Oenops Apla Rosé 2025
£14.25
The wine
A complex and refreshing rosé from three Greek varieties, showing elegant notes of tangerine, strawberry, raspberry and a subtle hint of tomato, one of the unique aromas of Xinomavro. Crisp and fruity with a long, refreshing finish.
A rose from three Greek reds, led by Xinomavro, whose name means acid-black and which is one of the most structured varieties in the country. The hint of sun-dried tomato is Xinomavro's unmistakable signature, and finding it in a pink wine is a good deal more interesting than the usual strawberry.
The producer
Oenops Wines
View all Oenops Wines winesOenops was founded in 2015 by Nikos Karatzas, who works as a negociant rather than an estate owner: he buys fruit from growers across Greece rather than farming a single property, which lets him chase varieties and sites wherever they happen to be.
That approach suits his purpose, which is the rare and the nearly lost. Kidonitsa comes from Laconia in the southern Peloponnese and its name derives from the Greek for quince. Vidiano is Cretan, Limniona from Thessaly, Mavroudi scattered across the mainland. Several of these varieties were down to a handful of hectares within living memory, kept alive by growers who had no particular reason to expect anyone would want them.
Karatzas concentrates on cool-climate sites and old-vine plots, mostly in Drama and Macedonia in the north, and the winemaking is deliberately unshowy: the point is the grape, not the cellar. Greece has several hundred indigenous varieties, more than almost any country, and this is one of the projects doing most to keep them in circulation.
