Two Greek grapes in a bottle called White Dot
"Wine with intense aromas of rose petals and white fleshed fruits. Distinguished for its pleasant, cool and long aftertaste."
Strofilia Wines
To celebrate my sister's birthday we dined in a Greek restaurant in Richmond, about which I shall write tomorrow maybe. Today I am concentrating on the wine shown here (apologies for my poor photo). (There is a better one further down the page.) It is called White Dot (I don't know why) and is a blend of Moschofilero and Malagousia grapes. It was very nice - and probably much like the winemaker's description. But as you may well realise by now I have absolutely no expertise in what a wine tastes like. I either like it or I don't. I liked this one. Perhaps a bit like a verdelho? Although I may have been influenced by various wine sites suggesting this - Gewurtztraminer was another one it was frequently compared to. Anyway because I knew nothing of Greek wines in general (none of us there that night did - Ouzo was all we could think of and that's a spirit not a wine) and I had never ever heard of these grapes so I thought I would look into it. And I did learn a lot but I am still a bit confused.
Well it's the names isn't it? So difficult to pronounce and to remember. And let me tell you there are a whole lot more Greek grapes that are even more unpronounceable. Not to mention the names of the people associated with producing the wines. We all agreed that, of course, Greece must make wine. I don't think winemaking actually started there - I think it was somewhere unlikely like Georgia, but nevertheless the ancient Greeks were obviously knocking back the wine as all their Greek vases and various pots show. So they must have been making it ever since. So why don't we know about Greek wines. Are they awful? Did they just make vast quantities of plonk - like they used to do in the south of France? I think there might be a grain of truth in that statement, but like many Mediterranean areas, there has been a bit of a renaissance. From around the 70s I think. Which is generally true world wide don't you think - outside of the traditional wine drinking and producing countries of France, Germany, Italy and Spain that is? I wonder why. Is this another thing our particular generation has been responsible for? The major increase in the drinking and producing of fine wine. I didn't drink much wine at university - it was too expensive for good stuff and the other stuff was awful. So I drank beer and maybe cider. When we got to Australia, Australians were beginning to bottle their own or drink cask wine, which gradually progressed to better and better wine. And now, maybe because all the obvious grape varieties have been tried and refined to perfection the wine growers of the world and Australia are turning to lesser known varieties. Hence the popularity of Italian and Spanish types. Maybe Greek is next. Though I think they will have a struggle with the name problem.
Because there were two grape types in this particular wine, and because they both begin with M and are hard to remember I became more and more confused as to which was which, but I will try. Below are pictures. The pinky grey one is Moschofilero and the white one is Malagousia.
The best articles I found on the grapes and their differences were from Winemusing Wine Enthusiast. So here is a very brief rundown of the two.
Moschofilero. One of the grapes in the fileri family. It's apparently nicknamed 'the chameleon' because it varies so much from year to year and vineyard to vineyard. It's grown in the Peloponnese (if you know Greek geography) in the Mantinia region.
“Moschofilero belongs to that category of varieties with a very high degree of difficulty, both because of its location and cultivation conditions,” Yiannis Tselepos
And this statement confused me a bit because I read much the same about the other grape in the bottle - the Malagousia (more later). Moschofilero is highly perfumed - rose and white fruit are often mentioned and it is now a kind of appellation contrôlée I think. It's not always blended - there are single variety wines made from it too. There are quite detailed articles about its various manifestations on the websites.
Malagousia. This grape was thought to be extinct but back in the 70s (again) somebody found it and began making wine from it. And the quote below explains one of my confusions over which grape is which:
‘the variety remains a struggle to cultivate well. It is important to protect the grapes from the sun, to keep the acidity and the aroma. The vine grows horizontally, not vertically and it doesn’t like to be trained. You have to tie it up to make it go into the wires. It is very vigorous, it needs green pruning two, three, four times. It needs well-drained soil; with its tight bunches and big berries, it’s particularly susceptible to rot.’ Vassilis Papagiannakos
After a description like that (and what a name!) you'd have to wonder why people would bother. One assumes it's because it produces lovely wine, and it is apparently now one of the most popular varieties grown in Greece.
Reading all the articles that I found - mostly either American or English - it would seem that Greek wines are 'hot'. I don't think that they have reached that status here and I could not find any Australian vineyards experimenting with them although Jim Barry of the Clare Valley seems to be experimenting with another Greek variety - Assyrtika. It's another white wine - this one is grown on the island of Santorini of the white houses.
So back to the wine we drank in Richmond. It comes from the Strofilia company of Greece, which has three major vineyards, (the picture is of just one of them) and very large looking processing plants. And guess what - it was founded in the 70s by two electrical engineers. The website tells their story.
I had a look at Dan Murphy's website and they have 17 Greek white wines - mostly Retsina. I forgot about Retsina - but is that a fortified wine too? I am so ignorant about Greek wine it is very clear. No Strofilia though. But then restaurants tend not to buy their wines at Dan Murphy. They probably deal with specialist importers.
Anyway if you go to the restaurant - Bahari - try the White Dot. And I've just noticed that really the label is a big black dot - although is that a white dot on the centre right of the dot? Yes it is - not that that really explains why it's called White Dot. But I had one last go and found the explanation.
"The wine gets its name from a white rock which can clearly be seen as a 'white dot' high above a vineyard where the grapes are grown." Matthew Clark
The Greeks make mostly white wine but there are red varieties too. I think the main one is Mavrodaphne. Haven't heard of that one either.
