Ampelostrates & the Road to Rosé

B. T. Tomlinson

Tucked away in the heart of the village of Koiliomenos on the Ionian island of Zakynthos (oft-christened Zante by her Italian neighbours) is a small restaurant next to a small house underneath which is a small cellar; and if you’re lucky enough to find yourself sat at one of the tables in their wild garden or in one of the small, cobbled-together rooms off the rustic kitchen that serves the local (and visiting) sun-chasers between May and October, you might count yourself doubly lucky to be poured a wine that has been made from grapes pulled from your high, mountainous surrounds and had their elevage in the small cellar underneath the small house.

Alekos Maroudas-Skarpas has inherited a family business that any young oenologist would dream of—a poet father, a painter mother, patches of vineyards his great-grandfather had once worked, an army of free-ranging chickens, three horses, an old dog (or two) and let’s not forget, a small restaurant next to a small house underneath which is a small cellar. The word small does not of it justice; in fact it likely serves to diminish the picture of the place. Quaint? Humble? Idyllic? No amount of trolling a thesaurus will put you under the olive trees with a noseful of grilling, oregano-laden codfish (bakaliaros) and a crisp, white wine wetting your lips. You have two options. Actually go there: hop a boat from Kyllini, catch a quick flight from Athens. Or, if that is beyond your capacity, a distant second best is to drink the wine.

Walking along the driveway that runs through the rows of vines that lead to the house (from which the restaurant and the winery get their name) and tasting the wines of Ampelostrátes I must admit that it was I who felt small. Like that time a child first visits an art gallery on school excursion and standing loose-laced before an enormous oil painting, whose figures of buxom women and decaying fruit and men in uniform with stern, bearded faces, feels dwarfed by the lightness of the future and weight of the past. Like standing at the edge of a cliff whose base is so far below you as to be out of focus. Like kneeling in the sand and sensing the water around you rush ahead to fill an incoming wave. With the zing and salt of these wines, the grip and plum of the reds, the grass and flint of the whites, the complex mosaic of the Xenykti rosé tickling the nose hairs and setting the tongue to question: ‘from where this thing has come, and how it has been wrought into existence?’… I… felt… small.

Working exclusively with varieties indigenous to Zakynthos, Alekos (graduate of the University of West Attica) makes four whites, three reds and one rosé; of the whites one is a straight up Robola, three are blends, including the famed multi-varietal and slightly oxidative Verdea; of the reds one is a blend of Augoustiatis and Katsakoulias that comes from the Yperagathos monastery, between Koiliomenos and Gyri, on limestone soil and ages in inox, and the other a barrel-aged Augoustiatis that comes from both the Yperagathos and Kataraha sites, also of limestone-rich earth. The same red grapes are used for the field-blend rosé Xenykti (Ξενύχτι) with the addition of a pinkish-skinned clonal cousin of Robola called Mavri Robola. The fruit is harvested from a single plot and is then co-fermented before spending 5-6 months on lees in inox tanks and is usually bottled in early March.

At a glance the wine is clean, not marred by floating grit or cloudiness, and reveals a pale rust (not pink) colour consistent from the core to the edge. On the nose the first things that spring out are sweaty socks, blood orange, mint and musk stick candy, there is also a dash of potpourri present but it underscores the pleasant secondary surge of fennel and smoked peppers that later jump from the glass; the overall impression is that of a posh elderly woman wearing a sensible amount of bergamot perfume with a new leather handbag hanging from her inside elbow swanning around a flea market looking for undervalued ceramics that her nephew can sell for five times as much at an online auction. In the mouth it is a touch oily and quite mouth-filling with the same herbaceous bouquet from the nose hitting the palate. There’s jasmine also, maybe a touch of lavender, of watermelon granita, and something savoury pushing against all the elements. A mid-palate tackiness is saved by noticeable salinity and the persistence of the acid profile to thrash against the myriad elements so that it all bounces around the mouth and nothing sticks, like a wind kicking debris in a fierce storm. A touch of basement mould on the nose and lanolin, and the aforementioned sweaty socks, come to my mind returning to it for a third and fourth sip but whatever it is it works because after each mouthful slowly dissipates across the tongue and the last of it slides from the teeth there is a very slight tannic chewiness left on the lips and it dares you not to take another sip.

It seems to beg for hard sheep’s cheeses and marinated green olives, it seems to want to sit alongside other tiny morsels of deliciousness, to not want to be the only thing on the menu; and that might be the difference between a good and a great rosé—they don’t always have the cleverness to know what they are and where they stand, to know what they’re role is at the table and in the glass—but the Xenykti knows, and the Xenykti might even know more about what’s good for you than you do.

Chances are, whether poured a glass of the Xenykti by a member of the Maroudas-Skarpas family or not, whether burying your nose in a glass of it under soft lamplight as you admire the brushwork of one of Mika Symvoulidou’s (Alekos’ mother’s) many paintings that fill the stone walls of the restaurant or guzzle it thirstily as you wait for plates of horta and octopus after a long afternoon letting the cool waters of the Ionian wash you of your sins, or find it filling your tumbler in an Athenian wine bar as you check your watch for when your train leaves for the airport and curse the fact that you only booked a four-day vacation and will tomorrow be just the same mouse you were five days ago in the same ceaseless marathon, it’ll leave you feeling as glad as it did me as to how in the big, wide (often ugly) world there are still, scattered far from the chaos, small restaurants next to small houses underneath which sit small cellars and in them one can still find bottles of wine that speak to the moons that adorn them, alongside which, the smallest of things in the big, wide (often ugly) world, is you.

Ampelostrates 'Xenykti' 2023 Zakynthos, Greece

tasted February 2025

B. T. Tomlinson