Winemaker Notes
Medium amber color. Intense nose of ripe peach, honey, hints of oak and sweet spices. Constantly developing in the glass. On the palate it is sweet but not cloying, since the high but ripe acidity creates an excellent balance. Hints of tannins add structure. Flavors like honey dew, stone fruit and vanilla carry through the long finish.
Blend: 80% Assyrtiko, 10% Athiri,10% Aidani
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The Estate Argyros 2016 Santorini Vinsanto First Release (in a 500-milliliter bottle) is made with sun-dried grapes and delivers honey, apricot jam, dried fig and sesame seed paste. I also get hints of toasted rye bread or sweet oats. This syrupy dessert wine reveals a light brown color that looks like unpolished copper, and its shows a very rich, sugary mouthfeel with an almost dusty or velvety texture. It is powered by a moderate 13% alcohol content and 200 grams per liter of residual sugar.
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Vinous
With 250 grams per liter of residual sugar, the 2016 Santorini Vinsanto First Release is based on grapes that were sun-dried for ten days prior to fermentation. Pronounced molasses, caramel and dates rise up from the glass, accompanied by minty shadings. Lusciously textured and concentrated, the 2016 is neatly balanced by steely acidity that provides lift and energy throughout. This checks out with endurance on the complex finish.
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Wine Spectator
An intriguing version, with aromas and flavors of medicinal herbs, spices and quinine that suggest a digestif, but the lightly mouthcoating, silky texture and notes of raspberry and blood orange pate de fruits, rich toffee pudding, and date lean more toward a sweetie. Integrating a bright frame of acidity and a salty underpinning, this is well-meshed and lingering on the palate. Drink now through 2036. 100 cases imported.
Apart from the classics, we find many regional gems of different styles.
Late harvest wines are probably the easiest to understand. Grapes are picked so late that the sugars build up and residual sugar remains after the fermentation process. Ice wine, a style founded in Germany and there referred to as eiswein, is an extreme late harvest wine, produced from grapes frozen on the vine, and pressed while still frozen, resulting in a higher concentration of sugar. It is becoming a specialty of Canada as well, where it takes on the English name of ice wine.
Vin Santo, literally “holy wine,” is a Tuscan sweet wine made from drying the local white grapes Trebbiano Toscano and Malvasia in the winery and not pressing until somewhere between November and March.
Rutherglen is an historic wine region in northeast Victoria, Australia, famous for its fortified Topaque and Muscat with complex tawny characteristics.
