Taste volcanic Assyrtiko with an island sommelier

Vines trained into low woven baskets on the ground, in pumice with almost no rain, producing one of the most distinctive white wines in the Mediterranean. Some of the rootstock is centuries old.

Santorini’s vines are grown as kouloúra — each plant coiled into a basket that sits on the soil, with the fruit inside it. The shape shelters the grapes from a wind that would otherwise strip them and traps the night humidity that substitutes for rainfall. It is a technique specific to this island and it looks nothing like a vineyard anywhere else.

Phylloxera never took hold in the volcanic soil, so many vines are ungrafted and very old. Assyrtiko off this ground keeps high acidity even in the heat and carries a saline, mineral edge people describe as tasting of the place. Nykteri is the traditional barrel-aged style; Vinsanto is the sun-dried sweet wine, aged for years in cask.

A tasting with a sommelier who works these estates covers the difference between the volcanic bottlings and the Assyrtiko now grown on the mainland — which is the argument for coming here to drink it.