Trip to Messinia

Messinia is the furthest west peninsula of Peloponnese, Greece. It is a country of amazing, crystal clear healing seawater, olive trees and cicadas. It seems to be pretty much colonized by German tourism, which has some good sides, like, for example, prominence of organic (bio) produce and grapes.

I was somewhat disappointed with the food, which was more simple and austere than Macedonia, a northern province I visited a couple of years ago. Although surrounded by the sea, Messinians don't have much local seafood... The fish from the area are small and bony, not much variety of aquatic life forms, and lamb seems to be the dominant cuisine specialty.

Wines from the area I would divide into 3 categories:a) the home grown/ home made seasonal, plastic canister products served in tavernas and consumed by the locals, b) the coops, where grape growers from the area can sell their fruit and regional wine of various quality is mass produced, c) artisanal, professional wineries which grow and vinify their own grapes.

Owners of Panagiotopolos in their tasting room and Matina,
current winemaker of Nestor coop, former winemaker of Dereskos

Messinia is a country of white wine. Reds exist, but are newer introductions to local agriculture, and mostly consist of cab sav and merlot, oaked to the max and intended for export or for tourists.
Plenty of interesting white varieties, most common being Roditis. It's an easy drinking light quaffer, lemony, some tropical fruit, produced and available throughout the region. It goes great with local scrawny fish;) I had some very nice Roditis at Nestor, one of the largest wine coops in Messinia.
Moscofiliero is a more complex one, produced around Messinia, Laconia and Arcadia. We tried around, there is a persistent presence of rubber, musk and lemon in the nose, taste is amazingly close to black tea with lemon, less fruity than Roditis, more pungent, crisp and surprising. Our favorite was Astala from Arcadia, but all Moscofilieros we had were worth mentioning.

The nicest artisanal bio wine producer we found was Panagiotopoulos, we had a great tasting of their wines and tasted two simply fantastic endemic whites: Fileri and Malagozya. The last one in particular is a great find: the explosive bouquet consists of pear, in fact a very peculiar little pear they all plant around their vineyards. Full, almost transparent white in color, viscous, mineral, sweet ripe fruit, pear, passion fruit.

As far as reds and roses go I enjoyed the cheap unpretentious Kalamata bio Cabernet wines. They all tend to be dusty, woody, pruney with flavors if black olive and bitter herbs. Higher end tasty Cabs came from Derescos and Panagiotopolos, dominant olive and herby, jeggermeister like flavor, deep fig and prune, slow to open.


Also worth trying are local Laconian Agiorgitiko, and of course reds of Nemea, which would require a separate post. One of the best reds I had in Greece was a 12 euro Athen's supermarket Xinomavro from mount Olympus area... Again, a whole new post;)

We grilled this octopus in our backyard! Turned out to be one of the best meals:)


Regional red of Laconia