Commandaria

Commandaria is made in the foothills of the Troodos mountains in Cyprus, and it has a reasonable claim to being the oldest named wine still in production. A sweet Cypriot wine was described by Hesiod in the eighth century BC, and the current name dates to the Crusades, when the Knights Hospitaller established a commanderie on the island and the wine took its name from their estate.

It is made from two indigenous varieties — the white Xynisteri and the red Mavro — grown in a defined zone of fourteen villages on south-facing slopes between roughly 500 and 900 metres. The grapes are harvested late, then sun-dried on mats for a week or more to concentrate the sugars, in the same tradition as the dried-grape wines of the Mediterranean.

After fermentation the wine is fortified and then aged, traditionally in a solera-like system of old barrels held in the villages rather than at the coast. Minimum ageing is two years, and the better examples spend far longer.

The finished wine is deep brown, sweet and dense, with raisin, date, fig, caramel, coffee and a distinctly nutty, oxidative character from the long barrel ageing. Acidity is moderate, and the fortification gives it a warm finish.

Most of it is consumed on the island, and the quality range is wide — much of the commercial production is unremarkable, while a handful of small producers make something genuinely serious. Neither of its base grapes appears elsewhere in this table.