Savvatiano

Savatiano is the most planted grape in Greece, and for most of the last century its principal use was retsina — the pine-resin-flavoured wine that is the country's most famous and most maligned export.

Resination has a genuine historical explanation. Before glass and cork, wine was stored in clay amphorae sealed with pine resin, and the flavour transferred; when the practical need disappeared, the taste had become the expectation. Modern retsina adds Aleppo pine resin during fermentation. Most of it is industrial and unpleasant, and the category's reputation is largely deserved.

What has changed is what else Savatiano can do. It grows in Attica, the hot dry region around Athens, and is remarkably drought-resistant — an asset in a warming Mediterranean. Its problem is very low acidity, which historically made it flabby and oxidation-prone, and which resin conveniently masked.

A small group of producers working with old ungrafted bush vines, picking early and fermenting carefully, have shown it can make a serious dry white: medium-bodied, with green apple, citrus, white flowers and a nutty, faintly saline character, and a texture that repays lees ageing. Some age it oxidatively under flor.

There is also a new generation of well-made retsina, using good base wine and restrained resin, which is a different drink entirely from the mass-market version.

Plantings have fallen sharply as growers switched to Assyrtiko and international varieties, and much of the best material is old vines that nobody has yet pulled out.