How Santorini Ages: part 2

Βy Yiannis Karakasis MW

I had recently the opportunity to taste eight wines, to be more precise, eight aged Santorini wines, the youngest of which was six years from harvest and the oldest at ten years. Bearing in mind the last extensive tasting of Santorini wines (read How Santorini Ages: The Oxidation Game), I admit I had my reservations. Our conclusions last time recorded a ten-year window; this was based on the wines tried three years ago that had seen no oak maturation and on the fact that the older a bottle, the more the chance of bottle variation and thus, the more the risk. The wines were all tasted blind (except for the first wine), and the wineries whose wines were to be tasted were not initially revealed to me. The first flight had wines as far back as the vintage of 2012, and the second included three wines from 2011, an excellent vintage for the island as described in my book The Wines of Santorini. I think it sounds intriguing. So, let's see what happened.