The legacy of Haridimos, a wine legend remembered

My column this week is dedicated to one of the world’s most inspiring winemakers, Haridimos Hatzidakis, who sadly took his own life aged just 50 last month.

Based on the beautiful island of Santorini (or Thira as it is officially called), Hatzidakis brought fame to this island, to Greek wines and most particularly to the ancient assyrtiko grape.

If you have ever bought a bottle of assyrtiko, it might well have been made by this talented winemaker. His bottlings have been the favoured pick of UK supermarkets and wine merchants for many years.

But Hatzidakis also went beyond the usual dry white quaffing style of assyrtiko.

“He was the first winemaker on Santorini to make a single vineyard assyrtiko from his 100 year old vines, unfiltered using indigenous yeast – and since then other wineries have followed his ambitious and pioneering lead,” says Mary Pateras of Eclectic Wines, who imported his wines to the UK for 15 years.

“He once told me his inspiration was the Aspa basalt volcanic terroir of Santorini which gives great minerality to the wines with iodine salty aromas. He wanted to make wines that had a real sense of the place,” she says.

Hatzidakis was born in Crete and studied oenology in Athens before working for Boutari on Crete and on the Cyclade island of Santorini. In 1996 he began planting a half hectare vineyard which had been abandoned after the island’s devastating earthquake in 1956, when his wife’s parents had left for the mainland.

“He started working in a very small traditional cave winery, near the village of Pyrgos Kallistis that had belonged to his wife’s family,” says Pateras.

Hatzidakis had a great passion for reviving age-old techniques, native grapes and making authentic wine. His first wine was sweet vin santo made from the native aidani grape and a dry red made from mavrotragano.

The ancient vines on Santorini grow in low nests close to the ground to store any humidity from the sea air, so yields here are very low, struggling to reach even two or three tonnes per hectare and no machinery can be used. It is a very harsh climate with all the work done by hand or using donkeys.

Hatzidakis experimented with organic viticulture, first in his wife’s vineyard and then worked with the local monastery and other growers. He produced two organic wines from aidani and assyrtiko. Organic viticulture is particularly suited to Santorini’s hot, parched, dry climate – there are no rivers on the island, and every drop of water has to be collected. The family winery makes about 7,000 cases annually.

Recently Hatzidakis built a brand new winery underground along very green principles. It was his dream, which he finally finished in time for the 2016 vintage.

A small vintage will be made this year by his friend Apostolos Thympiopoulos, who made the vintage in 2009 when Hatzidakis had his first breakdown. The early summer of 2017 had been particularly hot in Santorini, a testing time for any winemaker as grapes ripen. He died just a few days after the start of the harvest.

Hatzidakis is survived by his wife Konstantina and three children. The family plan to continue with his pioneering work.