Dessert wine

A warm winter means that, for apparently the first time in the history of German winemaking, the country's fabled vineyards will produce no ice wine - a pricey, golden nectar made from grapes that have been left to freeze on the vine.

The cutting of the first bunch of Assyrtiko on the southern Aegean island of Santorini on August 4 signaled the start of the 2017 wine grape harvest across Greece. The harvest takes roughly three months, ending in late October in the vineyards of northern Greece.

Along with their bottle of white Assyrtiko wine, a jar of split-pea dip (fava) and photographs of blue skies and sparkling white houses, the thousands who visit the Aegean island of Santorini every year can now leave with another souvenir of their holidays: Santopoly, an ingenious board game created by a young Greek couple.

Agricultural Development Minister Vangelis Apostolou vowed improvements to Greek legislation protecting the ancient vineyards of Santorini, telling Kathimerini that efforts will also be made to designate this wine-producing island a "high-yield zone" to curb the expansion of construction.

Walnut sweets known as "cevizli sucuk" or "orcik" are loved all over Turkey, but some of the best examples come from the eastern province of Elazığ.  Now, residents of the village of Mığı in the province have begun making a big splash with the sweet, selling it all over the country. 

Santorini, the island that has launched a thousand postcards, is famous for its white sugar-cubed houses perched ontop of the caldera, its volcano and the exquisite beauty of its sunset.

The Director of the Executive Agency for Vines and Wine Krasimir Koev said that Bulgarians have drunk around 100 million litres of wine in 2014.

Prince Radu of Romania on Tuesday evening attended the launch of the wine that bears his name, produced by the Tohani Winery.

The wine is made from grapes harvested from the 0.7 hectares of vineyards owned by Prince Radu, on the Tohani estate, a limited edition of 5,000 bottles.

...

By Ioanna Fotiadi

The secret of Santorini’s Assyrtiko is rapidly making its way through the grapevine of New York’s gourmands, who are raving about the grape variety grown on the southeast Aegean island.

“The Americans are mad about Assyrtiko,” the general manager of the Union of Santorini Cooperatives, Matthaios Dimopoulos, says with no small amount of pride.