Agiorgitiko

Agiorgitiko is Greece's most planted red grape and the variety behind Nemea, the country's largest red appellation, in the north-eastern Peloponnese. The name means Saint George's grape, after the church at the village of Nemea, and it is a genuinely versatile variety — capable of light rosé, soft everyday red and dense, ageworthy wines, largely depending on altitude.

Nemea rises from around 250 metres to over 800, and the vineyards behave quite differently across that range. The lower, warmer valley floor gives soft, deeply coloured, low-acid wine with jammy red fruit; the high zone around Koutsi and Asprokambos gives fruit with firmer acidity, finer tannin and much greater capacity to age. Blending across the range is common and the results can be excellent, but the single-altitude wines are where the grape shows what it can do.

The flavour profile is generous: ripe red plum, sour cherry, blackcurrant, with sweet spice, dried herbs and a characteristic soft, velvety tannin that makes the wines approachable young. Acidity is moderate. Oak is widely used and suits it, adding vanilla and cedar without overwhelming the fruit.

It is a tricky grape in the vineyard — susceptible to rot, prone to uneven ripening within a bunch, and capable of producing dilute wine at high yields. The improvement in Greek red wine over the last thirty years owes a great deal to producers simply cropping it less.

Comparisons to Merlot are common and reasonable for the softer styles; the high-altitude versions have more in common with a serious Sangiovese.