2022 Aóri Kotsifali Tinto
WINEMAKER: Aimilios Andrei
REGION: Crete, GR
VARIETY: Kotsifali
VITICULTURE: Organic
Old vine Kotsifali from 800m absl. Planted on schist and slate. 50% destemmed and 50% whole bunch. Kept on skins for 20-35 days with very little movement or maceration. Aged in 500l well seasoned oak before bottling.
Aimilios Andrei is a young sommelier turned wine maker from the mountainous Chania region of Crete. Over years of opening great bottles in the Michelin starred restaurants of Greece and the U.K., an idea kept nagging at him; why couldn’t anything Greek, or more specifically Cretan, sit shoulder to shoulder with the Bordeaux, Burgundy and Barolo that his customers and friends fawned over? Or even hit the less esteemed but more cult-ish deliciousness heights of Sicily or the Canary Islands? Why of the 400 native varietals being grown on Crete did everything kind of taste the same? It was these thoughts that led Aimilios into the Lefka Ori mountains, chasing a rare varietal named Kotsifali and finally coalesced into the Aóri Winery.
The Lefka Ori, or White Mountains rise over Crete and top out over at 2,400m. They’re a wild, often snow-capped expanse that’s at odds with the usual idea of Crete as cute seaside villages and summer holidays. The mountains are mostly limestone, and often appear to glow whitish even in peak summer once the snow has melted. The area had traditionally been planted to Kotsifali, a varietal that had largely been abandoned by modern Greek winemaking, except occasionally as a minor blending component used to add some aromatics to deep coloured, thicker-skinned varietals. Its thin skinned, pale coloured, high acid profile does not appeal to the mainstream Greek producer or consumer, and it struggled to retain acidity in lower altitudes, meaning it’s rarely found in the flatter, trellised modern vineyards. Even Jancis Robinson’s usually tactful Wine Grapes muses that ‘it’s easy to see why the varietal is not treated with great respect.’
But what Aimilios found in the Lefka Ori, were old Kotsifali bush vines, planted over a hundred years ago at 800m absl where the altitude provided respite from the Mediterranean heat and layers of schist and slate over limestone bedrock stamped the wines with minerality. Aóri, meaning ‘mountain’ in the local dialect, was founded in 2022. With it Aimilios believes he has the potential to create the wines he loves, full of elegance and tension, capable of sitting on great wine lists alongside Nerello Mascalese or Nero d’Avola or maybe one day even Nebbiolo, but most importantly speaking clearly of place that he calls home.