Michael Giannos's Page

The period following the first stages of Greek independence in the 1820s took an even greater toll on viticulture. Wine production was subject to a string of insults during the nineteenth century, including poverty, political upheaval, out and out war, Phylloxera (in northern Greece) and reprisals against vineyard and farmland during the gradual retreat of the Turks from Greek territories. The height of the French Phylloxera outbreak occasioned a brief resuscitation of Greece's wine exports. The slow and uneven pace of the disease in Greece enabled some producers to meet the desperate demand for blending wines in European markets. While this had temporary benefits for these producers, the adverse consequences of this era, the orientation towards high-production low-elevation farming and the planting of the dual use currant vine,



Rare 1927
Samos Muscat

Image courtesy of Samoswines
still haunt Greece today. Yet despite its problematic nature, this period marked the start of important wine ventures, notably Ahaïa Clauss, Cambas, Kourtakis and the Boutari Company, that survive today.

The first half of the twentieth century was conducive neither to the renewal of Greece's vineyards nor to investment in her wine industry. With the national focus on themes more rudimentary and essential than wine making, the establishment of the Greek Republic in 1924, close on the heels of the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913 and World War I, did little to fuel a nascent wine industry. While bulk production continued on a certain scale, perhaps the best outcome of Greece's new government was the establishment of a prototype appellation and cooperative for the island of Samos in 1934 and the formation of the Wine Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1937. The establishment of several cooperatives between the two World Wars at least provided a foundation for the survival of grape growers in key regions.