Featured in “FNL Guide”
“Post-Modern Shock and Awe!”
…“An unconventional wine from Pieria for discerning consumers and true wine lovers”
I have mentioned many times the impressive work done in Pieria by Pavlos Argyropoulos and Andreas Pantos (in the photo with their red wine Naked King) with the Pieria Eratini Winery as a vehicle. The wines of the two oenologists are wines with a point of view, bold and highly interesting. It is clear that the men have something to say and that is why all oenophiles eagerly await each new proposal.
Their latest creation is called "Meta" and it is a wine that has no equal in Greece. So as not to keep you in suspense, I'll tell you right from the start that it's fantastic. Fantastic as in too good but also fantastic as in something that imagination creates. Perhaps a more appropriate word would be "magical", so advanced is the shadow theatre played out between wine and taster. A wine-Cirque du Soleil, where nothing is as you imagine or expect, where the twists and turns are constant and where the wine keeps inviting you to taste it!
First of all, if you cool it down it becomes cloudy, but after a few hours of sitting in the glass it comes back bright and beautiful with a deep burnt orange colour that promises adventures of pleasure and tasting. The seduction continues on the nose where myriad aromas of mature fruit and raisin intertwine with stunning floral notes, against a subtle background of nuts and sandalwood. What is this stuff? You ask yourself, sure that the first sip will confirm your suspicions that you are holding in your hands another great sweet wine of our homeland.
And the time has come, indeed, to taste it: Shock and Awe.
“META” Malagouzia
Not only is it not sweet, it's downright dry! And when I say "dry" I mean having your tongue pulled out and cleaned out with a barber's razor, dry. Fruit and stiffness together, tannins, velvet and warmth from the exuberant but totally manageable spirit, great and deep flavors make up the profile of "META", which you taste and re-taste to see what you missed (and there's plenty to miss). Before you know it, the small 50cl bottle is empty. (I got my greatest pleasure when I paired it with a pasta dish with gorgonzola-nut sauce).
Yes, this wine is not for everyone (even if it is malagousia!), not because it is "difficult" (nonsense!) but because what it achieves is due to its (controlled) oxidation, which we have convinced consumers to avoid. And lest I be misunderstood: "META" has as much to do with horrible, oxidized, regionally vinified wines as a thoroughbred horse has to do with country mules. The oxidation here is workmanlike, tame, classy. It's the 6.16 pole vault, Jackson Pollock's first abstract painting. In the hands of an inferior winemaker we would be talking about a fisherman's wine; here we have a wine worthy of the Spondi Restaurant.
In any case it is a wine that will have as many enemies as friends!
As the creators say, it is the culmination of three years of effort in the vineyard and the winery. Cultivation techniques were applied to maximise the concentration of substances in the grape, while the (white) malagouzia was vinified as if it were a red variety and then the wine was exposed to extreme conditions of oxidative ageing in glass amphorae for two years.
"We pushed malagouzia both viticulturally and vinologically to transcend itself and confront the most merciless enemy of wine, oxidation," say Pavlos Argyropoulos and Andreas Pantos, may their boldness be followed by other Greek winemakers.