Seeking out Greece's most notorious wine
Package holiday retsina tarnished Greek wine's reputation. But today's modern versions are winning new converts. Plus: what else I've been drinking in Athens this week
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When Sotiris Gkinis arrived at wine school in Paris in the early 2000s and told them he was from Attica, his teacher didn’t bother to hide their disdain: “Oh, retsina…” The international reputation of Greece’s most distinctive wine, made with added pine resin, was at rock bottom, the villain of a thousand package-holiday anecdotes. And yet at that moment, a revolution in the ancient wine was about to start, and the birth of new-wave retsina would change minds, first in Greece and then in kitchens and cellars abroad.
Greece’s tradition of adding resin to white wine is first recorded by the Roman authority on agriculture, Columella, in the first century AD. Pine resin, or a mixture of it with rags, was used to seal the necks of wine amphorae, thereby also flavouring the wine. At some point it started being used in the wine’s manufacture too – indeed Pliny the Elder, writing soon after Columella, recommends adding it during fermentation.
Fast forward to the mid twentieth century and retsina made by big wine companies like Malamatina and Kourtaki was popular in tavernas nationwide and especially in Athens – if not necessarily with northern European tourists. It was often pretty rough: resin could hide a multitude of sins, or as winemaker Evangelos Nikolou at Nikolou Winery puts it more dramatically, “resin was used to cover up oenological crimes.” The big companies were more interested in volume than quality. The resulting cheap plonk was often mixed with Sprite or Coco-Cola, or simply watered down (I did try the Coke-retsina cocktail, in the spirit of journalistic research, and cannot recommend it.) Either way, it was traditionally drunk in tumblers.
At the turn of the century, however, a new generation of winemakers across Greece, many trained in France, had bold new ambitions for their wine. Backed by a flood of investment at low interest rates after Greece joined the Euro in 2001, they employed new methods and aimed for much higher quality. The result was an explosion of innovation across the whole Greek wine scene which, despite bankruptcies during the 2008 financial crisis and its aftermath, continues to this day.
Sotiris Gkinis’s father and grandfather made wine in Mesogeia, the bit of Attica south-east of Athens, the retsina heartland. Until the end of the twentieth century this was an almost entirely agricultural area, close to Athens but separated from it by Mount Hymettus, rising over 1,000 metres to the west. That changed with the construction of the new Eleftherios Venizelos international airport in the heart of Mesogeia, opened in 2001 in time for the 2004 Athens Olympic games. Yet looking out over the little town of Koropi from the terrace of the Nikolou Winery at dusk, it still seems a relatively quiet place despite the planes landing just four kilometres away.
Sotiris Gkinis was determined to make serious retsina. In 1998 he planted the first organically cultivated Savatiano and Roditis grapes for his Aoton Winery. Then his ambitions were vindicated in 2006 by the appearance of Tear of the Pine, a new retsina from Kechris, a Thessaloniki winery. Stelios Kechris and his daughter Eleni used Assyrtiko grapes (retsina is traditionally made from the more neutral Savatiano) aged in oak barrels, with more subtle use of resin. The result was hailed in Greece as revolutionary. More recently, in 2024, Eleni Kechri founded her own retsina winery, 1979Wines, so called for the year when retsina was granted its first official appellation: the wines remain subtle and elegant.
Down the road from Aoton, Dimitris Georgas came into retsina from a similar tradition: all of his family were winemakers and had made wine for several hundred years. He says he tried to escape, completing a Master’s in marine geology at Southampton University but, age 30, he came back to Attica to make wine.
Meanwhile the nearby Nikolou Winery had cultivated Savatiano grapes since 1875, though for many years they sold the must (juice) to Athenian tavernas to ferment into retsina (until the mid-twentieth century, most local families made wine at home for their own consumption.) Then Vassilios Nikolou trained in chemistry and oenology, before getting an academic position in oenology in Athens. He modernised the family house and winery, bringing a more technically sophisticated approach to the wines and bottling them under the family’s own name for the first time. Later he was joined by his son Evangelos, another trained oenologist.
Still, while these retsina winemakers are serious, the method hasn’t changed much. First, the resin has to be collected from Aleppo pines, a skilled job passed down from father to son. Resin collectors assess the right trees and the right place on their trunks, on the side with the most pine needles, to make a diagonal slash in the bark. “You must respect the tree,” says Evangelos Nikolou: the process does not harm the pine if done correctly. The cuts are made in July and August and after tapping, are left for a couple of years to heal. The resin drips into bags; when it is packaged, it thickens to a putty.
Winemakers then pound it to a honey-like consistency before adding it to the wine at the start of fermentation: the heat of the fermenting must dissolves the resin. It can be added as is, in or in teabag-like devices and removed. Gkinis adds 400g of resin per tonne of must; Nikolou use 200g resin/tonne. Otherwise, the winemaking process is relatively conventional, though several of the producers I spoke to have a more natural approach. Gkinis uses no fining or filtering and adds a small amount of sulphur only at bottling. Georgas thinks that pine resin, which has antimicrobial properties, is a better and more natural preservative than SO₂: he makes some of his wines with no sulphur at all. Vintages are not normally marked on labels (though the wines are all made from single harvests – and for example Aoton does puts a release number on the label from which you can figure out the vintage.)
The results are hard to describe: quality retsinas have a botanical and herbal quality to them, yet are fresh and clean. I enjoy it as an aperitif, perhaps just with black olives, as I would drink fino sherry. It works well with mezze and strong flavours: “Retsina needs food, things cooked in oil,” says Georgas. Sitting at a table on Gkinis’s terrace on a broiling afternoon, he served his wines with smoked trout – and it was indeed a match of genius. He says, “When we started producing good wine, we found chefs love it.”
Nevertheless, retsina remains relatively difficult to sell outside Greece: “it has either friends or enemies,” shrugs Georgas. Closer to home, Attica and other retsina areas face some of the same challenges as other Greek wine regions. Attica has one of Greece’s driest climates, which makes Savatiano easy to grow, with almost no disease pressure: Aoton and Nikolou wineries are certified organic, Georgas Family Vineyard biodynamic. But there has been severe drought in recent years: this year Gkinis will make just 5,700 bottles, down from nearer 40,000 six or seven years ago.
Retsina still has work to do in places like the UK and Germany, where it remains for too many a byword for bad holiday wine. Yet even some of the cheaper stuff is today far better – and much less pine-scented – than any retsinas were 50 years ago. Athens-based importer Markus Stolz, selling to the US, reports that interestingly far fewer people there are familiar with retsina and thus have fewer misconceptions. “At tasting events in Boston, for example, the younger generation had never heard of retsina,” he says. “They were thrilled about the potential food pairing opportunities.” It is surely for that reason that this quintessentially Greek wine deserves more success abroad.
Five modern retsinas to try
Aoton Winery 2022 – this 50/50 blend of Savatiano and Roditis has had 15 days’ skin contact, giving it a beautiful, deep gold colour. Extraordinary length, depth, and richness, with balance – just utterly gorgeous (sadly unavailable retail in the UK, though it is in select Greek restaurants via importer Southern Wine Roads.)
Georgas Family “Black Label” Single Vineyard Retsina of Mesogia 2024 – on the nose, citrus and spice; a complex mouthful – warm, slightly honeyed, deep and quite powerful, yet still fresh (Iron and Rose, Les Caves de Pyrene, Sip Wines, from £21.95.)
Nikolou Winery Botanic Base NV – quite pale; a very fresh, subtle, citrussy nose; fresh with lemon and gentle pine notes on the palate. A classic modern-style retsina (Dennhöfer Wines, currently on offer at £9.50.) Nikolou’s enjoyable sparkling Botanic retsina is sadly unavailable in the UK, and has had struggles in Greece, where because of the bubbles, the authorities have forbidden the winery from putting either “retsina” or the grape on the label. As Evangelos remarks drily, “you can produce it but you can’t name it. Greece!”
Tetramythos Retsina Amphora Natur NV – Tetramythos winemaker Panagiotis Papagiannopoulos showed me his wines when I visited him in the north-west Peloponnese last year. I was there doing research for my book, Rooted in Change: The Stories Behind Sustainable Wine, because the winery is one of Greece’s most sustainable operations: for instance, the pines the resin is harvested from grow in and around the vineyards. A bright retsina, subtle pine and fresh citrus fruit, well balanced – and good value (The Wine Society, £14.50.)
Kechris Tear of the Pine NV – the retsina that started the wine’s new wave, though it doesn’t taste quite so revolutionary today, since others have imitated the style. Fresh nose with botanical notes; bright, with a touch of oak, nicely balanced and so refreshing (unavailable retail in the UK though Athens merchant Greece and Grapes ships to the UK, €17.90.)
1979Wines Kallos Thalassino NV – one of Eleni Kechri’s cuvées, this boasts subtle, fresh pine aromas; bright, expressive fruit, herbal and saline notes, balanced and elegant (unavailable retail in the UK though Athens merchant Greece and Grapes ships to the UK, €25.35.)
What else I’ve been drinking in Athens this week
Kanakaris “Notos” Roditis 2024 – Roditis is for me probably the best of Greece’s workhorse white grape varieties. The grapes for this are grown at high altitude in the northern Peloponnese, giving it nice, well-defined freshness as well as generous citrus fruit, some body and length. Very good value (Vinatis, NY Wines – the 2025, Vino Gusto and elsewhere, from £9.78.)
Monemvasia Winery Tsimbidi Kydonitsa Mature 2019 – Kydonitsa is a south-eastern Peloponnese grape that normally produces pleasant but fairly unremarkable whites - but this is a fair bit more serious. The notes on the winery’s website are maddeningly vague but I’m assuming the grapes came from older vines. A deep gold colour; citrus, herbs and a touch of smoke, quite rich and structured but with lovely balance and an almost savoury texture to it. Impressive. Like the following wines, I enjoyed this at brilliant Exarcheia wine bar Tanini Agapi Mou (unavailable retail in the UK though Athens merchant Greece and Grapes ships to the UK, €20.90.)
Ariousios Chiotiko Krasero 2017, Chios – a very unusual red from the Dodecanese island of Chios, made from the fantastically obscure local Chiotiko Krasero grape. Dark, quite dense, intense, savoury with mineral notes, long: just very individual – and delicious (Theatre of Wine has the 2016, £23.60.) The same producer’s orange Assyrtiko 2024 is amazing too, with evocative herbal, spice and orange notes, yet so elegant (The Oxford Wine Company have the 2022, £23.50.)