Santorini

Santorini is not an obvious place to grow grapes.

Very little rain. Ferocious winds. Volcanic soils. Summer sun. The occasional reminder that you are farming on what remains of an enormous volcano.

Assyrtiko seems untroubled.

The vines are traditionally woven into low baskets called kouloures, with the grapes tucked inside to protect them from the wind and blowing sand.

But the more extraordinary story is underground.

In the late nineteenth century, phylloxera devastated vineyards across Europe. The solution was to graft European vines onto resistant American rootstocks.

Santorini largely missed the crisis.

Its sandy volcanic soils are hostile to phylloxera, so many vines remained ungrafted, growing on their own roots.

And those roots can have remarkably long lives.

When an ageing vine becomes less productive, growers can cut it back and train new growth from the existing root system. What you see above ground may therefore be relatively young. What sits underneath may be considerably older.

Some root systems are said to be centuries old, although exact birthdays are understandably difficult to confirm.

No grafting. No American rootstock. No phylloxera.

Just Assyrtiko sitting in a basket on a volcano, apparently unaware that the rest of European viticulture had been having a crisis.