(Gerhard Ziegler / photo: historical archive)
An evening on a terrace in Larnaca. Leo pours me a glass of red; the wine is slightly sparkling, smells clean, fresh and rather enticing. I’m guessing it’s Italian, and I’m not entirely wrong about that, though I am about everything else. After a few failed attempts, Leo grins and reveals the answer: Lambrusco. This irritates me more than it should, because up until then I’d mainly associated that name with sweet evenings in my youth, lipstick, first crushes and the slightly wobbly walk home to catch the last tram. Memories like that run deep, even when it comes to wine, and sometimes they prevent us from taking a closer look for decades. That was the case with Lambrusco. With Retsina, it was even more so.
In the early nineties, probably 1991, I flew to Greece with friends after school – one of my very first flights ever – then on to Athens and onwards to Poros on a hydrofoil, whose paintwork even back then played a significant part in how stable it felt. We were in our early twenties – some younger – had little money, stayed in simple accommodation, got to know some easy-going American girls and found a taverna we could afford to visit every evening. It was called Papas Stamatis, and the landlord served food, chatted, laughed, ranted, topped up our drinks and seemed to be in a perpetually good mood. The problem lay in the carafe. His house wine was retsina, priced exactly where we needed it to be, but in terms of flavour, it was in a league of its own that I still haven’t forgotten to this day. The resin of the Aleppo pine dominated completely, accompanied by notes of nail varnish remover, glue, a hint of grape somewhere in the background, and an effect that reliably lasted until the following morning. It certainly didn’t improve our conversations in English, nor did it improve our state at breakfast. The fact that we ordered it again several evenings in a row can only be explained by youth, a lack of money and the astonishing physical resilience of those years. After that, I was done with retsina. In Greek restaurants in Vienna, I ordered Austrian or Italian wine and left that resinous past behind me.
More than three decades later, I find myself sitting on the terrace of the ‘Vintage’ in Nicosia after sunset, with the divided city spread out before us; a few streets further on lies the Turkish-controlled north, and suddenly there is retsina in my glass once more. This time, there is nothing to get over. The wine smells of Mediterranean herbs, citrus zest and a hint of salt; it possesses freshness, structure and a surprisingly precise spiciness, whilst the resin remains in the background, lending the wine a distinctive character that becomes entirely natural after a few sips. Modern Retsina has undergone enormous changes in both technique and quality. Ambitious producers work with high-quality grapes, often Assyrtiko or Roditis; the resin from the Aleppo pine is added in only small quantities during fermentation and subsequently removed. The former dominance fades, leaving behind spice, freshness and that distinctive aroma that makes these wines instantly recognisable. What was once, for many travellers, a drink synonymous with cheap holidays in Greece for decades has, in the hands of the best producers, become a serious wine category.
Anyone wishing to try it will now find plenty of opportunities to do so. Gaia’s Ritinitis Nobilis is made from Roditis and demonstrates what precision can achieve with this ancient tradition. ‘Tear of the Pine’ from Kechris is based on Assyrtiko and ranks among the most ambitious examples in the category; ‘Retsina Amphora Nature’ from Tetramythos combines Roditis with ageing in amphorae; whilst ‘Nimbus Ritinitis’ from Kamara takes a more herbaceous and unconventional approach. None of these wines requires nostalgic leniency; none needs the excuse of a long tradition. Today, they stand on their own merits in the glass and pair superbly with Greek cuisine – with fish, vegetables, herbs, grilled meat – or simply late in the evening on a terrace in Nicosia. For me, there is one small consolation in all this: not every bad wine from our youth has necessarily remained bad. Sometimes the wine has evolved, whilst we had long since stopped asking after it. And sometimes it takes thirty years, a different place and a single glass to finally settle an old score.
Vintage Wine Bar & Bistro
,
Ermou 285
,
1017 Nicosia
,
Cyprus