It’s all Greek to me

When I started this blog I wanted to focus on wine regions that I had not tasted as extensively as I have the wines of my clients. Recently, I have been exploring connections I have made through ProfNet, kind of a help line for journalists to connect to the PR people that make the story happen (ok, I am biased).

The good people at LENNDEVOURS have been preaching drink local for a while now, joined by other journalists one of which is Dave McIntyre, now the columnist at the Washington Post. I have been talking to some of the people representing Ohio State wines, North Carolina wineries, Texas Wineries, and a note about Arizona’s wine country. That might not be drinking local, but its closer than I’ve gotten so far (besides a few Long Island wines).

But back to the topic at hand: Greek wine. Greece was in the group of places that I really never thought would have wine, but could not think of a good reason why it wouldn’t. You have some hills, cool breezes, maybe some hot summers, but sure, let’s see what the wine’s like.

I received a bottle of Boutari Moschofilero (mo-sko-FEEL-ero) 2007 from the people at Terlato Wines International. Yiannis Boutari founded the Boutari Winery in 1879. The original winery, outside of Naoussa, has a 124-acre vineyard. There are also five other wineries located throughout Greece in Goumenissa, Attica, Mantinia, Santorini, and Crete. This Moschofilero comes from the Mantinia region.

The wine was a pale gold when it came out of the bottle. On the nose there was a strong presence of petrol, almost like a dry Riesling. As it opened more I found pear and sugared yellow apple. I even left it in the glass for a while and as it opened up more there were more sweet white fruits, guava, a little perfume. At the end of the evening the wine started giving a bready aroma.

When I stuck it in my mouth there was weighty and rich characteristic to it with spicy acidity. In fact, after the wine had left my mouth there was a HUGE continuation of the acidity zipping along my tongue, almost ripping any other tastes from my mouth. As I continued to taste the wine there was more green-apple, a little bit of saltiness, and white pepper. The last few times I tasted the wine there was a Welch’s grapiness to it.

After review, the petrol notes of this wine turned me away from it. There were some good qualities to it, and I would love to have drunk it on a sailboat in the middle of the Greek islands, but for now I’ll go back to grapes I can pronounce.