2023 Aristotelis Ke Anthoula Retsini

WINEMAKER: Tony Zafirakos & Maddie Park-Neilson
REGION: Riverland, SA/South Pambula, NSW
VARIETY: Zibibbo
VITICULTURE: Organic

Retsini is our homage to the traditional Greek wine style called Retsina – which is fermented with resin from the Aleppo pine tree. It is straight Muscat of Alexandria (Zibibbo), and of course pine resin which we source from the regional home of Retsina, in a small village in the mountains. The Zibibbo comes from 50-60 year old bush vines grown on the striking red sandy soils over limestone of the Riverland.

Traditionally it is white wine that is used in the production of Retsina, however we’ve adapted this to our house style and used an orange wine with a shorter resin maceration, giving the phenolic fruitfulness of the muscat a refreshing herbaceous lift – think lemon, lime, bitters with a splash of tonic water thrown in.

This is the taste of Greece – it’s the sun, the beach and the mountains, the oregano and thyme in the air and the freshness of the sea.

Aristotelis Ke Anthoula started as a family pastime. Having migrated from rural greece in the early 80s, Aristotelis and Anthoula longed for the feeling of home so they started making their own wine in a garage in the beachside suburbs of Sydney. From the beginning, all their wines were made entirely by hand (and foot) using only grapes, with no additives, no filtration or fining and no pumps or machinery.

All fruit is hand harvested and farmed with care. Our wines are still crafted from grapes alone with the aid of very little machinery. They are carefully made by hand and laboriously fussed over to extract maximum flavour and ensure they are high quality and stable. Natural, wild yeasts are used for fermentation, and there are no chemicals or preservatives added at any time. All of our wines are unfiltered and unfined and to this day we have never added (nor had a need for adding) any sulphur to our wines.