Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020 - 56

Top 100 Wineries

O LD WO R LD

STELLA
PAPADIMITRIOU

Hatzidakis
GREECE | SANTORINI
A new team is sustaining the legacy of Haridimos
Hatzidakis with complex, vivacious wines.

FOUNDED:

1997
OWNERS:

The Hatzidakis
family
WINEMAKERS:

Stella Papadimitriou, Marietta
Samara
VITICULTURIST:

Andrea Roussos
ACRES OWNED:

25
ANNUAL
PRODUCTION:

12,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:

48%
IMPORTER:

Dionysi Grevenitis
Selections/DNS
Wines, San
Francisco, CA
56

HARIDIMOS HATZIDAKIS MET KONSTANTINA CHRYSSOU IN
the early 1990s when he was working as an oenologist at
Boutari's new Santorini winery where she was the hospitality director. By 1997, they'd set up their own winery, working
with Chryssou's family's vineyards in Pyrgos Kallistis, near
the highest point on the island. In the early days, Hatzidakis's cellars looked like little more than a hole in the ground
accessed by a ladder, a ramshackle space ﬁlled with tanks and
barrels, even as he worked with obsessive focus to ﬁnd all the
best ways he could draw out Santorini's terroir. He pioneered
dry wines from mavrotragano, a tannic red grape that had
been nearly forgotten, bottling one of the ﬁrst-ever varietal
versions in 1997. He also experimented with aidani, a local
ﬂoral white he believed had unrealized potential. And he
spent countless hours visiting growers, tapping their generations of knowledge on farming assyrtiko in the island's unforgiving climate, with its high winds, desert dryness and poor
volcanic soils. He bottled single-parcel wines long before it
became fashionable to do so, relying on long, slow ambientyeast fermentations in stainless steel to preserve the vineyard
character of the wines, and lees aging to develop structure
and longevity. So when he died suddenly in 2017, many wondered what would happen to his winery. The latest releases

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provide an answer: The current team, a nearly all-female
cast led by Chryssou and her eldest daughter, Stella,
are carrying on his legacy with their own high-powered
energy and curiosity. -T.Q.T.
2017 Santorini Skitali ($60, 96 points) When Haridimos
Hatzidakis died in August 2017, he left behind a lone tank of
2016 assyrtiko that was still sitting on its lees. After tasting it,
Chryssou was inspired to create Skitali. "It means 'baton,' says
Chryssou, explaining that "it was something he'd given us,
passed on; a new way of viniﬁcation." The difference, she says,
is the length of the lees aging, something that imbues the
wine with the ability to age especially well, a quality Hatzidakis strove for. For the 2017, the team blended fruit from Pyrgos
with lower-altitude fruit from Megalochori, all viniﬁed in stainless steel and left on the lees for a year. At 14.5 percent alcohol, it's a big wine, staunch and meaty in build, with the depth
and breadth to cellar-and yet it's already entirely charming,
welcoming in its juicy pear ﬂavors and cheerful in its tangelo
and honey notes, ending with a cleansing salinity.
2018 Santorini Cuvée No. 15 Assyrtiko ($60, 94 points)
A selection of organically farmed old-vine fruit fermented long
and slow with ambient yeasts in stainless steel, this is equally
slow to reveal its depths after opening. The wine reads as tropical and spicy before mineral notes well up, providing a stony
savor that girds and balances the fruit.
2018 Santorini Familia ($48, 92 points) This vintage was
one of the smallest in volume on record, and grape prices had
never been so high. In reaction, Chryssou went to family and
friends for grapes, and she built a cuvée to celebrate their relationships. Fermented spontaneously and aged in tank for six
months, it's rich and savory, a mouthful of mineral ﬂavor, with
chamomile scents that add lift and charm.

Wine & Spirits - Winter 2020

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