“Considering the region, people were growing vines because it was a great climate,” says Zafeiropoulos. Despite occupation during World War II, followed by a civil war and a military dictatorship, by 1971 Greece had established its first official classifications, adopting a two-tier system with Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO) and Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). From the 1820s through the 1920s, the focus continued to shift further away from wine and largely on independence, as Greece slowly regained its land in segments. But when the Ottoman Empire took control in the mid-15th century, strict Muslim laws resulted in the heavy taxation of wine exporters, abandonment of vineyards, and the overall discouragement of wine production. “We went through a lot of phases,” says Dimitris Zafeiropoulos, global beverage director at Estiatorio Milos, an international Greek restaurant group whose New York wine bar serves around 100 labels of Greek wine.īefore and during Roman rule, wine flowed freely in Greece. However, the country’s tumultuous history put Greece behind many other European countries in the early establishment of viticulture, DOCs, and processing methods. After all, the mythological Dionysus was the god of wine not only for his rambunctious partying habits, but also for discovering viticulture. It’s hard to believe that the Greeks were latecomers to the modern wine world, given that they were some of the earliest wine drinkers in recorded history.
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