Ancient and modern
Christine Austin heads to Cyprus to find out how a new generation of winemakers are leaving their mark on an amber nectar thought to have been served at the wedding of Richard the Lionheart.
CYPRUS is a great place for a holiday with sunshine, deep blue seas and plenty of resort hotels with big swimming pools. There are enough ancient monuments across the island to fill a few days of sightseeing, but if you don’t want to leave the beach, then the mix of good food, warm sunshine and swimming will keep most families occupied.
There is also a reassuring familiarity to this country, with English spoken everywhere and you don’t even have to take adaptors to plug your gadgets in.
Cyprus is much more than a holiday island, however. It has a rugged coastline, high mountains and a history of growing grapes that has produced the oldest named wine in the world.
It seems that Cyprus has always made wine. Just a few years ago, fragments of a clay flask were dug up close to Erimi, near the historic Kolossi castle. When tested, traces of tartaric acid on the inside of the flask suggested that it had been used for wine. The flask is 5,500 years old, which means that winemaking was part of the culture millennia ago.
This is probably the wine that was drunk at the wedding in Cyprus of King Richard the Lionheart, and Berengaria of Navarre in 1191. He declared it to be the “King of wines and the wine of Kings” and it became known as Commandaria, named by the Knights Templar who ruled the island at the time, and it was poured liberally in the courts of Europe.
This wine has been in continuous production since then, although rules have been introduced to maintain quality standards. It is sold and enjoyed across Cyprus but very little is exported, so you might have to try it while you are on holiday.
The recipe for making Commandaria has hardly changed since the Greek poet Hesiod wrote it down in 734 BC. Grapes must come from one of 14 villages on the southern slopes of the Troodos mountains, and they can be the local black grape Mavro, the local white grape Xynisteri or a blend of the two. Unirrigated, bush vines must be older than four years, although many are decades old.
Cyprus has never been affected by the pest phylloxera that destroyed many European vineyards, so Cypriot vines grow on their own roots, which means they can dig down further and survive periods of drought. It also means that farmers can take cuttings and plant them directly in the soil, to regenerate a vineyard.
Once the grapes have ripened and been picked, they are laid out in the sunshine for 10 days to dry out. This used to be done on mats on the ground but now many producers have raised tables and some of them are shaded so that the grapes dry a little but are not burnt by the hot summer sun.
Crushing and fermentation follow, and, in some cases, the resulting wine is fortified to 15 per cent alcohol to ensure stability, but there is a new trend for no fortification. The wine is then aged in oak for a minimum period of two years, which younger winemakers are extending to develop more complexity and concentration.
So, while Commandaria is the oldest named wine in the world, and has been enjoyed for centuries, there is a new wave of enthusiastic winemakers who are taking this ancient recipe and shaking it up.
While legislation insists that grapes come from a particular area, where altitude, tem
peratures and lower yields ensure quality, the resulting newly fermented wine can be moved to ageing cellars in other parts of the region. So even if younger winemakers do not own a piece of the hallowed ground, they can still stamp their own quality standards on this ancient wine.
Marcos Zambartas produces a Commandaria in Zoopigi, which is one of the designated villages for the wine. He does not own the vineyards but does look after the grapes, harvest and fermentation. Then the wine is moved to his bright modern winery where it is matured for a period of ten years.
Using techniques such as drying the grapes on shaded raised tables, then a natural wild yeast fermentation followed by a long maturation period without any fortification, Marcos makes a Commandaria known as Melusine with just 13.5 per cent alcohol that stands out for sheer balance and flavour.
With an amber colour, the aroma of dried raisins, apricot and orange peel with a thread of lively acidity, this is a wine to enjoy, just slightly chilled, on its own at the end of a dinner. It has sweetness but is so perfectly balanced that it hardly shows. At €65 for 50cl, it is a gem that will probably be served in the best hotel bars in Cyprus.
Orestis Tsiakkas is one of three brothers and a sister who look after the family winemaking business. This younger generation took over from their parents who started out making tiny amounts. Now they have 25 hectares of vineyards, which is no mean feat considering that, over a few generations, a plot of land can be divided between hundreds of distant relatives.
Buying extra land can be difficult and very expensive. Part of their vineyard occupies a glorious, high-altitude slope on the Troodos mountains, and this has been carved into terraces to take advantage of the 1,000-metre altitude. Here grapes get perfect exposure to the sun, while night-time temperatures are definitely cool, giving balanced, fresh flavours.
They produce an unfortified, exceptional Commandaria that has been aged for three years in oak casks. The result is a wine with flavours of dried apricots, figs and walnuts, balanced by freshness and a long, clean finish. Like the Zambartas Commandaria, this sets a new standard of quality.
As a parting comment, Orestis, who has trained in winemaking around the world, admitted that he really wants to make this nectar of a wine in clay pots, just as it has been made for thousands of years. So far that is not permitted, but perhaps it will be soon.
Commandaria is the historic wine of Cyprus, but there are new developments on the island too. Local indigenous varieties are being revived and some fabulous, new-style wines are being made. More next week.