Ktima Gerovassiliou Viognier 2025
£21.95
The wine
Benchmark Viognier with expressive aromas of exotic fruits, peach and pear combined with delicate hints of jasmine. Perfumed and elegant, with a subtle smoky accent on the wonderfully long finish.
Viognier needs heat to develop its apricot and blossom perfume and loses acidity fast when it gets it, which is why so little of it succeeds. Epanomi's sea breezes are what make it work here. Gerovassiliou has made this since the 1990s, when planting Viognier in Greece was an eccentric decision.
The producer
Ktima Gerovassiliou
View all Ktima Gerovassiliou winesVangelis Gerovassiliou trained in Bordeaux under Emile Peynaud and returned to Greece to work at Domaine Porto Carras, then began replanting his family's vineyard at Epanomi, south of Thessaloniki, in 1981. That vineyard now runs to around 100 hectares.
His single most important act was rescuing Malagousia. The variety had fallen to a handful of surviving vines and was effectively extinct as a commercial grape; he propagated what was left, planted it, and made a wine from it that changed how Greece regarded its own varieties. Malagousia is now grown across the country and is one of its most popular whites, and it exists because of him.
The estate is among the most respected in Greece and Gerovassiliou is also a co-founder of Ktima Biblia Chora in Macedonia. Avaton, a blend of three indigenous reds, is the landmark red; the whites run from Malagousia and Assyrtiko to unusually convincing Chardonnay and Viognier. There is also a museum of corkscrews on site, which runs to several thousand.
