Is Greek wine better than Italian wine?

There are 74 renowned wines produced in Italy and 29 produced in Greece. The difference is that Italy produces 20 times more wine than Greece.

Historically, the Greeks had an advantage in wine production as they started 6500 years ago. They exported surplus wine to supply ores and other goods that were not available in Greece, established colonies and expanded into Sicily, Italy and Galatia by the 8th century BC.

The Greek writer of the 4th century BC, Theophrastus, described in detail the influences and avant-garde of the Greeks in agricultural cultivation as well as in the study of the various grape varieties. One of their pioneers was the minimization of cultivated soils to achieve better flavors and quality at the expense of quantity. The economy of the time required a greater expansion of cultivated land for more harvests and this limitation of cultivated land was very unusual for the ancient world.

Pliny the Elder said, "Why produce wine in Latium since Greek wine is better and cheaper?". The poet Virgil also said, "It would be easier to measure the grains of sand in Greece, despite the different varieties of grapes".

The type of wine the ancient Greeks drank and traded throughout the Mediterranean is different from what we have today. Due to bacterial and fungal limitations, as well as storage and transportation issues, the wines were late harvests, fruity in flavor, and very strong. In fact, some of the unique varieties of the Aegean can naturally produce wines with an alcohol content of up to 22%.

This type of wine was traded extensively from the Aegean coast through the port of Monemvasia to the western Mediterranean until the Ottoman conquest in the 17th century, which destroyed much of Greece's wine production as the wine trade collapsed. It was not until long after independence in 1830 and the liberation of Turkish influence that viticulture began to be professionally pursued as an economic factor and many vineyards were reactivated.

The recovery was relatively slow, as in the meantime the demand for Greek wine had also decreased significantly. Greek viticulture experienced a renaissance after the end of the military dictatorship in 1974 and Greece's accession to the EEC in 1981.

So basically, wine production in Greece was almost non-existent for three and a half centuries.

On the other hand, the Romans began innovating in wine production around the 2nd century when, after the destruction of Carthage, they imported large numbers of Carthaginian slaves, many of whom were experienced grape growers, and used them extensively in commercial vineyards.

Italy is now the largest wine producer in the world, with 702,000 hectares (1,730,000 acres) under cultivation and a 2013-2017 annual average of 48.3 million hl of wine. A quarter of the wines imported into the US come from Italy. Basically, Italy is in pole position with many high-end vineyards generating enough income to continue investing in quality and marketing. There are currently 74 DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) or VQPRD wines.

In Greece, the average annual wine production in 2017 was 2.5 million hl, making it only the 17th largest wine producing country in the world, with most wines made from Greek grape varieties. Greece returned to the wine scene when the EEC abolished wine tariffs and funds were made available to rejuvenate old vineyards around 1980. The one exception was Greek shipping magnate Carras, who developed the first "Greek" Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1970s Domaine Carras with the help of the father of modern winemaking, the University of Bordeaux Professor Emile Peynaud.

Since then, however, many vineyard owners have sent their children to France to study oenology, and with this knowledge of modern winemaking there has been a tremendous effort to capitalize on the 300 indigenous Greek cultivars. The result is 29 OPAP (High Quality Appellation of Origin) or VQPRD wines, 15 of which Robert Parker has declared outstanding.

Greek wines have thus long been undervalued for historical reasons, including the fact that Greek cultivars are characterized by low yields that make profitable export difficult. On the other hand, numerous traditional Greek naturally sweet late harvest wines, as they have been produced since ancient times, are in a class of their own, all subtly different. They taste decadent, powerful and in no way inferior to their Italian or French counterparts and are available in larger varieties.