Economou

Economou

GRAPE WRANGLER/S:
Yannis Economou
LOCATED IN:
Sitia, Lassithi, Crete
LAND HELD:
160 stremmata
HOW HIGH:
550m - 650m
TERROIR TYPE:
clay topsoil over limestone, marl, shale & phyllite
GRAPES GROWN:
assyrtiko, velana, thrapsathiri, mandilari, liatiko
PRACTICE IS:
only the Gods know
YEARLY BOTTLES:
20000 - 25000 bottles

Yannis Economou trained in Europe: cutting his teeth under Franz Keller in Baden, earning his oenology credentials in Alba, absorbing the discipline of Ceretto and Scavino in Piedmont, and spending a formative stretch at Château Margaux, before returning home to Crete in the 1990s.

Nowadays, if one is lucky enough to be granted an audience at the winery (note: he spends a lot of time in Germany) you will see barrels and tanks in every shape and material, some sitting outdoors in the open air, others crammed into seventeenth-century stone rooms.  Wine gets moved, blended, aged, and re-aged on instinct, not schedule.  Economou doesn't measure.  He casts.  He tastes, waits, and releases only when the wine says so, which might be three years from now or might be never.  Ask him how he does it and you'll get a shrug and a smile and a swift change of topic.  Yet the results speak with total clarity. Reds that fuse Bordeaux structure with Barolo's finesse and the haunted, herbal depth of old Rioja, unmistakably Cretan, undeniably Economou.  Whites that swing from bone-dry and mineral to rich and oxidative, sometimes both in the same vintage.

The vineyards span 16 hectares across the villages of Ziros, Katsidoni, and Etia, situated at altitudes between 550 and 650 meters.  Production is limited. Timing is unknowable. Some vintages never leave Crete at all; lesser years have been poured straight into vinegar rather than bottled under his name. What survives is some of the most singular wine in Greece, reminding us that some things aren't to be explained, they are to be enjoyed.

THEIR WINES