This microphone really picks up everything, doesn't it? Oh, sure. Yeah, they're really... Greg bought really nice microphones. Yeah, you did. I can see your setups pretty good. Okay. Are you ready? Welcome back to Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm your host, Pat Brophy, along with, as usual, my co-host, Kristin. How are you? Good, I'm good. And we got Greg Versch here with us, too. Hey, how's it going? So we have an esteemed guest today with us, Ted Diamantis. Ted is an importer of Greek wine, and we're going to learn all about kind of a forgotten area of wine, so to speak. Is it forgotten? I don't want a bad-mouthed Greek wine. Why are you having me do this part? Well, I mean, Ted, correct me if I'm wrong. There's a major resurgence of Greek wine, especially with on-premise. We're going to talk about a style of wine that's seen a recent resurgence in interest and kind of tied into the history of it and the history of one of the great winemaking countries of the world, Greece. So Ted, welcome. Well, thank you. And thank you for having me, guys. And it sounds like we're going to have a little bit of fun today. So I'm looking forward to this. So, yeah, Greece is having a resurgence and has going through a renaissance of sorts over the last about 15 years or so. I've been involved in the Greek wine world for about 26 years. And it's about the whole region and it's about the varieties and it's about the culture that people are rediscovering or discovering for the first time. And there's a lot to discover in Greece. Now, I kind of associate Greek wine with... Don't say it. Don't say it. No, don't start it off this way. It's the R word. Yeah, yeah. You're too young to know the R word. I know. I've certainly never tried it. I only know it as like when old people would come in and ask for a Greek wine at the first Binny's I started at a decade ago. It would be like, well, we have this Rhoditis. What is it? Oh, there are two R words. Rhoditis and Rhoditis. And you're referring to Rhoditis. Okay. I was thinking Rhezina. That's what I was thinking too. I've never even heard of that one. Oh, buddy. The Rhoditis thing is also very isolated to the Midwest and especially to Chicago, because Rhoditis is a variety and a very good variety in Greece. It makes white wines. But years ago here in the traditional Greek town of Chicago that's existed here for over a hundred years, even though it's been diminished greatly in the last few years because of the development in the area, it used to serve, they used to make a wine in their basements, which they would basically buy California jug red wine, add water to it and sugar, and call it roditis because etymology of the word roditis means rosé because the rosé, the variety in Greece is a little pinkish hue to the skin. So they made up this wine, called it roditis. And then after that, after one restaurant, Parthenon, if anybody's here from Chicago, knows a restaurant that's now gone and survived 45 years, started this phenomenon in their restaurant. And then for every other Greek restaurant, they wanted to compete. So they started ordering wines from Greece, very inexpensive wines, very mid to low quality wines, I would say. And it would call them roditis without even having the variety in the wine. And this became kind of a Chicago phenomenon that spread throughout the Midwest. Roditis was not known in New York, which was the largest Greek community. It wasn't absolutely wasn't known in Greece. And the ore was known only as a simple white variety to make clean, crisp sauvignon Blanc style wines. So roditis is actually something that is absolutely Chicago, Greek Chicago. Ritina, on the other hand, is a long story of traditional wine making that goes back to antiquity. This was with the introduction of pine resin into the wine, either to stop fermentations, to add flavoring, or they sealed their barrels with pine resin that leached into the wine. This, in context, this really was something that I fought against when I first started talking about quality, high-end, artisanal Greek wine with Greek varieties over 26 years ago. The headwinds that I had were Ritina, nationally, because people thought that all Greek wines were pine-flavored. So, one wine indicted the whole sector of wines, and that was because the Greek restaurants of that period, that's what they serve, Ritina. And also, Roditas here in Chicago was something I had to fight against as well. So, the two R words were a big part of my hurdles in my early life. Way to go, Pat. Yeah, I started this one on Reddit. Yeah, I started on a great note. I'm not here because I know a lot about wine. I'm here because I want to learn about wine. But actually, it's a great thing because Ritzina right now, for a generation like yourself, who's heard about it and has never had it, it does have a place at the table of Greek wine history. But now that the broader sector of wine drinkers have experienced other Greek wines and understand that not all Greek wine is Ritzina, there is a place now to talk about it. And I talk about it in the context of vermouth. Herb-flavored or take-and-finish wine and adding other components to it, whether it be herbs and or natural flavorings, which was actually more indicative of what the ancient world used to drink when it came to wine. They would add mead to the wines and they'd add herbs and honey to the wine. It wasn't like what we drink today. Yeah, it sounds like a lot of kind of those Italian aperitif, digestif style wines like Americanos. Yeah, exactly. Well, I don't know that the wine was anything to write home about. So it made it more palatable often to add these, what Roger would say, adjuncts to the wine. You know, they weren't cereal and marshmallows back in the day, but it was what they had to make something more drinkable. Absolutely. I mean, talk about natural wine. I think if we sent people back 1500 years and had them drink the wine in that period, I don't know if they would be that much into the natural wine movement. Absolutely. As they are today. Absolutely. And so you got into importing Greek wine. Yes. I got into it faithfully. It wasn't my goal. It wasn't what I was intending to do in my life. I was around 26, 27 years old at the time. And I kind of after I just didn't want to do the corporate thing and I wanted to find another path, I decided to move, go back to Greece, which I hadn't been in 12 years. As a child, my sister and I had been going to Greece since about four years old, if not every summer, every other summer. So I kind of stopped wanting to go to Greece. I had been there for over 12 years and I decided to go back. My family has a home there, like every Greek family, Greek American family. We all have our homes, we never give those up. So I had a place to stay and kind of traveled through Europe and faithfully met a gentleman named George Skouras. For the people that don't know who George Skouras is, he's one of the pivotal figures in Greece that started the artisanal craft wine movement focusing in on indigenous varieties and better cultivation. He was making wine in his dad's garage at the time. So this is a man who started as a real garagist and was attempting to make an iconic wine, which he did, called Mega Enos. He eventually started talking to me about how wine is a way of life, how it is a great profession that can combine a lot of different aspects of one's personality. And it's also a profession of patience, because you have to wait a whole other year to try to get it right again or try to make it better. It's a really interesting way of putting it. So that's what's fascinating about it, and that's what intrigued me, it lit a fire in me. When we sat there, and of course, I was probably intoxicated, when he was telling me all this great stuff, it kind of made me romanticize. And you have to be romantic, too, when it's about wine. And also the wine, one great thing that we all feel, see wine is a great equalizer, because through a bottle of wine, a person of one socioeconomic status and one of a lower status, it brings them together. The farmer and the royalty, that bottle of wine could join people together, is a common thing that both people enjoy. And it takes a farmer for somebody of a higher echelon to enjoy. Cheers to that. Yeah, let's put them up. You gotta get the sound. That was kind of ugly sounding, but whatever. Oh, that was romantic. One of the hot things in terms of Greece, what people have really learned a lot about, what they've heard a lot about when it comes to Greek wines and Greek varieties, because we have over 300 indigenous varieties. We have over 30 Appalachians in Greece. We have over 150 regional wine designations. So we're a complex country. It's not a one-off country. Geographically, we're very complex. We're the third most mountainous country in Europe. We're surrounded by water. So we have a lot of coastal influence. We're a small country, small footprint. We're only 45,000 square miles, a little bit smaller than New York state. But we have a huge coastline presence. And we have, of course, a lot of islands. So we have a lot of ancient indigenous varieties. And we have a lot of really unique growing regions. The first wine we're trying is from one of the most special regions, historic regions of winemaking in the world. And I believe the oldest, the oldest continues to cultivate vineyards in the world. And that's the island of Santorini. Now, if everybody's heard so in Santorini, because it's a huge vacation destination, it sees three million tourists a year. But geographically and historically and viticulturally, this is one of the most special places in the world, and a place that can't be emulated anywhere else in the world. The conditions on this island, the terroir. This island was the last super volcano to erupt in 1620 BCE. It was a cataclysmic effect, a geological effect on earth's history. The effects will be filled throughout the Mediterranean, changed the course of human history. But what it did on the island of Santorini geologically, is provide the island with some of the newest soils in the world, and some of the unique soils in the world in terms of a vineyard. It's volcanic ash, lava rock soils. This island is dry, dry, dry. In the last three years, because of climate change, we are classified as a desert climate on this island. The vines here, because of these unique soil profile, they're relatively new soils, because it has very few nutrients because this island is so dry. And we haven't had a lot of decomposition of plant life on this island. It's lacking a lot of natural nutrients. So these soils have lacked potassium, lacked nitrogen. So it's a unique place to grow any kind of product because it creates concentration of flavors. This island has a huge history of wine production dating back prior to the volcanic eruption. And how do we know that? because there is an archaeological dig on the island called Akrotiri on the southern side of the island. It's an ancient city that was covered with volcanic ash. And to put it in context, you're probably like, oh, it's kind of like Pompeii. Well, it's much more than Pompeii. Pompeii had about 10 feet of volcanic ash. We're talking about 200 feet of volcanic ash on this island. It was a cataclysm, a huge eruption. But it preserved the city perfectly. It preserved the frescoes on their wall, depicting their life, depicting how people lived, how people ate. We found amphoras were full of seeds. So we know this variety, the main variety of the island. And this is a difficult one, guys. We're going to have to pronounce it together. It's not that difficult, actually. It's called Assyrtiko. Assyrtiko. Good job. Yes, very good. It's all so condescending. Do I get a sticker? You do. You get a smiley face. Not from me. I wanted a Spider-Man sticker. Not yet. Not yet. We have more difficult varieties to talk about. This is the easy one. So, this variety, we know it existed there for prior to volcanic eruption, so it could be theorized it was there over 4,000 years, which makes it probably the oldest documented variety that's still being cultivated, continuously cultivated to today. The vines here are all original DNA vines from that period because there are no vine diseases on this island because of the soil profile and the climate. So, we're talking original plant material going back over 3,000 years. This is fascinating. I mean, nobody talks about this story. It's not only the history for Greece. It's a history of all viticulture and it's important to the whole world. This is a cultural site. Needless to say, the yields on these islands are very small. And remember, Santorini is only 33 square miles, roughly, tiny little island. The yields here are lower by 50% of what Gran Coo Burgundy is. And if anybody knows that, that's microfarming. We are much less in microfarming. 15, 18 hectoliters per hectare. In normal years, in the last four years, we were down to 11, 10 to 11. So we're talking about quarter ton per acre yields. You would think, well, my God, these wines have to be expensive. But for years and years and years, because nobody knew about these wines, they were very inexpensive. And even today, when people have discovered all over the world, and Assyrtiko is a well known entity all over the world now, even today, by standards of cultivation, these are very inexpensive steel, even though they've risen. This is really good. Thank you. And I love that reaction. That's what I like to hear. It's really good. You know the prices on these? We got a Binny's app to the rescue. So the Santo Assyrtiko, yeah. And I love that reaction, guys. I love it's really good. And this is really excellent. This is tremendous. It has like the limestone kind of mineral complexity and the bright, tight fruit of something like Chamblis with like more softness in the fruit itself. You're going to tell us how good it is with seafood, right? Oh yeah. Like this is seafood-wide. But I'm also going to tell you how good it is with roasted goat. All right, I've never had roasted goat. Also commonly known as Roat. So yeah, but the point is that this does go with great white meats as well. I could stand up to pasta dishes because of their phenolic, their pH component in this wine. This is a wines are also quite ageable. This iteration of Assyrtiko from Santo is a wine that's 2017. Santo Assyrtiko from the Appalachian of Santorini, 2017 vintage. Not a huge production on this wine. It's a wine that could be consumed in the next three to five years and it will improve with age. And we usually sell it for like 19 bucks. Okay. And today, at least, it's $16.99. It's a great deal. That's an incredible price for a wine of this quality. Yeah. And of this yield. Right. And it's pedigree. And the other cool thing, I don't know if you guys noticed, that if you look at the label, that is what the vines look like. They look like little nests. They're cultivated lower the ground in a little nest and have been done for 3,500 years this way to protect from the high winds that exist on the island. So like low slung stumping instead of trellis or anything? No trellis, not head pruned like a bush. On the ground, the clusters will lay inside. The leaves outside protect from the intense sunlight. The cluster, the vines itself, the wood of the vine, protect from the high winds. And this is amazing because this is historic as well. And all the vines are propagated vine to vine. And that's why we have this DNA purity going back 3,500 years. Unbelievable. It's under 20 bucks. It's under 20 bucks. That doesn't even cost $20. That is crazy. Yeah, you're having experiences, historic wine, and that's what's exciting about Assyrtiko. Up next, we have a Dafnios Vidiano. Yes. And why am I talking about this variety? Listen, the other great white variety that a lot of people know and have enjoyed, and we have one of the great producers of it is Mosco Filaro. Mosco Filaro is cultivated in mainland Greece, in the mountains. We represent Domain Skouras, which is one of the pioneering wine makers on that variety. Makes two versions of it that both are available at Binny's. I wanted to talk about the next great thing that even in Greece, and Greeks in Greece, and it's new for them. This is another ancient variety that's cultivated on the island of Crete. Now we keep on talking about Crete and ancient varieties. Why? because the Minoans, which was the leading civilization in the Mediterranean for thousands of years, and suddenly disappeared less than a half century after the volcanic eruption of Santorini. You can imagine what caused this civilization, which was a powerful civilization that traded around the Mediterranean, that spawned so many other civilizations throughout the Mediterranean, disappeared overnight. And 50 years in the spectrum of time is overnight in this appellation of Dafnes. And Dafnes is a region right under the largest city of Crete, which is called Erocleon, which is named after Hercules. So the city of Hercules, even though he really didn't have anything to do with Crete. And under this region is this huge, beautiful valley of rolling hills with all calcareous limestone crushed limestone soils and clay. What we find in this valley, because this area has been inhabited for thousands of years from the Noans, we find over 150 wine stone wine presses, some of them dating back to over 3800 BCE. And until recently, where the oldest wine presses ever excavated in the world, until recently in Armenia, now we find one in a cave, which is more, people believe more of a ceremonial kind of thing. But when we find 150 of these, you know it was a big part of their culture, that they were shipping this wine to Egypt. We also know that the, in the Egyptian tombs, that the wines that they found in the Amphoras were from the Minoans and from Crete. We find evidence of these wines throughout the Mediterranean, basically they were trading them. So this was a big part of their world. And they would vinify in the vineyard, load the unfermented must on to donkeys or carts in Amphora. And by the time they reach either the northern port of Iraq or the southern port, they would ship to Egypt. They would have fermented. And then they would load these vats fermenting in the ships. While they fermented, the whole process would evolve until they got to their final destination. So this is what the ancient Minoans did. And this is an ancient variety. This variety called Vidiano, V-I-D-I-A-N-O. Ancient variety, been cultivated as far as we know for all this time on this island, was almost left to obscurity because it was a variety that was difficult to cultivate correctly. You had to do it at higher elevations. You had to do it at lower yields. And because the tradition on Crete, unfortunately in the early 20th century was bulk wine, the farmers didn't want to mess with something that didn't give them enough cash. They kind of forgot about it, let's say. This young wine maker, again, a wine maker that trained in Italy at the one at in Alba, this gentleman went to Alba. His name is Nico Douloufakis and brought this variety back from almost complete obscurity when it came to white wine vinification. Vidiano is now become a sweetheart in the Greek wine world because as you taste this wine, here is a different variety that also brings you acidity, but it also brings these more tropical fruit flavors. It gives you more pineapple. It's almost reminds you of Shannon or Marsan from the Northern Rhone. It gives you this nutty aspect. This is a wine again that I'm not sure what it is on. 1299. 1299. Listen, these are wines we're talking about. These are also 90 Point Parker wines, Advocate wines. This is really pretty. It's got a lovely melange of citrus and floral, but I definitely like that nutty characteristic. It's round like the second Assyrtiko as well. It's not so acidic in its youth. This first one, the Santorini, I'd almost want to lay that down for a year or two. You know what I mean? Let that chill a bit. This is a lot more approachable now. And to hear of a grape that was almost extinct and then brought back into cultivation and then commercial production, I love that story. It's another reason I like to drink Arnaise from Piedmont and things because it's like these people grab onto them and it's a true story of humanism, you know? Yeah, and it's a story of a place too. And the fascinating thing is now other vintners in other parts of Greece, after tasting especially Douloufakis iterations of Vidiano, are now going, Holy Kalido, here's a variety we completely forgot about, let's plant this. This is a wine that I think a Chardonnay drinker could like. We can migrate a Chardonnay drinker into this because it's a similar profile. I was going to say that exact thing. Your Chardonnay drinker, it has the roundness and breadth and like not buttery quality, but like butterscotch quality. Right, exactly. It would be a really easy recommendation. Plus it's $12.99. You want to move on to these reds? Let's do it. Is this one first here, this guy? A lot of the discovery of Greek wines over the last five, six, seven years has been centered around white varieties. It's natural. We're surrounded by water. And believe it or not, I'm gonna throw you guys a crazy fact here. We don't eat a lot of lamb and grease. Okay? We eat our proteins, or obviously we're surrounded by the water. It's fish. Go figure. And in the mountains, we do chicken and pork. The land misnomer is associated with the migrant class of Greeks that came over to the United States. Where red wine in the old country was very rare and very special to have, even being in the mountains, because in an agricultural culture, in a village, you wouldn't actually slay a lamb, because it's obvious it provides wool and milk. You only did it for special occasions. So that special occasion was the lamb. So when the immigrants came here in the turn of the century and found lamb and red meat in general, abundant and inexpensive, every day became a holiday. So every Greek restaurant has 15 lamb dishes. In Greece, a modern Greek especially, might eat lamb maybe once or twice a year max. What are the special occasions? Easter. Easter, which coincides with the spring lambs, very good lambs, a baptism. About your child's wedding in the village setting. That's when you'll traditionally have your lamb dishes. To the wine, to red wines. Domain Skouras, we're drinking Domain Skouras here. There's the gentleman that got me into the wine business 26 years ago. This is one of his red wine iterations. This is one of the great expressions of the variety. And here's where you guys are gonna earn your keep on this variety. This is where we're gonna test you guys. I don't even want to attempt to pronounce this. Okay, if you try to read it, good luck. Agiorotiko. Very good. He's a linguist. Agiorotiko. But also... Agiorotiko. Agiorotiko. And it translates to St. George, and the name of this wine is... St. George. St. George. This is a great variety, and it's cultivated in one of the original appellations in all of history, the Appellation of Nemea. And it's in southern Greece. It's about an hour and a half southwest of Athens. It is the largest red wine appellation of Greece in terms of geographic size and gallimage produced. It is a beautiful appellation. The valley floor is at around 1000 feet and rises all the way up to 3500 feet elevation. Actually, the highest red wine vineyard in Europe is a vineyard that George Skouras cultivates called the Grand Cuvée Vineyard and cultivates this variety. In this appellation, there's varying soil profiles and climate conditions. So we have sandy soils, we have calcareous soils, we have clay soils, volcanic red rocky soils and poor soils. This particular wine is sourced from calcareous and sandy and the volcanic red rock soils. All high elevation. This is all cultivated above 1800 feet elevation. This particular wine is about 3 tons per acre yield, aged one year in all older French barrels, French oak barrels. Depending on your cultivation, depending on your yields, depending on the location of the vineyard, you can make different styles of wine. George Skouras was asked in an article that he was giving, aren't you bored with working with one variety only? And he comes to your res. He's like, absolutely not. He goes, because the breadth of the options that I have in this growing region, I can get different kind of fruit and from one variety, I can make multiple styles of wine. The thickness of the skins are in the same world as Pinot Noir, Tempranier or Sangiovese. So we don't get huge tannins. It's a variety that has great acidity when cultivated correctly. And again, that's why we're up in higher elevations because we want that cooling effect into the vineyards. Even the wine we spoke of earlier, the Megainos, that is old vine aggregates, co-blended with a little bit of cab. And it was the first red wine the George Skouras ever produced, first wine he ever produced, that brought worldwide attention to Greece after hundreds of years hiatus off people's radars. And it's become one of the big cult wines around the world. So you can have a wine like the Megainos, which has been made for 35 vintages continuously. And see the example of Ayur Gitsiko in that form. And you can have a wine like this, built to drink on a daily basis, but can be enjoyed up to five years later and improve in the bottle. So which is pretty wild at the price where this is at. I like the fruit characteristic of it. I think it would stand up against some spicy barbecue for sure. Like this would handle spice in food because of the fruit. It's great, very well balanced. It's plush. Yes. It has like a fresh nose. I expect something like Gamay, a little lighter in body. It has a lot of breath on the palate. Great comparison. Gamay-ish, absolutely. It kind of reminds me of a Creux beaujolais, like a Morgon. So if you're into that style, if you're into Pino's, if you're into San Giovese styles as well because it has that high acid cherry finish, this dusty quality to it, it's plum and cherries. It's a variety I think that will fit a lot of different food profiles as well. This is a great, you put a little chill in it, it's great with seafood as well. So St. George, and what is this retail at with you guys? 12.99. Another 12.99, here we go. You like that price I think. I think it's a great price to introduce people to Greek wines at this level. Do you secretly want it to be like 18.99? Yeah. Of course you do. Of course I do. because I think if these wines had a label from a different country, they would be 18.99 and more. And that's one of our great advantages, that we can provide quality for the dollars that you're spending. We've moved up to another variety. I'm very excited about this wine. You are? I'm excited about this wine too. This wine is from one of my producers of Northern Greece, what we classically call Macedonia. This is from Western Macedonia region. The appellation is Amedion, one of the oldest appellations in Greece, but it's also the smallest. This is the coldest growing region in Greece. This is from a cutting edge producer called Alpha Estate that set up shop in this appellation when nobody was making wine up here. It's an area that's located at a high mountain plateau at around 2,400 feet elevation surrounded by a ring of mountains that range from 5 to about 7,000 feet. It's just north and west of Mount Olympus, which is the highest mountain in Greece, which is roughly around 10,000 feet. This is a fairly dry and arid area during the growing season, but intense snow during the winter. And when I say intense snow, hey, we're from Chicago, we know snow, right guys, right? These guys get six, seven feet of snow. In these villages, they get snowed in. Traditionally, you go up to these villages, they have walls and they have winter kitchens and summer kitchens, because they're isolated. They even have chapels in their own house because they couldn't get out of their house to go to church. So this is an old traditional area. Amidion was named after the grandfather of Alexander the Great. This is an ancient viticulture area. It's been cultivated as far as we know, about 400 BCE. The variety of this region is a variety, ready guys, Xenomavro. I always thought it was Z. Xenomavro. Xenomavro. Xenomavro. Yeah, it's spelled X-I-N-O, and that anemology means sour or acidic. Mavro means black, so this variety is called acid black. Okay. That is a great band name. I call it. Actually, I've always wanted to make a wine called the black acid wine. So, this is a variety that the X in Greek, it's almost pronounced like K-S-E-E, Xe. It's an indigenous ancient variety. Now, this is a variety that a lot of people have compared on the palate with Nebuolo, especially from its neighboring appellation of nausa, which is the other appellation that cultivates 100 percent Xenomavro. But you can find some of those attributes in this region and in this bottling. You kind of get that stewed tomato, olive top and odd kind of aspect to it, a little bit of rose petal. And it's also 85 percent sand. So we have no phylloxera in this region, old vines, deep rooted vines, because underneath the sand we have limestone and clay, clay and then limestone. Also cold temperatures, so we get great acid development. But also we have a long hang time here. This is the only rose appellation of Greece. And why was that? because the old farmers in this region that did head pruned vines could only ripen their food enough to make rosé wine. So for years the only wines that were coming out of this red wine appellation were rosés. Until this gentleman from Alpha Estate came up there and changed agriculture entirely. High density planning, underground irrigation to water the vines from underneath, to get into the limestone faster, and doing multiple green harvests to produce wines that could vinify into red. And climate change over the last years has extended our hang time by about two weeks, which is essential. Here, we're only about 13.5% alcohol, which I love wines in that moderate alcohol range. I don't like 15 degree wines or 16 degree wines. It's too much. And for ageability, it's too much. For food pairing, it's too much. Nuts to you guys, isn't it? Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. We just want you to drink twice as much. So this is Xenoma Ro, cultivated in the Medellin. Spends about a year in Barrel, about 75% old oak, about 25% new oak, because we really don't want to impart a lot of oak flavor in this wine. And at this winery, we also, when it comes to our Barrel, when it comes to the Barrel program, it is all white toast barrels. Have you guys ever heard of white toast barrels? We're all looking at the whiskey guy. Yeah. I mean, white toast. For you guys, you would not have any use for white toast barrels. I don't know. I assume white oak that's toasted, lightly toasted, like not even browned. It's a misnomer in terms of using the toast designation. That's what they call it. The stays are bent and treated with hot steam so not to create caramelization. So in the whiskey world, we want that burnt caramelization. Is it actually breaking down any lignin or anything in there? It is. The steam is breaking it down, but it's not caramelizing it. In order to bend it, it must do. Right. It does, but when the sugars are coming out of the wood, the fire caramelizes them and that's why we get these toasty vanilla kind of flavors that go on and other kind of flavors. When you do it with hot steam, extreme hot steam, you're not opening up the grains because you want to preserve the grain structure because it's an oxidation vessel, but we're not caramelizing the sugars. So they're fairly neutral oak, neutral flavors imparted to the wine without ruining the grain structure. That's called what again? They're called White Toast. This type of barrel making and procedure is, from my knowledge, is all burgundy. Alpha Estate is one of the wineries in Greece that first started using these. They're fairly new to the California wine world. Unfortunately, whiskey guys are not going to like it. Cool. I love this wine. I think it's just super light on its feet. It's refreshing. I drink it, I'm like right on. This is the complexity of some Burgundian Pinot Noirs. It's got that acidic quality that doesn't overpower the fruit here. I've loved this wine for a long time, especially this vineyard. I was immediately struck by the color, and it's got this kind of like bricky red color to it. For under 20 bucks. For under 20 bucks? Yeah, we're usually 20 bucks, and right now we're 17 million. How am I making a living? I don't know. That's a good question. I don't know. Thank you for these lovely maps. You're welcome. They're all available on my website, diamondwineimportors.com. These maps are available. They can be downloaded. We have a phonetic pronunciation of all the Greek varieties that you can access as well. We have some great information on tasting notes on these wines. We have press on the website. You can email us as well directly. Anybody out there that wants a little more information, email us. We will try to answer you promptly and effectively. Thank you so much for coming in and teaching us a little bit more about Greek wines. I just think it was kind of a bit of an arcane category, and I just want to shed some light on it. I think that these wines show where Greece is going with quality. I mean, I almost didn't want to do the cast because I like to buy Greek wines. They kind of are a best-kept secret. I'm like, I don't want people to know, because my $7 secret is going to be a $12 secret, you know? Yeah, this was fascinating. I mean, my only introduction to Greek wine again was Roditis and Half-Naked Dudes on the side of Amphorae. Nothing wrong with that. But where we are today is incredible values and a wine history going back thousands of years that's practically unmatched around the world. Absolutely. Hey, their wine is worth talking about, right? Absolutely. Yeah, and next time we got to come back and talk some spirits and other fun things. Come on back. We would love to have you. All right. Well, great. Thank you guys. You guys have been awesome. Thank you. Ted Diamantis. Thank you very much. See you. That wraps up another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. Thanks for listening. We will be back in a week. I'm Greg. I'm Pat. And I'm Ted. I'm Kristin. Keep tasting.