Gaia Wines Vinsanto By Gaia 8 Years Old (50cl)
£46.45
The wine
Deliciously sweet but balanced by the refreshing backbone of Assyrtiko, this is an aromatic explosion of dried fig, raisin, coffee, caramel, vanilla and cinnamon enveloping a beautifully textured palate full of flavour. Eight years of ageing, and sun-dried grapes in the Santorini tradition.
Vinsanto is Santorini's ancient sweet wine, and the Italian Vin Santo took its name from here rather than the other way round. Grapes are sun-dried on mats for up to a fortnight after picking, concentrating the sugars, then fermented and aged for years in barrel. Assyrtiko's acidity is what stops a wine this sweet from cloying.
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.
