Gaia Thalassitis Submerged 2021: beneath the surface of Santorini Assyrtiko

By Yiannis Karakasis MW

I have been following Gaia Wines Submerged Thalassitis since its early days, around 2014, when we first wrote about it with Grigoris Michailos during the Wine Commanders era. Back then, it felt almost experimental: Assyrtiko lowered into the sea, aged underwater for 4 years at 20 metres, carrying all the obvious questions. Was this serious wine, clever storytelling, or both?

Years later, the wine feels fully formed. Submerged Thalassitis Santorini has always carried one of the most powerful narratives in Greek wine, but narrative alone can only take a bottle so far. The real test is in the glass, especially now that the wine has moved into luxury territory, retailing at approximately €250, and is therefore tasted by me far less often than in the past.

The scale is tiny, and the risk is real. Each year, Yiannis Paraskevopoulos, winemaker and producer at Gaia Wines and one of the strongest voices of Greek wine, initially submerges around 500 bottles for each vintage. Even that fragile number was recently hit hard. As he explained, a storm in March 2026, with southerly winds reaching 11 Beaufort, destroyed two cages, meaning two full vintages, and around 1,000 bottles were lost (shown below). Two more cages, containing another 1,000 bottles, were buried so deeply in the sand that their recovery remains uncertain. Those four cages held the 2021 (the only vintage in which 1000 bottles were submerged), 2022, 2023, and 2024 vintages. His comment was disarmingly direct: At 66, there is only so much one can keep pulling out of the sea''.