I don’t actually remember what I ate—or drank—on my first Easter in Greece.
Wines for a Spring Greens Pie
(Find a recipe here for hortapita here.) Lyrarakis 2017 Crete Psarades Vineyard Plytó ($21) Made from a variety the Lyrarakis family resurrected in the 1990s, this tastes of bay leaf, chalk and thyme, with a sense of minerality so strong it brings to mind lemons crushed on rocks. It’s firm and powerful, the sort of staunch wine that could go up well against the salty chunks of feta in a spinach pie. USA Wine West, Sausalito, CA Gaia 2017 Santorini Wild Ferment Assyrtiko $39 This is the wine to go with if there’s a leg of lamb on the table next to the pie. Cold macerated for 12 hours on the skins, then fermented without any added yeasts in an array of French, acacia and American oak barrels, it’s a substantial white, creamy as avgolemeno. The initial oak scents are quickly subsumed in a tsumani of saline, chalky flavor, broad and savory, ready to go stand up to meat, fish and bitter greens. Craft + Estate/The Winebow Group, NY Domaine Papagiannakos 2017 Retsina $15 Vassilis Papagiannakos takes a light hand with his Retsina, choosing a base of clean, fresh savatiano and adding only a small amount of fresh pine resin. The result is a wine with lemon-pulp juiciness and the fresh scent of a pine forest after a rain. Craft + Estate/The Winebow Group, NY Domaine Zafeirakis 2017 Tyrnavos Malagousia $17 Made in a light, fresh style, this is round and delicate, with jasmine and green herb scents and lemony fruit. It ends on cleansing mineral acidity; a wine for greens, whether in a salad or cooked into a pie. Dionysi Grevenitis Selections/DNS Wines, San Francisco, CA Alpha Estate 2017 Amyndeon Rosé $24 Orange-pink, this is made from xinomavro grown on a high, cool plateau in the far northwest of Greece. It’s earthy and broad, with a sour-cherry savor and a little white pepper spice that’s delicious against the salty richness of feta cheese. Diamond Importers, Chicago, IL This is a W&S web exclusive feature.is W&S’s editor at large and covers the wines of the Mediterranean and Central and Eastern Europe for the magazine.
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