The Many Sides to Sideritis

The mouth has grapefruit peel and a lick of white pepper and the cool water feel of the high mountain from whence it has sprung.  All the perfume and promise of the nose dissipates on drinking it (and this is a good thing) as we gear change to flint and pine and bitter greens and pineapple and the soul-satisfying rush of chicken bones having sat long in boiling broth; as we shift from flora to fauna; as the wine arrives unapologetically across the palate and announces itself to the senses—‘I am Sideritis…’ it says ‘…and with me, you may quench your many thirsts.’

Sideritis is an ancient, pink-skinned, white Greek varietal that is rare in its plantings and even rarer still in its bottlings.  The brothers Aristides and Stathis Spanos of Tetramythos Winery, with the watchful eye/nose/palate/tongue/talent/skill/& wizardry of Australian-born, goateed and wonderfully named winemaker, Panagiotis Papagiannopoulos, churn a range of organic and naturally made wines in the Northern Peloponnese, across the mountains of Aigialeia, of which the ‘Sideritis Naturε’ is a star part.

Planted in 1966, the ungrafted pergola-trained fruit grows on clay-loam in Zachloritika and after harvest (ordinarily taking place in mid-November) spends 7 days on skins and then sees elevate for 6-8 months in clay and concrete vessels.  The wine is focussed and clean and certain and, as aforementioned, ‘arrives’ with a pale kind of honey colour in the glass, the shade of a long-brewed camomile tea taken in the face of adversity.  The nose is a fête of fruit and spice that edges toward umami; there’s dried mango and candied satsuma and lemon thyme; there’s Krispy Kreme donut icing and white hot charcoal and chervil and lime and it speaks of golden tree sap and heavily lemoned, heavily olive-oiled bitter green leaf salads.  There’s a touch of bathroom bleach to it also and passionfruit seed and iced darjeeling tea taken when the long day or the short night will be sated by little else.

All of that perfume, all of that joy is buoyed by the natural acidity of the Sideritis grape which I find to be in near perfect balance.  Any more and it might appear harsh.  Any less and it would fatten and flatten and be too opulent.  This is restrain.  This is a high refrain.  This is someone pulling shoestring tight around brown papered frangipane.  This is all the light we cannot see.  This is one of those rare moments in a crowded room where, despite the noise, despite the crowds and the chaos they bring, there’s only you and me.  This is an old-world new-world order.  This is my kind of (white/orange/amber/skin contact) wine.  Though the skin contact has lifted the tannins a little and deepened the hue, it should, for its own sake and that of its fans-to-be, sit on wine lists as a white wine and be sold as such.

Sidero, meaning iron in Greek, may well be how the small wonder got it’s name.  Thick-skinned and imparting that ever-arguable, ever-desirable, ever-difficult-to-describable flavour of minerality, the Sideritis grape shares it’s name with ironwort, or what is much better known in Greece as mountain tea.  Late-ripening in small compact bunches and mostly planted in the Peloponnese, though also found on the islands of Evia and Patras, Sideritis has traditionally been used in white blends alongside Roditis with only the occasional vintner bottling it solo.  And we can thankfully add the crew at Tetramythos to the top of that short list.

What I get is an abundance of salted grapefruit.  And a little smoke.  A little flint.  A little rain hitting hot stone.  At the back end of the bouquet, as with all great perfumes, there is the smallest amount of something slightly rancid that might be stale urine, that might be turned cheese, that might even be the back of a bin truck having done the rounds of a long street of tavernas and bistros on Monday morning after a busy weekend’s service.  But all the prettiness that comes before it; the abundance of ginger and citrus and dried peel and sherbet, all the stone and cactus water, all the sea salt and bird-meat gravy, all the crushed bones and mustard fruits, all the meringue pie, it needs the soft shadow of decay on it; it needs it like beauty needs foul.

What I get might not be what you get.  What I get might be foolhardy and desirous.  What I get might be purely the result of smoke and mirrors, of affectation, of industrious suggestion.  What you get might be a wild reach.  What you get might speak of decades of quiet irrevocably unleashed.  What you get might just be fermented joy itself.  And is that not the great beauty?  Is that not what all the hard work of Panagiotis and his team is for?  That the wine might arrive somewhere in someone’s glass in any corner of the globe and stir in them something they’d always thought to be iron-clad, but might have forgotten slowly over the years, that a mere sip of wine, much like a piece of candy or a spoonful of soup, can so rattle the memory, so stir the imagination as to open up cosmoi.

Tetramythos ‘Sideritis Nature΄ 2020 Ano Diakopto, Greece

tasted November 2021

B. T. Tomlinson

visit Tetramythos Winery here