Assyrtiko 2025
£16.25
The wine
A flinty and concentrated Assyrtiko with lifted citrus fruits, exuberant tropical fruits and a touch of honeysuckle. Refreshing, precise and zesty, with a mineral backbone and a lovely, crisp finish.
Monograph is Gaia's range devoted to single Greek varieties, and this is Assyrtiko grown on the mainland rather than Santorini. Away from the volcanic soils the grape gives a slightly rounder wine, but it keeps the searing acidity and stony character that make it one of the most distinctive white varieties anywhere.
The producer
Gaia Wines
View all Gaia Wines winesGaia was founded in 1994 by Leon Karatsalos and Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, and stands among the handful of estates that dragged Greek wine into the modern era. Paraskevopoulos holds a doctorate in oenology from Bordeaux, and the technical rigour shows throughout the range.
They work from two wineries in the two places that matter most for what they are trying to do: Nemea in the Peloponnese for Agiorgitiko, and Santorini for Assyrtiko. The Santorini vineyards are extraordinary in their own right, ungrafted and pre-phylloxera because the volcanic ash cannot host the louse, and trained into low basket shapes called kouloura that shelter the fruit from the Aegean wind.
The stated aim from the start was to explore the boundaries of the indigenous Greek varieties rather than plant international ones, and the range shows how far that can be pushed: a Retsina made seriously rather than as a joke, Assyrtiko fermented in acacia, in amphora and in stainless steel, and an eight-year-old Vinsanto from sun-dried grapes.
