Unique winegrowing practices

LIASTA STAFYLIA Santorini

Greece has an age-old tradition in winegrowing which has led to a wealth of unique winegrowing practices. As historical records and archeological facts indicate many became common practice after having been in existence for entire millennia.
The renowned Greek wines of antiquity acquired their fame through their quality which, to a great extent owed its existence of such practices, which were remarkably advanced for their times.  Among them are wine presses, debourbage, filtration, sulfation, oaking, etc.

Through the passage of time, these unique winegrowing practices developed in Greece were handed down from generation to generation.. The result is the production of wines popular both in their place of production as well as elsewhere, among wine lovers seeking out the winegrowing traditions of different countries.

Some characteristic examples of unique winegrowing practices still applied by Greek winegrowers today are: 

• Sun-drying the grapes to produce straw wines (vin liastos) 

• Adding pine resin to produce retsina

• Various discrete ways of vinification leading to the production of traditional wines such as verdea, nycteri, marouvas and “air-dried” wines. Many of these wines are still crafted in historic Greek vineyards today.

Most of these unique winegrowing practices are applied under the supervision of experienced scientists, agriculturalists, and oenologists using state-of-the-art equipment in modern wineries. Still, the production process is based on techniques that emerged and were first tried out centuries ago.