Grape Expectations: The Sequel

From time to time you have one of those days on Crete that seems to press all the right buttons when it comes to the ‘Escaping the rat-race and living the dream amongst the olive groves on a Mediterranean island’ cliché. For a few of us, a recent trip up to the Amari valley did just that. In October last year, we reported on the grape harvest on Crete and featured our friend Manolis Kalomenopoulos who produces wine (Nefs label) in the Amari valley for love. It will come as no surprise to many of our readers that when the suggestion was made that it might be fun to help out with bottling Manolis’ great wine in exchange for some free samples, the words ’like a shot’ were uttered, and off we went the following morning. On the way up to Amari a brief detour was made to Asomatos Monastery, which is currently undergoing restoration. The monastery was closed when we visited but as you can see from the photo on the right, the church is now looking lovely, and we look forward to providing a full update later in the year.

To Know Wine is to Bottle Wine

Bearing in mind that the prospect of a visit by the BBC to Dourakis winery (see below) was already in the pipeline (!), our excursion could actually be justified as essential research, conducted by a carefully selected team of international experts (representing Belgium, Britain, Greece, Finland plus some unusual ‘mixes’). And in the social science literature, this might be described as ‘participant observation’ or even ‘experiential learning’. Enough! It was great. We all had different jobs (and as Laina said ‘everyone had the best job’), were all really motivated to do our tasks well — put it this way, we REALLY like the wine, so anything we could do to help…. In the evening we all sat round the kitchen table eating supper —meat and fish cooked over a wood fire — drinking the fruits of our labours and talking about love, life and the universe. A perfect day.

From left to right you can see: Kate cleaning bottles, Laina filling bottles, Tom being a corker, Anna labelling, Luc filling wine boxes when there were no more corks left, and the crew with Manolis in the kitchen (minus Luc who was taking the photo).

BBC Visit to Dourakis Winery - Anna’s Birthday!

On 23rd February the Bugle Booze Club had their inaugural outing to Dourakis Winery, at Alikambos in the Sfakia region of Crete. The 23rd February also happens to be the birthday of the BBC’s Founder and Events Coordinator, Anna Capernaros, so the occasion was a doubly happy event. About 15 of us, driving from different directions, met in the car park in Vrysses at midday, and then, rather like the ‘Gumball Rally’ drove up in convoy to the winery. We were welcomed at the winery by the owner Andreas and his son Antonis, who gave us an informative tour. From the pictures below, you can see that Dourakis Winery is a somewhat larger and more hi-tech enterprise than Manolis’ in Amari — the gleaming bank of machinery in the photo did all the jobs that the bottling crew did by hand! However, it remains a family run business. The winery produces about 90,000 bottles of wine — white, rosé and red, of which about 5% is exported. Antonis explained that for Cretan vintners, the export market is difficult to crack, and is also in any case unforgiving, so, whilst production capacity could actually be doubled, it makes sense to establish themselves globally slowly but surely, by taking small steps. Dourakis has its own vineyard, but the bulk of the grapes used for wine production are bought in. The grapes used are a mix of local Cretan varieties and foreign strains. Some of the wine produced is designated as organic, however the majority does not conform to this category.

After the tour, over a delicious lunch, we sampled five different wines—each wine being complemented by a typical Sfakian dish. The wines we sampled were: 1) Επιλογές Ντουράκι — crisp white, 2) Grenache Rouge— light rosé, 3) Λογάρι - light table red, 4) Κάβα Ντουράκι — full bodied red, 5) ‘Unlabelled’- red dessert wine. Finally we finished off with home-made Lemon Raki (the recipe for this will go in the next issue, honest, folks!). All in all it was a thoroughly enjoyable day out, and we thank the Dourakis family for their hospitality.

Tours of Dourakis winery – with or without lunch— are available by appointment: Telephone 28250 51761