Your Next Lesson: Santorini Assyrtiko

I visited the lovely Greek island of Santorini the beginning of this month and drank my fair share of assyritiko. I discovered a small section in our local Total Wine before we left for the vacation and gave my palate a nice preview. This wine deserves as much respect in this country as our love for chardonnays and sauvignon blancs. I was increasing impressed every time I had a glass.

The Argyros Santorini had a smooth citrusy palate showing a little yeast. The elegant nose equaled the taste nicely. When served with three different oyster preparations it seemed dryer and showed a little brininess.

We found the prickly sensation in the Hatzidakis Santorini. We also found it less citrusy and not as dry except for the finish. With food (a summer corn chowder) it showed quite well. It blended perfectly and revealed all its fruits in a velvety texture.
It was our favorite.

The Gai’A Assyrtiko Wild Ferment showed little to no citrus but a touch of flint and some bitterness at the end. We served it with some Halibut and watermelon and the acidity in the wine cut through the food and showed some complexity. It seemed like it needed some time in the bottle due to its young age.
George Erdle - Harper's Fine Dining Charlotte, NC

On a spectrum of acidity/crispness and citrus/fruitiness vs. savory taste, Argyros seemed a bridge between Hatzidakis and Gai'a.

In the bottle Gai'a smelled lightly of fresh dough and had a mineral quality, whereas in the glass, the bouquet revealed a hint of underripe blackberries. The first sip was savory, earthy, and "grassy" with stony minerality and medium acidity - not as acidic as the other two Assyrtikos, and most balanced.

We had grilled branzino with braised broccoli rabe, spinach-avocado salad with tomatoes and feta. With food the wine remained savory and mineral. It was smooth, medium-bodied with a medium finish; stoic, nuanced, and most evolved. I found the black cork and the dark glass wine bottle a reference to the volcanic rock, caldera, which Santorini is made of.

While all three featured Assyrtikos represented their own unique characteristics, they all seemed related, clearly representing their terroir and a place of origin.

Hatzidakis was aromatic and slightly floral. It tasted dry and acidic with sweet citrusy undertones, pear, lemon, and a light-medium body.

We had grilled shrimp, marinated in lemon juice, Atlantic char with slices of roasted lemon, and tomato salad with olives. With food the wine tasted crispy, acidic, mineral, and it could be felt at the front of the mouth; it lingered and had medium finish.

Hatzidakis was the crispest and most acidic of the three Assyrtikos - lemony and "fruitiest" in character, with just a touch of minerality.

Argyros had a light yellow-lime color. It smelled of earth, minerals and rocks. In taste it was dryer than Hatzidakis, briny, mineral, stony, also acidic, but more balanced, with a medium body.

We had it with grilled shrimp skewers marinated in lemon, dill and olive oil, and a Greek salad: tomato, cucumber, and peppers with feta. The wine became rounder and had a medium finish. The next day we had it with gigante beans and marinated red roasted peppers and feta, and it was simply delicious.

Good Evening: I tried the Hatzidakis Santorini 2013 with the Shrimp and Coconut Curry recipe the Times printed recently: http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1017517-curry-noodles-with-shrimp-and.... Because of course Greek wine perfectly accompanies Thai food.

No kidding: it does.

The color of the wine reminded me of Champagne. Nose: primarily mineral, with some lemon and pear notes. Taste: acidic and tart, but pleasantly so, cut through the creaminess of the coconut sauce. Definitely mineral taste, but balanced by lemon, pear, peach and orange flavors. The fruit flavors suited the shrimp, while the mineral flavors suited the tomatoes and sauce. Decent finish. Juicy, mouth watering, this is a very good bottle of white. I salute Mr. Asimov and his imaginative choice this month's lesson!

Lisa Mattson, if you're reading this, I found a good selection of Greek wine at K&L in San Francisco (south of Market, not too far from the Giants' ballpark).

I was able to find Argyros Santorini Assyrtiko 2014 and Gai’a Santorini Assyrtiko Wild Ferment 2014. For food, I made an approximation of Alex Witchell's Sea Scallops with Brown Butter, Caper and Lemon (http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1012796-sea-scallops-with-brown-butte....

I found the Gai'a to have a fruity aroma, and had a little tartness/acidity that paired well with the lemon and capers. The Argyros seemed more savory, yet also seemed sweet with the food. I enjoyed both wines with the food, but each very different.

I haven't been in Santorini for 22 years, but I have wonderful memories of this island. Beaches with black sand, pumice, red rocks, and the blue see. There's no better place to read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy than Santorini. First wine I got my hands on was The GWC Assyrtiko 2013. I enjoyed it with Greek-style broiled shrimp added to a Greek salad. This wine is not shy. It's bold yellow and honey-like, the finish is citrusy. It's familiar somehow. I immediately had the cylindrical copper carafes in mind (what Greek wine is usually served in). The taste is like the Greek sun trapped in a bottle.
The Sigalas 2014 Blend of assyrtiko and athiri had a floral smell and started with a blodness similar to the GWC, and finished with a burst of lingering carbonation and spice. All wines from Santorini seem to have a common thread.
Argyros 2014 tasted of tart lemon and brininess, with hints of tart pear and licorice. Argyros is my favorite so far. This wine appears to be very consistent, it has no open end, it forms a unity, yet it comes out showing new honey-like qualities with the meal (Greek salad and the very unGreek pasta with meat sauce).

Hope this comment doesn’t get me booted from Wine School. And if it does, a pox upon the moderator who even let it appear. It has nothing to do with Assyrtiko. It is about wine pairing. Very lowbrow wine pairing.
Wednesday night supper was nothing fancy, just broccoli and roast chicken thighs. A half–finished bottle of California red was in the fridge, a wine so unspectacular that neither its vintage nor its grapes are named. (A Rhone-ish GSM, maybe? Heavy on the Grenache?) And Thursday we’d be traveling, so I hardly wanted to open anything special and new. A 3-day-old generic Cali red it would be.
The wine was off-dry, plummy and ponderous, not unpleasant on its own, I thought, but far too dark to suit our meal. What the heck, this isn’t working, let’s pop a cheap-but-trusty Barbera instead.
Bright and lively and berry-like the second wine was. Too bright for the chicken, and as poor a pairing in that direction as the first had been in the other. Back and forth I sipped in frustration. Too dark for the chicken. Too bright. Too dark. Too bright.
I mixed them. Dropfuls first, then guilty glassfuls of Barbera di Cali. On a Wednesday night, paired with roast chicken... it was dark and bright and delicious.

Santorini Argyros 2014. Imagine our surprise when the first wine recommended is everywhere at the LCBO here in Toronto. It had a floral nose, minerally and a taste unlike all the previous whites we have tasted. We tasted honey. It was tingly and seemed to be one of those wines that adapts to whatever you are eating. We had it with a Greek salad and spicy barbecue shrimp. The food was outstanding, delicious. The wine did not want to compete with it, but provided a base note. We never thought of Greece as a country that would produce a wine like this that would compete with Chablis and Sauvignon Blanc. We were not expecting this wine. Our only previous knowledge of Greek wine is retsina, which is great when drunk in a taverna in Greece with some moussaka, but never seems to work when you try it back home. We found the wine was a surprise. We were surprised that Wine School chose a Greek wine and surprised at how much we liked it and thought that we would try it again.

If you have a chance to go to Santorini, head down to the southern part of the island and you will find an old, old, winery with an art gallery built in. The Artspace Wine Gallery (http://www.artspace-santorini.com/ ) does not bottle Assyrtiko, but they do make Nychteri, a traditional white so named because it is fermented at night. It was an interesting side trip for us -- and at every taverna and restaurant, we ordered the house wine by the kilo or half kilo, and they were all excellent.

Also love the Argyros. Similar flavor profile to the G'aia but lighter on its feet. Lime zest, flowers, wax, stones.

The Hatzidakis, compared to the Argyros, is more prickly, as Eric puts it, and more distinctive. We had it with Greek vegetarian: baked gigante beans with tomato and onion; carrot keftedes (fried patties, lightly cinnamony and sweet, with feta and kefalotyri cheese); a lemon tahini.
The prickliness is strongest cold from the fridge. Warmer, it broadens and mellows, but even so, combined with the wine’s sea-swept stoniness and lemon and grapefruit flavors… hoo boy, this is one sharp mouthful, bitingly so. It dominated our pairings, all but straight feta.
It outgunned the beans, with their gentle, sweet carmelized onion (a softer, waterier Friulano tasted alongside did better). With the keftedes, the Hatzidakis was still dominant, but less so, pleasant enough with the veggie, oily flavors, but no soulmate. Ladling on a tart tahini lemon sauce, one the food itself did not need, gave the wine’s prickliness an equally feisty partner, and made for the dinner’s best match.
Puckery dry Greek deli feta was a soldier. Added to the beans, it manned them up to the muscular wine, and paired well. Head to head, feta and Hatzidakis was a slugfest, lively and loud. At first, the wine cooled the cheese’s tang, deliciously. On finish, the feta won, its tang outlasting the wine, to the pairing’s great detriment.
Again, this is a distinctive wine, like none I can name. I’d like to try it again with seafood. Shrimp? Or barracuda, maybe? For sure something scrappier than carrots and beans!

Assyrtiko is one of my favorite white wines. It's tough to find retailers in Northern California who stock a few good ones. I'll see if I can find the Gai'a and the Argyros. Thanks for the recommendations.

Once again we were able to find all three. There was definitely a prickly sensation, more so in the Argyros and Hatzidakis than the Gai’a. I think prickly occurs more with minerality and fruity wines tend to feel smoother. The one wine the assyrtikos called to mind was the Sancerre we had in wine school, some of that chalkiness reappeared. The first night we opened all three bottles and served fish with them. I made a Mark Bittman recipe for Greek-style fish with marinated tomatoes http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1013193-greek-style-fish-with-marinat.... The next night we had just the Gai’a with David Tanis’s Curry Noodles with shrimp and coconut. I liked the complexity of the Gai’a but I found the Argyros’ prickliness refreshing. There were no losers in this bunch. I would be happy to buy any of these again. They had energy and lightness without being bland.

I was very taken by the Gai'a Wild Ferment. Loved the rare combination of bracing acidity and rich, broad mouthfeel. Chablis in a ripe vintage came to mind. Wonderful with Black Cod steamed with herbs last night. Lime-custard richness complemented the buttery character of the fish and the snappy acidity acted as a foil.

Just two weeks ago, I was at the Sigalas winery on Santorini. Anyone who visits the island and has any remote interest in wines should plan a visit. Instead of fighting the crowds in Oia and Fira, head to Sigalas for a sunset wine tasting. The tasting is well curated and all wines are paired with delicious small plates with ingredients from the Cyclades. In fact, this was some of the BEST food we had in tourism-heavy Santorini!

I fell head over heels for Gai'a's Assyrtiko last year. It remains a favorite treat. The slightly resinous character is just the ticket when I want something with a bit more body than the typical Gruner V.

#drinkthedebt

In the nose, before tasting, the Argyros is reserved, cool, faintly briny. Imagining—only—how the warm Aegean smells late at night, this is it. On tasting, tart and sweet citrus predominate, and suddenly those notes are there, too, aligned in the nose, where they weren’t before. Sipped before food, the Argyros’ mouthfeel is slick and hard. After, fizzier, raspier. It shares traits with Muscadet (stony) and white Burgundy (mystery citrus); it is less like either Friulano (not herby) or, as often compared to, Sauvignon Blanc (not citrusy lean) than expected.
It contains contrasts: citrusy and not, light and not, even Greek and not. The potent citrus veers between citrus tart and citrus sweet but, oddly, never quite citrus flavored. Its acidity is like lemon-dipped tangerine. But looking for a citrus fruit flavor, it’s not there; more just remind-you-of-citrus. The weight mirrors its hard-then-fizzy mouthfeel, with a stony gravitas beneath a bright, joyful surface. “Smells light, tastes heavy,” Barb said.
Our no-brainer and near perfect pairing was a very Italiano Shrimp Santorini (Greek in name and feta only). Loved the back-corners-of-the-mouth dustup between dry-tart feta and stony-tart wine. But—due to pairing?—the Argyros seemed no more distinctively Greek than our dish. Looking for cool vegetal and herby tastes (resin, cucumber, dill) I got just cool stone. I was reminded, happily, of a lighter, lemonier Italian Eric once cited, the lovely (Venetian) Soarda Vespaiola.

Please look for Gavalas wines from Santorini if you want to try assyrtico, as well as the best vin santo(s) and dry rose from the island.

I am glad the author wrote this article and helped raised attention to Santorini and Greek wine in general.

The Assyrtiko is perfect for summer - light weight, dry to semi-dry, usually with fresh lemon and water melon notes, medium to high acidity. They are not commonly found in local wine shops. I only have tried them at some Mediterranean restaurants in the city. Most recently, Atrium, about a month ago, in DUMBO. Food wise, it goes well with grilled seafood, say octopus or salmon. I found it also went well with creamier pasta dish, say linguine with clams in white sauce.

Last week, before this article appeared, I bought a bottle of Argyros Assyrtiko in a small but good North Carolina wine shop. In other words they were stocking it -- and many other quality wines beyond the usual endless rows of Chardonnay, Merlot, Cabernet, etc. Wine stores outside of NYC will stock variety if their customers ask for it. Assyrtigo grapes can make wonderful and distinctive wines, so glad this article is spreading the news.

You might want to try a Santorini red wine - Santo wines Mavrotragano. Excellent. Not sure if it's exported?

Have tried the Sigalas several times, both the 100% Assyrtko and the Blended one. They are very clean, fresh, and aromatic (melons, pears,) with a medium to full body and a soft, crisp, mineral (volcanic?) finish. Somewhat akin to an unoaked CA Chardonnay at times!

Each year, my wife and I buy a case of Sigalas for the summer. We like it very cold, having it for lunch outdoors on a hot day with salads and perhaps grilled fish.

We like its crisp, almost sharp feel with hints of volcanic minerality. Reminds us of cold Greco Di Tufo from the Amalfi, Italy area which is also so delicious on hot days by the sea.

Cheers!

It mystifies me why a column about wine does not accompany the subject grape or region with a phonetic pronunciation when necessary. The article is supposed to be instructive, yes? Assyrtiko is my favorite summer white.

Looking forward to household favorite, shimp with tomato and feta, a proven Assyrtiko soulmate. What will some of the vegetarian Schoolers be having? There's a bean-and-tomato dish I'm wondering about, or do big roasted white beans seem too rich for a crisp white? Spanakopita?

Great topic: I love the bracing quality of a good Assyrtiko (although I prefer them quite cold). I'm surprised that you didn't mention the Argyros Atlantis, which I learned about from one of your columns a couple of years ago. It's widely available, only about $15-16, and delicious!

Now really out on the fringe. Wines such as these are simply not going to be available in 95% of the country. Has this series run out of subject matter?

Nevertheless, have a fine time, NYC people.