Winemaker Notes
Bright purple-red color. Complex, typical bouquet of small berries red fruits, leather and spices (vanilla, pepper, clove), with hints of ripe blackberry. Full mouth, rounded tannins, balanced acidity and well integrated wood tones. Long aftertaste with intense quince aroma.
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Here’s a red to buy by the case—one case for this summer, as it’s light enough to chill, and another for the cellar, as this is structured enough to keep. It comes off of Angelos Iatridis’s younger vines, growing in a sandy 23-acre vineyard close to his winery. Cold-soaked and fermented in stainless-steel tanks, then aged in white-toasted barrels for one year and in bottle for another, it’s bright and fresh, with no perceptible wood influence to get in the way of the fruit. That fruit is cherry-red and layered with spice, notes of wild herbs and fennel fronds accenting its cool feel, but it’s the acidity that gives the wine its tautness and precision, an energy that makes it ready to enliven the evening. Best Buy
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Xinomavro Hedgehog Vineyard was aged for 12 months in an equal mixture of used and new French barriques. It comes in at 13.6% alcohol. This seems riper than the 2015—which is not a synonym for saying "better," but I suspect in the long run this will be better. Right at the moment, neither is ready and they were both a little hard to read when I originally received them (only the 2016 is here, the new release).
Rating: 90+
Native to Greece, Xinomavro is widely regarded the finest red wine of the country. Its name literally means “acid black”, and attains fullest potential in the country’s northwest region of Naoussa. These single varietal bottlings of Xinomavro (blending is not allowed here) are often compared to the fine Barolos of Italy for their structure, finesse and age-worthiness. While its vines are fickle and blue-black grapes grow in tight clusters, similar to Nebbiolo, Xinomavro actually appears unrelated. Somm Secret—The use of French oak can help tame Xinomavro but too much can overwhelm it. Some eschew oak entirely during winemaking; other producers use locally-grown walnut.
As one of the few continental-climate, mountainous growing areas of Greece, Macedonia produces notable, high-quality red wines. Xinomavro is its star variety, capable of making a spicy and age-worthy red.