This article is taken from the August-September 2024 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

The wine world was struck a blow last year when after years in the doldrums, Oddbins finally went out of business and the high street was left a sadder place. The maverick wine merchant chain made wine fun, introducing customers to the sunny delights of Australian and Chilean wine.

The British public quickly got the hang of Lindeman’s Bin 65 Chardonnay and Santa Rita Merlot. Oddbins’ next innovation, however, wasn’t quite so successful: Greek wine. I worked for the firm in Leeds in the late Nineties and remember a pallet arriving that had us scratching our heads — the labels were in Greek, not a Latin letter to be seen.

Now Oddbins staff were famously over-educated and these letters may not have been a problem in the Oxford branches, but sadly none of us had the benefit of a proper classical education.

The complications didn’t end there. Once you had deciphered the labels, the grapes were things like Xinomavro, Agiorgitiko, Malagousia and Assyrtiko. Much harder to get your tongue round than Shiraz. If the staff couldn’t understand the wines, the customers definitely didn’t, especially as most of the Greek wines cost about £10 when you could buy something quite drinkable for £2.99. As you might expect they didn’t sell well, but they did prove popular amongst the staff because they were almost all absolutely amazing.

Greece, like Portugal, has a wealth of fascinating grape varieties, which until recently were used to make basic tavern wines, Retsina or sweet wines. This all changed in the 1980s when a new generation of winemakers trained in France and brought back techniques such as temperature-controlled fermentation and oak ageing.

They even copied the French appellation contrôllée system right down to the language used. Some planted French varieties such as Syrah and Viognier, whilst others made French-style wines using native Greek varieties. The results were spectacular.

As well as Oddbins staff, the press loved these pioneering Greek wines. Roger Scruton was a great champion in his New Statesman wine column, as was his horse Sam who, according to Scruton, loved Amethystos rosé mixed into his oats. Those few customers persuaded to try Greek wines like Gaia Estate Santorini or Domaine Mercouri were converted, too.

It’s been a slow burn, but ordinary drinkers have now caught up with 1990s Oddbins. People are so much more adventurous than they used to be in what they eat and drink.

Plus, Greece is perceived differently these days.

In the Nineties it was regarded as a cheap and cheerful holiday destination for Brits on the lash. Nowadays think of Greece, and you imagine Santorini filtered through Instagram or the Corfu idyll depicted in The Durrells.

Greek wines, especially those from Santorini, could not be more fashionable. The pioneer here was Boutari, one of the country’s largest producers, who saw the potential of the island’s native grape Assyrtiko in the late Eighties.

It’s traditionally grown with the vines trained in a bizarre birdnest style to trap moisture in the unforgiving volcanic soils. The wines taste like nothing else on earth, intensely dry and salty like preserved lemons. The grape is now grown all over Greece, though the examples from Santorini are the most distinctive.

It has its red counterpart in Xinomavro, a pale tannic grape native to Naoussa in the hills of Macedonia that in the right hands makes wine reminiscent of Barolo with a haunting Turkish Delight quality. Some can be a bit fierce in youth.

I can, however, highly recommend the Young Vines wine from Thymiopoulos. The grape also makes some excellent pinks like Meteora rosé from Theopetra Estate. The magic of Greek wines is that they manage to be utterly different and reassuringly familiar at the same time.

If you get a hankering for something a little different, Greece can provide that too. There are some producers making upmarket Retsina — wine flavoured with pine resin. I’ve tried a few, and they smell a bit like the kind of biodegradable floor cleaners that Green Party voters buy.

Much more to my taste are the sweet wines of Santorini known as Vinsanto. The island was part of Venice for centuries, and the locals claim Vinsanto — meaning in this case “wine from Santonini” — was invented here and then taken to Italy.

I’m not going to get involved, only to say that high acidity Assyrtiko here produces some of the most intense sweet wines I have ever tried. They’re made from overripe grapes, which are dried in the sun and then fermented over the course of years to produce a wine with the extraordinary sweetness of a PX but with the freshness of riesling.

Even rarer is another Santorini speciality called Nychteri or Nykteri. The word is derived from the Greek for “night” because traditionally the grapes were harvested in the dark when it was cooler, so there was less risk of them oxidising.

Producers use extremely ripe grapes which are slowly fermented to dryness and aged in oak to produce something that, with its marmalade and salt flavours, tastes like a cross between Vinsanto and manzanilla sherry: utterly mesmerising and thoroughly Greek.