Skouras Winery, located in the Peloponnese region in the south of Greece, played a pivotal role in elevating the profile of Greek wines internationally. After studying oenology in Dijon, France, George Skouras returned to Greece with a vision to create wines that express the unique character of the Peloponnese terroir while incorporating modern winemaking techniques.
Skouras' vineyards are primarily situated in Nemea, one of Greece’s most renowned wine regions, and focus on both indigenous and international grape varieties. Skouras has been instrumental in promoting the indigenous Agiorgitiko grape, which is used in many of their celebrated red wines. Agiorgitiko, which translates to “Saint George” produces wines that range from fresh and fruity to deep, complex reds. Skouras’ interpretation of this grape has earned widespread acclaim for its balance of fruitiness and structure. Skouras Winery also produces standout wines from Moschofilero, a white grape known for its aromatic qualities and crisp acidity, native to the Mantinia region of Peloponnese. The estate’s commitment to quality extends from vineyard management to winemaking. They use sustainable practices in the vineyards and combine traditional methods with modern technology in the cellar.
The Peloponnese holds a central place in Greek history, as it was the cradle of many of the ancient world’s most powerful civilizations and legendary events. Home to the Mycenaean civilization, one of Europe’s earliest advanced cultures, it played a key role in shaping Greek and Western history. The region is famed for its archaeological treasures, including Mycenae, the city associated with Homer’s epics, and ancient Olympia, the birthplace of the Olympic Games. The Peloponnese was also a major center of power during the Classical period, with city-states like Sparta dominating Greek military and political affairs. In later history, it was the heart of the Greek War of Independence in the 19th century, marking its importance in both ancient and modern Greek identity. As well as playing an important part in the rich cultural and historical legacy it also plays an important part in Greece's wine revival.
Grape Collective talks to Dimitris Skouras about the evolution of wine production in Greece.
Talk a little bit about the history of Skouras.
Dimitris Skouras: The history of the winery starts pretty much in 1986. It was my father who started the winery. He started winemaking in France. He was based in Dijon and he was the first in our family to start working with wine. My grandfather had no connection with vineyards, no connection with wine.
(Dimitris Skouras)
After starting winemaking, he came back to Greece and started working with the wineries. And then he decided he wanted to start making his own wine. So he came back to Argos, the town he grew up in, his birth town. He started making wine in barrels in the garage with my grandfather and selling that and running a small space.
And then again, renting a winery and then building the winery where we are located right now, in the zone, the appellation Nemea, just outside of Argos. So he started in 1986 and the winery was built back in 2004 and everything is done right now in our facilities. We own a second winery in the appellation of Mantinia. So these are the two most important appellations in the Peloponnese.
Can you explain where the Peloponnese is?
So the Peloponnese is in the southern part of Greece. If we think about Greece we have on the other hand, the mainland and the islands. And somewhere almost in between these is Athens. We're located in the south of Athens, about one hour and 30 minutes away. Peloponnese is almost an island.
This is a very big piece of land that is connected to the mainland of Greece with just one tiny bridge. So it's basically a peninsula. Peloponnese is a very, very intriguing place to grow grapes. Since antiquity and mythology, people have been referring to the Peloponnese as the birthplace of the grapes, as described in some books.
And it is a region that is covered pretty much 70 to 80% by mountains, and that gives us a very big advantage. That allows us to grow grapes in different altitudes and then helps us battle the heat and really high temperatures sometimes that we get during the summer. The altitude is always a very good solution for us to be able to grow grapes.
And let's talk a little bit about the grapes that you work with.
The main grapes that are really important for our winemaking are two. One of them is Agiorgitiko, which means Saint George. It's a red grape that is grown in the appellation of Nemea, the most important appellation for red wine in Greece. Nemea is very interesting land that starts from 100m of altitude, 300ft, and goes up to 3,000ft or 1,000m, and allows us to grow Agiorgitiko in many different altitudes.
We use Agiorgitiko for red blend single vineyards and also for our rosé wines. The second very important grape that we grow here is called Moschofilero. And Moschofilero is grown a bit more south than the different appellation called Mantinia. And Mantinia is a plateau that is surrounded by mountains at 600m of altitude, roughly 2,000ft.
Moschofilero is what we call a grey variety, which means it's not white and it's not red. It's something in between, it has a little bit of color. So we're able to make rosé wines if you wanted to. We mostly use our Moschofilero for our white wines, and it's a very lovely aromatic variety with a very, very nice acidity.
I think it's fascinating that if you think of the influence of Socrates and Plato on world culture, on Western society, you know, philosophy, politics, the arts, everything, it's immense. And, the idea of Socrates sitting around this table, this symposium, drinking Greek wine, and the importance of Greek wine and antiquity, maybe just speak a little to that.
What is really fascinating, if we think about the history of Greece and wine, is that wine has been something really important in our culture for millennia. So what happened is that wine was considered to be a drink, but for those people it was the medium that brought different people together so they could meet, and they could exchange views and talk about anything in their life. So there was this really interesting protocol in the symposium where people had meetings. And at the same time there were people responsible for serving the wine, controlling the temperatures by mixing it sometimes with water to be able to get the correct taste and alcohol.
So there was this whole protocol that people would follow in order not to get too much alcohol. Because if you were drinking too much, it was not considered acceptable to be able to drink and communicate with others. So I would say that ages ago, sommeliers actually existed in Greece serving wine, making sure that it was the right proportion with water and making sure it was the right temperature and making sure that people were not drinking too much. Wine was considered to be absolutely the medium that would bring people together to communicate and meet each other, exchanging views about anything in their lives.
And talk a little bit about the centrality of wine in ancient Greece. You have, you know, a whole pantheon of gods, some of whom are more important than the others. And one of the most important is Dionysus, the god of wine. It just gives you a sense of how central wine was to the culture back then, which I think is quite fascinating.
We can also see how wine was important in the life of people ages ago. When we think about our mythology where we have one God, Dionysus, and it's a god that's really connected to wine, representing feasts and people, going out and drinking and having fun and dancing. You know, Dionysus is really connected to wine, to harvest. So, people would think about Dionysus and would describe the god that would bring wine, the god that was responsible for the fermentations, for people enjoying wine together, for having fun and communicating wine with each other. If we think about that in antiquity, we can see then how important wine was, at the time that the whole god was responsible for that wine and for people having fun.
Talk a little bit about Greece’s role in spreading the vine and spreading vinifera to the rest of the world in the sense that, you know, France and Italy received vines in a way, because of the colonization of the ancient Greeks.
So what we also see from history is that Greece was one of the first civilizations to grow vineyards and at the same time make wine. And because it was that important to them, Greeks traveling with a ship to different countries would bring with them wine, would bring with them vines. And thus taking that philosophy about wine, about growing vineyards in different countries such as Italy, such as France, and then those countries would adopt those vineyards with different varieties and grow them, and then pretty much spread the wine culture all over Europe and then all over the world.
It was one of those situations where the vineyards came from Georgia, from Caucasus to Greece. Greece kind of grew it and cultivated and then spread it around in Europe. The Greeks were one of the first civilizations to actually have, what we call a DOC, an appellation, back thousands of years ago where they would grow wines and name them after where they would grow in the Peloponnesus.
And then where they were spreading that wine culture and taking vines and wine with their ships, they would explain wine and explain where it comes from. And people would know the name of the place that the wine came from, thus creating the first appellations that we know of.
There was almost like a dark age with Greek wine during the Ottoman Empire where things didn't evolve a tremendous amount from a wine perspective.
If we look at the history of Greece, what we can see is, Greece started growing vineyards, making wine, really emphasizing the culture of wine. And then there was one time in our history that the production of wine kind of stopped. Greece was taken over by the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans do not drink wine, and weren’t allowing Greeks to grow vineyards.
It was for us a kind of dark time for wine where everyone stopped making wine. No one was growing vineyards. And this really set Greece back about 400 years in terms of the cultivation and growing of vineyards and making of and production of wine. And that was a really small stop in terms of production and then only more recently Greece has rediscoved its own vineyards and winemaking culture and started to plant vineyards again.
Can you talk a little bit about the modern Greek wine revolution and how things have really sort of re-energized in recent years?
So what we can see, talking about the modern winemaking of Greece, is that there was this really, really important revolution of winemakers back in the ‘80s and ‘90s. People would go to different countries like France and Italy and study winemaking and come back and start to revolutionize the production of Greek wine.
(Dimitris and George Skouras)
At the time, we're talking about the ‘80s, it was a really, really small production of wine being grown. We are talking about maybe five or 10 wineries making wine. And those people went away, studied wine, came back and started using the ideas that they learned, they started to use more indigenous Greek varieties and trying to explain those varieties, show them to the people. And we can see that from the ‘80s until today, we have more and more wineries being created all around Greece.
In the ‘80s, we're talking about five to 10 wineries. And today there are more than 1,000 different wineries, all spread around Greece, the islands, the mainland, south, north, everywhere. And that shows how much the production of wine has grown, how many people are more and more involved with making wine and really trying to tap into the Greek indigenous varieties more and more to the lesser known varieties, to the more known varieties.
We're seeing that Greek wine has right now really, really strong momentum. People are starting to understand it, falling in love with it. We can see, for instance, Santorini Assyrtiko, which is, right now, the most known variety and appellation. And people are visiting Santorini. They are falling in love with wines and coming back to their countries, and they're asking for more and more Greek wine. You can see how people are into learning and finding out about new varieties that they didn't know before. And that's, for us, the biggest advantage of the Greek wines.
If you think about Michelin-star restaurants, if you were to visit them maybe 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you would barely see any Greek wines. Today, almost every single Michelin-star restaurant we can think of has Greek wines, as Greece is considered to be a very interesting place where wines come from. And they are always trying to show what Greece is making.
Talk a little bit about your philosophy of winemaking.
Our aim when making wine is always to learn more about the variety and show that variety. Try to take what we see in the vineyard and make it appear in a way in the wine. So what we try to do is ask ourselves what we notice in the vineyard. What is the strength from the grape itself to take into our winery and make it express itself and show how every variety has its own characteristics.
We try to have our wines be clean, be able to express the fruit itself, be able to express the variety and most importantly, the place where the variety comes from. It can be from 3,000ft, 1,000m of altitude, it can be from Mantineia where Moschofilero is grown. We always try to have the variety in front, and we love when people are able to try our wines, smell them, taste them and understand where they come from and how these varieties express the fruits, the aromas, the characteristics of the tannins. That is our philosophy to kind of let the grape express the soil, the place where it's coming from, while at the same time having the variety in front.
What are your hopes for the future of wine in Greece?
When I think about the future of Greek wine, personally, I feel really optimistic. I can see more and more people making Greek wine, working with indigenous varieties, trying to showcase what has been grown in their soil for so many years. And there's so many varieties we don't know and haven't tried, from Greece.
There are more and more people just finding those varieties, cultivating them and then producing wines and thus making a nice complexity of Greek wines that no matter how much you know about wine, you always find something new to try, to understand how this variety might express itself in the volcanic soils of Santorini, or more to the north where it's colder, or where it has less altitude, for example. There's so many different varieties and so many things to know about Greece and from my perspective this is only going to get better and more interesting.
