Of the many small, remote wineries we work with, Doric is in a league of its own.  A tiny, itty bitty league of its own… The way to the miniscule village of Koniakos winds up a remote mountain near historic Delphi, up perilously steep hills, on narrow, winding roads shrouded in mist.  The slow journey is frequently barred by whole  herds of goats; the only real traffic seen on those mountain ways.  At a mere 800 meters above sea level, the village of Koniakos, surrounded by fir forests.  Populated almost entirely by a diminishing crowd of geriatrics, half the town is empty and the experience would feel like time travel if the locals weren’t so aged.  

 

The trek is more than worth it to encounter a truly singular, fading wine tradition maintained single handedly by Giorgos Balatsouras.  His raggedy, 0.85 hectare vineyard is supplemented by individual vines climbing up trees, hanging from an arbor over his front door and otherwise embedded into the crumbling infrastructure.  The wines are made in a truly esoteric fashion with macerations in primitive open top, wood fermenters under a lattice of fir branches and thyme.  Vinified entirely without additions, our expectation was that these would be aggressive resin bombs (like brutish, zero sulfite retsina), but the truth was quite different.  The wines feel truly distant from the modern world, artifacts of a bygone era that are completely transportative and earnest.