The booming music and all-night, high-octane parties of Greece’s Mykonos island seem a million miles away from the pristine vineyards of T-Oinos, a winemaking project on the island of Tinos, but it’s only about a half-hour away by speedboat to get there. It’s a pet project of French consulting enologist Stephane Derenoncourt and his Greek friend Alexandros Avatangelos. It’s not surprising that when Derenoncourt retired last year, it was T-Oinos that he focused most of his “retirement time” on. It arguably makes the best wines of Greece from its incredible vines planted mostly on granitic soils.
James, his wife, Marie, and Associate Editor Claire Nesbit visited T-Oinos a couple of years ago and spent a large part of a hot summer day in August walking the vineyards, which are about 460 meters high, and later tasting a range of wines. And they were amazed by the quality of the bottles, especially compared with most of the hundreds of other Greek wines they tasted the same week.
The T-Oinos wines have such great focus and complexity, both white and red. Derenoncourt’s subtle hand in winemaking finesses so much sophistication and grace from the indigenous grapes used in the wines, including assyrtiko for the whites and mavrotragano for the reds. The single-vineyard wines from vines planted in soils of clay and pulverized granite under the Clos Stegasta Rare label, such as the T-Oinos Mavrotragano Cyclades Clos Stégasta Rare 2022, are clearly the best, although they cost double the price of other wines from T-Oinos at about $150 a bottle.