Wine & Spirits - August 2020 - 27

itharia, in fact, may be what has been
missing in modern efforts to tame some
of Greece's more challenging grapes. In
Crete, Douloufakis uses his pitharia to
vinify liatiko, a local grape that was widely
celebrated in Venetian times but has since
been lost to obscurity, with little call for
its pale color and unusual spicy, sweetsour flavor. Vinified in clay, the variety seems to blossom,
with more body and texture to support its sweet, spicy fruit.
"It likes oxidation," Douloufakis explains. "That gives it
more expression." He finds that Dafnios, his oak-aged liatiko, takes two or three years in the bottle to become more
expressive. "Out of amphorae," he says, "it's expressive
right away."
At Sant'Or in Achaia, Panagiotis Dimitropoulos has
released a wine from santameriana, an old variety he's rehabilitated from a few vines his father grew. He cites history as
his inspiration for using amphorae ("in ancient times, here
in Greece, all foods were stored or carried in amphorae"),
but also, he points to the wine's strong aromas, evident
in his 2018 Santameriana: It's distinctly fruity with scents
of orange blossoms and rose hips, and flavors that recall
mango and candied orange slices. It's entirely unusual in
its intensity, and the slight grip of the skin tannins and the
earthiness of the clay in which it fermented add a savor that
brings it into balance.
Another curious local grape inspired Theodora Rouvalis to work with pitharia at Oenoforos, her family's winery
just outside the Peloponnese port town of Patras. She and
her partner, Antonio Ruiz Pañego, first encountered clayaged wines when they were living in Burgundy; she was
doing her MSc in viticulture, and working at Clos de Tart,
while Ruiz Pañego was working at Domaine Frédéric Magnien. "In these years, Frédéric started to use jars for some
of the best grand cru," Rouvalis says, "and the results were
amazing: much more expressive on the nose, direct and
mineral, with power [in the flavors]."
When the couple returned to Greece, they became particularly interested in tsigello, an ancient strain of mavrodaphne, a grape that's traditionally been made into sweet
wines, to assuage its mouth-crushing tannins. "The primary aromas of juicy black fruit and herbs were so lively
and present that we didn't want to lose them with oak
intervention," she says. "But at the same time, we needed
to work on the tannins. And that is what the amphora
does: Clay is porous, like oak, so it does allow for some
oxygen, giving the wine a deep and rich texture, but it's a
neutral material (if made correctly) that won't impart any
additional flavors. It is a nice way to 'manage' the tannin
potential."
Recently, they released their second vintage, 2018, vinified in 160-liter clay pots from France. The wine is a deep,
velvety red, delivering all the wild spice and wild-berry flavor of the variety without its typically tight, drying tannins-a revelation in mavrodaphne.

"Having
vineyards with
the names
Pythos and
Upper Pythos,
full of broken
ancient amphoras, is the call of
a place with a
continuous
history of
centuries
of winemaking and
viticulture."
--PANAYIOTIS
PAPAGIANNOPOULOS,
TETRAMYTHOS

Now that amphorae have become a trend worldwide,
several Greek producers are looking to reestablish their
own regional traditions with pitharia. On Lemnos, Manolis Garalis is trying to reclaim some of the "gouva"-large
holes in the shape of amphorae, dug directly into the volcanic soil-once traditional on the island. On Ikaria, the
Afianes family is recovering local pitharia for their wines.
And, increasingly, winemakers are adopting pitharia as
a useful tool.
In Nemea, Dimitri Skouras began experimenting with
clay vessels a couple years ago. His father, George Skouras,
was instrumental in putting this Peloponnesian region on
the world wine map with his potently extracted reds aged in
French oak (most notably, Megas Oenos, or Big Wine). "For
me, the choice was about creating a new profile," Dimitri
says. "When you age in oak, you get tannins and structure,
but aroma as well." As clay vessels offer some of the same
advantages of wood without the added aromas, he decided
to import amphorae from Italy. "They seemed to be the
safest and most problem free," he says. "You have to clean
most amphorae very carefully, and if they aren't made well,
you can lose four hundred liters of wine out of nowhere."
He found that the earthenware vessels made the biggest
difference when it came to reds. "You get a clearer expression of the fruit," he says. "It's more vibrant, with more
complexity than you get from tanks." Whites, on the other
hand-especially the light and floral moschofilero grown
in nearby Mantinia-tend to lose their varietal character
in clay. "It creates complexity and volume, but loses on the
character of the variety."
To get around this, he developed something completely
different: a blend of moschofilero fermented with some of
its skins in amphorae, tank-fermented syrah, and agiorgitiko aged in acacia barrels. The result, Peplo, is a deep
rose-gold wine with an earthy richness bolstering its savory
red-fruit notes. "For us, it's a gastronomic rosé," Skouras
says-with a versatility at the dinner table that the floral,
pink-skinned moschofilero never really achieved in stainless steel. n

DIMITRI SKOURAS
TURNED TO CLAY
TO FIND A NEW
PROFILE FOR HIS
WINES; HE HAS
SINCE INVESTED IN
40 AMPHORAE AT
HIS WINERY IN THE
PELOPONNESE.

WINE & SPIRITS

AUGUST 2020

Wine & Spirits - August 2020

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