Say Samos to most wine drinkers and they will picture something sticky and golden, fortified, ancient, off the dinner table. Evmorfia Kostaki has spent her short career trying to break that picture apart. The wines she sent over from Karlovasi on the west side of the island do not taste like a souvenir. They taste like an argument about what Muscat can be when someone takes it seriously.
Who is Evmorfia Kostaki
Evmorfia grew up in Karlovasi on the western part of Samos, where the mountains drop hard into the sea and the family vineyard has been on the same terraces for more than a century. She wanted to go into wine almost from the start. Worried she was too young to commit, she did Chemistry in Athens first. A safe plan. A useful plan. It did not work as a distraction.
She went on to Vinifera Euromaster, the joint Viticulture and Oenology programme that pinballs you between France and Italy, with a thesis year at UC Davis. WSET Diploma at the same time, which is a brutal combination if you have ever seen the Diploma reading list. Harvests in Champagne and Chablis along the way. That is where she met Lorenz Immerfall.
Lorenz is the other half of Kostaki Winery. Bavarian, Geisenheim-trained, also WSET Diploma, with harvests in Germany, New Zealand, Australia, France, Austria, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, the USA, Cyprus and England before he landed on Samos. Three years in he is fluent in Greek. The two had offers to stay in California after their thesis year. They chose Samos.
The address on the bottles reads Megali Lakka Kondeikon. That is the winery. The vineyard sits a short drive away on the slopes above Karlovasi.
A vineyard that has been Muscat for as long as anyone can remember
The plot has been Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains for over a hundred years and Evmorfia has no plans to plant anything else. There are roughly 1,400 hectares of Muscat on Samos in total. A handful of other grapes scratch around the edges. This is a Muscat island.
What makes their parcel different is the propagation. There is no certified clone here. When previous generations needed to replant a row, they walked up to the next terrace, cut buds from a healthy vine, and pushed them into the new soil. Massal selection in its oldest sense, repeated for decades, which gives them a population of plants that is genetically diverse, locally adapted, and not for sale at any nursery.
You taste it in the wines. They are not loud. They are not the cartoon Muscat that smells like a soap aisle. They are quieter, more strung out, less obvious.
That is one of the things Kostaki Winery is betting on. The grape most drinkers dismiss because it makes obvious wines does not have to make obvious wines if you start from the right plants and stop treating the cellar like a perfumery.
Organic since 2000, on the wettest sunny island in Greece
The vineyard has been certified organic since 2000. Twenty-five years. First organic vineyard on Samos. That is the easy line. The harder line is what it costs to keep an organic certification on an island that gets more rain than London.
Roughly 650 to 700 millimetres a year. That number alone tends to end most conversations about Samos, because everyone assumes a Greek island is a sunburnt rock. Most of that rain falls between November and April, but the humidity does not switch off in summer. Walk into the vineyard at eight in the morning and the leaves are wet. Lift the mulch and the soil under it is wet too. The vines never go into water stress.
Now combine humid air, tight Muscat bunches, thin Muscat skins, and no synthetic fungicides. That is a recipe for fungus to march through the canopy.
The Kostaki answer is partly the architecture of the vineyard itself. They train as gobelet bush vines, which puts a canopy of leaves on top of the fruit zone like an umbrella against the high-UV sun. Then they strip leaves from the bottom for airflow, and to make sure the spray (mostly copper and sulphur) actually reaches the cluster instead of bouncing off green walls.
The meltemi wind does the rest. It runs down from the north most afternoons in summer and dries the vineyard out at the hottest point of the day. Without it the disease pressure would probably be unmanageable.
This is the contradiction of Samos in one paragraph. Lots of rain. Lots of humidity. Lots of sun. Two mountains over 1,100 and 1,400 metres looming over the vines. Forests up against vineyards up against olive groves. The absolute opposite of Santorini, where the wind is desiccating and the soil is bone dry. Both places make interesting wine. They have almost nothing in common.
Why Muscat does not get taken seriously, and why that is wrong
Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains is one of the oldest cultivated grapes on earth. It travelled with the ancient Greeks, which is why you find it in every old Greek colony around the Mediterranean. From there it spread to Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Australia, the United States. Arguably the first international grape variety. So why does it get short shrift?
Evmorfia’s answer is that the variety is too forgiving. Almost anyone can make a pleasant, perfumed, easy Muscat. Hardly anyone makes a great one. Because the floor is low, the ceiling never gets a serious assault. Most of the world’s Muscat ends up either soapy and sweet or thin and dilute, and that is the reputation that sticks.
She makes a comparison I keep thinking about. Sauvignon Blanc in the Loire is taut, mineral, restrained. Sauvignon Blanc almost anywhere else turns into a tropical fruit basket. Same grape, very different wines. Her bet is that Muscat in its homeland, on Samos, behaves the same way. Origin terroir pulls the grape back into something serious. Plant it in California or Australia and the volume on the perfume gets turned all the way up. Plant it on cool-pocket Karlovasi terraces with massal-selection rootstock and it goes quiet.
You can argue with this. I would push back that Loire Sauvignon and Marlborough Sauvignon are both legitimate styles with their own audiences, and that calling one of them “the real version” is a bit territorial. But the point about Muscat is fair. Almost no one outside of Samos has tried to make it restrained. So the experiment is worth running.
Reductive winemaking, screwcaps, and an honest bottle
Muscat oxidises fast and once it oxidises it goes bitter. So everything in the cellar is set up to keep oxygen away from the wine, from the moment the fruit comes in to the moment it goes into the bottle. They use their own indigenous yeast. No commercial yeast. No enzymes. That is principled and it is also limiting. Their yeast struggles to push beyond about 11.5% potential alcohol. The dry wines come out lower than most other Greek whites for that reason alone, and they like it that way.
Closures match the philosophy. Screwcap on every bottle. If you spend a year working reductively and then put a cork in the neck, you give back most of what you bought. Not a controversial position any more, but worth saying out loud.
The bottles themselves are dark UV-protective glass and deliberately lightweight. When the box landed at my place I thought it was empty. Evmorfia and Lorenz carry the boxes themselves to tastings, so why drag a kilo of glass around for the sake of a heavy bottle. None of it is window dressing. It makes their working life slightly easier and produces less waste.
The labels are an abstract rendering of the view from their tasting room over western Samos at sunset. Quiet, in the same register as the wines.
The Prototype range, where they break things on purpose
Prototype is the experiment line. The first one in the box was a sparkling made in a way almost no one is doing. They aged the 2023 base wine in barrel for a year. Then, instead of adding sugar and commercial yeast for the second fermentation, they blended in actively fermenting must from the next vintage. That fermenting must brought its own sugar and its own indigenous yeast. Cap the bottle. Let it finish. No additions, no commercial inputs.
500 bottles. The Greek distributor took them all. None of it was sold on Samos itself. They are making more this year, this time under a regular label now that the trick works.
There is more in the pipeline. They have a flor trial sitting in a small tank that has not been opened in months. They are also running a governo experiment, the half-forgotten Tuscan technique where you add dried grapes from the previous vintage to the current fermentation. The result, when it works, is a dry wine that tastes like it has been on something darker. Or it could end up as vinegar. They will know in a year.
This is a small winery taking a lot of risks at once. Some of it will not work. The fact that they call the experiments “prototype” and put them on the shelf as such, instead of marketing them as “limited edition cuvée artisanal”, is something I respect.
The Master of Wine path
Evmorfia started the MW programme in 2020. She has passed the theory papers and is currently in stage two practical, which means drinking blind, writing tasting essays, and reading her way through the world’s wine regions in detail. The next step is the thesis. Most candidates take six to ten years to get there. She is on year five.
She is matter of fact about it. Tasting at MW level has made her a better winemaker, she says, because winemaking is fundamentally about tasting, and most winemakers do not taste enough wines from outside their own cellar. That is probably the most useful argument I have heard for why a producer should also chase the qualification. Not for the letters. For the calibration.
If she gets through she will be the next Greek MW. Worth following.
Women in Greek wine
I get pushback occasionally that the guest list on Sparks skews male. It is a fair note. The honest answer is that wine production is still male-dominated in most of Europe, the network effects are real, and you have to actually look for women winemakers and importers and educators if you want to find them in proportion. Otherwise the calendar fills up with whoever a publicist puts in front of you.
Evmorfia is part of Women in Greek Wine, the network for women working in production and trade in Greece. The point of the network is to make it easier to find each other and easier to get found. She drew the parallel to the island itself. If you assume Samos only makes sticky sweet wine, that is what you will look for, and that is what you will see. If you look harder, there is a renaissance happening. Same principle, different scale.
The tasting
Three wines were on the table during the recording: the Prototype Sparkling, the Kostaki Dry, and the Early Harvest at 9% alcohol. We work through impressions live in the conversation. Detailed tasting notes for each wine will follow in a separate write-up once I have re-tasted under quiet conditions, side by side, with the bottles at the right temperature and the camera off. Stay tuned.
Where this is going
Samos is at the start of a small renaissance. Other producers are pushing past the cooperative dessert wine model. Evmorfia and Lorenz are publicly setting a marker for what dry, single-variety, organic Muscat can look like at the high end. The Prototype line is the experimental wing. The Dry and Early Harvest are the wines that need to convince a wine list buyer in Athens, London, Amsterdam, New York.
The wines are not yet imported into the Netherlands. I have asked a few NL importers and the response so far has been “interesting, let us see”. To any importer reading this: there is room on your Greek list for this label, and the price-quality ratio is better than what is currently on Dutch shelves from this island.
If you want to follow the project, the winery is at kostakiwinery.gr and on Instagram as @kostakiwinery. The current range covers Prototype 01, Kostaki Dry, Rosé, Ancestral Method, Early Harvest, Amber and ALO. Seven wines from one grape on one set of terraces is already a long conversation.
The MW journey is worth watching too. If the next thesis goes through, Greece gets a new Master of Wine and Samos gets a much louder voice in the room.
Full transcript
Open the full transcript (English, ~4,300 words)
Transcript sourced from the original Riverside export with speaker labels, lightly edited for proper names and wine terminology. Included for accessibility and search indexing.
Jeroen [00:02] Hi, and welcome to a new episode of Sparks by VinoVonk. My name is Jeroen, and I’m guiding you to the world of wine, meeting fascinating people like today, we’re meeting a very special winemaker from Samos in Greece, Evmorfia Kostaki. Very welcome, Kalispera.
Evmorfia [00:20] Kalispera, thank you for having me.
Jeroen [00:22] Thank you very much for making time. You send me all of your wines. You’re making six wines We’re going to taste only three today because well time is limited But you are on the the Greek island of Samos. I’ve been there a couple of times for holidays. I saw a lot of beaches Yeah, I was in Marathokampos and
Evmorfia [00:37] You have been here, wow!
Jeroen [00:45] and I went to the architectural museum and I saw the big statue of Kouros. I still have some pictures and I found them during my research for this conversation. And I thought, okay, I have to come again because I didn’t know they make wine there. But first of all, can you tell me something about yourself?
Evmorfia [00:54] Yeah, so I actually come from Samos, from Karlovasi on the western part. That’s where I grew up. And this is also where we have our vineyards and winery. So I grew up here, I went to school here, and then I moved to Athens to study. I studied the first chemistry. I always wanted to go into wine, but I thought, okay, maybe I’m young, like maybe I’m not sure. So I thought chemistry is a safe solution and something I really love. So I did that first and then I thought, okay, the wine bug does not go away that easily. And I went to study a bit more. I studied Viticulture and Oenology and that’s where I met my partner, Lorenz. So we studied in Italy, first in France, then in Italy. We did our thesis in California. I did it with the university and Lorenz did it with the winery. And at the same time as we started our masters, we started with the WSET, we did the diploma. So it was a really complete course, complete overview of wine, because you saw at one time how it’s made and then the other time what a lot of universities are missing, the actual tasting and learning about the regions and the styles and the grapes and all that. So, yeah, I mean, we had some offers to stay in the US and continue working. over there, but we thought, okay, let’s do something of our own. And we decided to come back to Samos. And here we are now.
Jeroen [02:50] So you’ve been winemaking all over the world? Well, almost. Not in Australia or New Zealand.
Evmorfia [02:54] No, went, I did harvests outside of Greece just in France. I did in Chablis and Champagne. But Lorenz has been all over the world, also in New Zealand and Australia and all over the place. Yeah. Yeah.
Jeroen [03:11] So lot of knowledge all over the world and now you’re on Samos. But the vineyard started in 2000, but did you start a…
Evmorfia [03:19] No, the vineyard. So the vineyard we have has been in the family for many, years, more than 100 years. And it always used to be a vineyard. And that’s what makes it special because our vineyard is massal selection. And basically, when they wanted to replant something, they just took cuttings from the next terrace and planted it in the new one. So the clone we have on the vineyard the vineyard it’s just this very original clone so that makes the wines very special very unique. But I think it’s important to talk a bit about Samos maybe because you have been but most people have no idea what’s happening. So it’s a very green island. I think you saw maybe not as much in Marathokampos but when you go to the north side where also most of the vineyards are, you get a lot of rain. We have more rain than London, which is quite impressive.
Evmorfia [04:29] although it’s mainly in winter. And yeah, everything is green. You have forest, interrupted by vineyard, interrupted by an olive grove, and it’s all like growing together, a very special place. And we have these two massive mountains. So one is 1,400 meters, more than that. And the other is about 1,100. All that makes it a very unique place. It’s not like the desert-like climate of Santorini, let’s say. It’s the exact opposite.
Jeroen [05:02] because Santorini is known for its assyrtiko, a lot of wind there, a special kind of vineyards, little baskets. But how does the climate compare to Santorini?
Evmorfia [05:05] So as I said, we have so much rain, we have about 650-700 millimeters per rain, of rain per year. And because of the forests and the mountains, we have a lot of humidity throughout the summer. So that makes the temperatures a bit lower, combined with the meltemi wind that flows from the north and cools down the vineyards in the midday. And yeah, we also have the the training system of the bush, like the goble, and that is very traditional here and acts as an umbrella basically against the sun because Samos is one of the places in Greece with the most sunshine hours, so you kind of need the sun protection. It’s very oxymoron, at one side you have a lot of rain, on the other side you have a lot of sun, but yeah it’s perfect conditions for grape growing.
Jeroen [06:12] Yeah, but not a lot of rain during the summer because I’ve been there and I never had any rain.
Evmorfia [06:18] Not a single cloud, not rain. The weather from, let’s say, most of the rain falls from November until April. And then maybe you have a little bit before, a little bit after, but in the rainy season it rains. And yeah, the rest of the year, it’s just, you have a lot of humidity, like you go in the vineyard and you’re wet immediately, like the leaves are wet. So it’s very impressive and you like we don’t till the soil, we just cut the grass so we have a thick layer of mulch in our soil and if you just lift it up underneath it’s also wet, like the soil stays wet throughout the summer. So it’s very impressive and the vineyards don’t have a lot of water stress and you see them like they’re not struggling at all but that’s also because of the muscat grape we have. So the Muscat.
Jeroen [07:11] because before we start, what kind of grape varieties you have, you’re making wine now. And I found out you’re also learning more about wine. You’re doing, you are doing the master of wine. Well, journey, course. Could you tell me something about that?
Evmorfia [07:16] It’s very challenging, I have to say, and requires a lot of time and real dedication. So I started in 2020 and now we’re in 2025, it’s been five years. And I am in stage two, and I have passed the theory part. So now I’m just a practical only student, which means I taste, taste, taste, taste, taste some more and study about the wines and styles and regions. And communicate that in the paper, in the exam. yeah, it makes me really a better winemaker because winemaking is about tasting. And our philosophy at Kostaki is also that without tasting properly, you cannot make good wine. yeah, it’s really helped me become better every day.
Jeroen [08:18] So maybe soon you will be the next Greek master of wine.
Evmorfia [08:23] Maybe, hopefully, hopefully soon. Three. So if I pass now, if this year I pass the practical, I will have to do a thesis. And that’s it. If I pass the thesis, which is not as easy as it sounds, then yeah, I will be free, free and a master of wine.
Jeroen [08:25] Maybe, Hopefully soon, because there four stages, on three. I will be following your journey. Now back to the vineyard. What kind of grape varieties do you now have and what kind of grape varieties did you have because the vineyard is in your family for more than 100 years? Could you tell me something about it?
Evmorfia [09:08] So the vineyard was always exclusively muscat. We have Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains, and it’s the variety that you find all over Samos Island. There are about 1,400 hectares of muscat planted on the island. There are a few other grapes, but it’s the vast majority. originally it was, yeah, it has always been muscat and will always be muscat, let’s say. Yeah. And then…
Jeroen [09:38] but you make different kinds of wine from the same grape variety.
Evmorfia [09:46] Yes. So our goal is to become basically the benchmark of Muscat and not a lot of people around the world really focus on this grape, although a lot of people make it. you found it in Greece, you find it in almost all the wineries, they almost all make a Muscat and also abroad you find it in many wine regions in Italy, France and even Spain, Portugal, Australia, the US, it’s the first international grape variety. And it’s one of the most ancient grapes in the world. That’s why it expanded together with the ancient Greeks. They took it with them and you find it in all the ancient colonies. And from there, it spread all over the world. So it’s a variety that’s really loved, but it’s not really currently appreciated because it’s easy to make an OK wine, a very perfumed wine. But to focus on it and see what it can do, not a lot of people have tried to do that. Because, it’s hard. It’s a very hard variety to grow and hard to make it good.
Jeroen [10:58] It’s so… It’s wine friendly, but it’s not labor friendly.
Evmorfia [11:04] Absolutely not. So we’re also organic and Muscat has very thin skins and very tight bunches.
Jeroen [11:08] I saw the label on the bottle and I saw it and I thought, you’re organic certified. That’s a lot of work. And it’s very special.
Evmorfia [11:24] Yes, yes, yes. It is organic certified and this vineyard has been organic since 2000. So it’s the first organic vineyard on Samos and has been continuously organic for, yeah, since then, like 25 years, which is a lot of time and enough to make an impact. But it’s very hard to grow perfect grapes with organic, especially in Samos with so much humidity and with the muscat that has the tight bunches. So for example, we have the bush vine, which has all the leaves on top. that creates the shade, but at the same time we do leaf removal in the bottom to improve the aeration and to improve the contact of the pesticide, basically like sulfur and copper that we use, fungicide. So yeah, it’s a lot more work, but we’re very happy with it. And I mean, we work in the vineyard ourselves. Like we are the ones who are in the vineyard all day. And it’s important for me that I’m not afraid to sit in the grass of my vineyard. So it’s not just marketing, it’s about myself.
Jeroen [12:38] But it’s hard work, but is it also hard working for making a good wine of it?
Evmorfia [12:44] Yeah, Muscat is very easy to oxidize. So you have to be very careful during wine making to not allow oxygen inside because then it becomes bitter. So for me, that’s the biggest challenge to not have something bitter. yeah, so we work very reductively and we love the style actually. And at the same time, we use screw cups. because if you work productively and then you put a cork in it, you just undo everything you’ve done. yeah, we just, all our decisions are the best for our product and ourselves, maybe not necessarily for marketing, but for example, we also use lightweight glass and all the glass is a color like this kind of brown color because it protects from UV. And I mean, we’re in Greece, we have a lot of UV. And but also they’re they are lightweight bottles because we carry them around and we go to tastings and we do all these things and we have to bottle ourselves and we have to carry the boxes. And why choose a bottle that’s one kilo when you can choose something that’s very light? Like there are so many practical things that that we did. Yeah. Making our life easier wherever we can.
Jeroen [13:39] When the bottles arrived at my place, I got them out of the box and I thought, they’re empty. And I looked, no, they’re not empty because they were so light. Yeah. And I liked the labels also, very elegant, but also, maybe it’s my imagination, but…
Evmorfia [14:14] Thank you very much.
Jeroen [14:30] I also see the landscape of Samos in it.
Evmorfia [14:33] Exactly. So it is an abstract view from my tasting room. And our tasting room has a very amazing view all over Western Samos. And that’s basically what you see. then as the sun goes down, see all these different colors and the layers between all the mountain ranges. yeah, the labels perfectly represent that and represent our style. We’re very happy with them.
Jeroen [14:59] Before we’re going to taste the wines, could you tell me something about the different kinds of wine? Because you sent me six wines.
Evmorfia [15:01] A lot of wines. So Muscat is basically the grape that can make all styles possible. You can have sparklings, can have still wines, you can have dessert made with botrytis like in Tokaj. You can have dessert from sundried like on Samos or Mistelle or I don’t know, whatever kind of wine you imagine. Orange wines are now very trendy. Whatever kind of wine you can imagine, you can make with Muscat.
Evmorfia [15:35] And that’s something amazing that this variety can do. And I honestly believe no other grape can do it so successfully. And we cannot claim to be the Muscat masters if we don’t make a lot of different styles. And we want to showcase this variability of Muscat and its ability to make so many things. And yeah, our goal is to change people’s minds. about the variety and hopefully we see many more wineries coming up, not only in Samos but elsewhere that follow this logic that they take Muscat to the next level because it’s a pity that it’s so undermined.
Jeroen [16:15] Yeah, because when I say to people, well, I’m going to taste some wine from Samos, they say, sweet wine. Because they only know Samos making only sweet wines.
Jeroen [16:26] And then they say no, they also make dry wines. Shall we go taste some wines? Yeah, it’s a prototype. then it’s more like a pet-nat or not. and this is the second term of the section. And that’s why it’s called Prototype. It’s very fresh. The first thing I thought, okay, it’s a little bit reductive because you have these kinds of aromas that you think, okay, what is this? And then you have some like forest vibes, red leaves, like pines. But then I got some lime and some lemon. And it’s very fresh and neat, the flintiness, a little bit like a bitter of the grapefruit peel. but it’s very fresh, but the aftertaste is so long. I feel like I’m walking in a forest, but it’s beside of the beach. Very strange things happening in my mind now. Yeah. And it’s a little bit like a little bit yeasty, but a lot of full flavors, but it’s very light at the same time. It’s very nice in balance. Yeah, so this is what made of by the masters of Muscat. And what are the reactions on the island of this wine? What were the reactions of this wine on the island? Yeah, because I love it. Yeah, are you going to make this every year now? Because it’s not a prototype, it’s a success. Yeah, very nice. Shall we go to the next one? And that’s the drive. Yeah, well, sounds very interesting. Fascinating times. Then we go into the, yeah, very nice name, dry. Yeah, but it’s also very simple to pronounce. It’s… Kostaki? Dry, please. the color is light lemon yellow. It’s a little bit cloudy. You don’t find it. Because you clear it with bentonite, I think. stable and the gravity worked for it. Because it’s very complex in the nose. And I thought, okay, what is happening? And again, the same vibes of the forest, but it’s more floral, one. More flowers, but also a lot of rosemary and thyme. And very fruity. Oh, it’s very elegant, complex, but very round and straightforward at the same time. You smell something, you taste it, that’s it, and it stays there. And develops in your mouth and then need a little bit of the tannins of the orange wine. I feel it in my gums a little bit. Oh, it’s very nice. The label is simple, but the wine isn’t simple. You don’t make it simple. it’s going be lovely. Yeah, it reminds me of a conversation I had with a champagne maker. Yeah, and we do this and that and that. And then we’re going to mix and then yeah, then we have a simple wine. Yeah, and sometimes the most magical things happen by accident. Did you sometimes do a blend that you thought, okay, okay, I didn’t want this, but now I want this. Yeah, that was a magical moment then. Let’s try it. And now we do it everywhere. Yeah, that’s very interesting. Could you share some technical details about how you do the fermentation? Because sometimes people ask, okay, what is the temperature they use for the fermentation and how do you do it? But how do you balance that with the pH level of the wine? Perfect, thanks. Shall we go to the last wine? And that’s a very interesting name because the name is Early Harvest. Well, I think it’s you picked the grapes earlier. Yeah, and I don’t know if you can see it, but this is the early harvest. It’s a little bit lighter of color than the dry one because, yeah, I think maybe there’s… and only 9 % alcohol. It’s a little bit less aromatic but also very interesting that you think, okay, what is happening now? Because you think, okay, it will be the same. But it’s not completely different, but there’s a huge difference in it. It’s a little bit sweeter, but also higher in acidity. And in that way, you get a lot of tension in your mouth. Your brain is like, okay, it’s sweet. No, it’s not. It’s sour. No, it’s not. Well, it has another level of complexity. It’s very pleasant also. Yeah, because you have a lot of lime zest. If you think in cocktails, just put an umbrella on it. maybe in the label some, yeah, a little bit of umbrella shape. Yeah. But this is a new sound of Samos, a new renaissance of Samos, you could say it. But how do you see the future of winemaking in Samos? And are other winemakers coming to you? I want to learn about how you make these kinds of wines.
Evmorfia [35:21] Okay, I’m it overheated because it was hit by the sun. Yeah. Okay, we can continue. We should taste some wines. We can start with the prototype. So, yes. So, prototype is are
Jeroen [35:56] Because you’re working in very hard conditions, very wet during the whole year, but besides of the summer, very hot in the summer, but you’re organic certified, so you know how to do it. And a lot of people say, OK, I can’t do organic certification because I have too much humidity. Go to Samos and learn from you, I would say.
Evmorfia [36:22] And what we do with this wine is it’s basically a traditional method, but because we don’t use any commercial yeast in the winery, we aged the base wine of 2023 for one year, we aged it in barrel. And then we blended it fermenting mast in order to initiate a second fermenting bottle. So that’s how it became sparkling. It doesn’t have any extra
Evmorfia [36:52] or yeah, commercial yeast. just has a base wine plus fermenting must put together like this.
Jeroen [36:59] But how do you see the future of Samos in winemaking then?
Evmorfia [37:04] the first fermentation. So here, this is the second fermentation with just 10%. Yeah, it’s a prototype because we didn’t know if it was going to work. We have our own yeast, The winery is new. All the equipment was new when we started in 2023. We didn’t know if it was going to work because we never used any yeast here. It’s just our own. And we know our yeast struggles with, let’s say, achieving 12 and 1 alcohol. That’s why also quite low alcohol because our yeast cannot ferment very high, for now at least. And so yeah, it was an experiment. It worked really well.
Jeroen [37:51] You’re a very passionate winemaker. You’re learning new things. You’re going on study trips. But I found also out that you are one of the women in Greek wine. And your role is a fearless wine warrior, I found out.
Evmorfia [38:11] Yamas. So yeah, as you see, in other wines, we try to not have so much the very intense muscat flavors. And that’s contributed by the massal selection that we have, but also don’t use enzymes, for example, or commercial yeast that can really enhance this flavor. But what I also say is that Muscat Blanc à Petits Grains comes from this area, comes from Samos or comes from somewhere around here. And for example, just like Sauvignon Blanc, it comes from the Loire. And over there it makes these wines very mineral, very elegant, very. And anywhere else in the world, you have these very opulent styles. And it’s the same with Muscat. Like in its origin, where it comes from
Jeroen [39:28] Yeah, I can understand. because in Netherlands you also have a large network of women working in wine and because they support each other. But now they still you see a lot of men only networks doing things in wine. And I thought, OK, why is that? A lot of people complained to me also because I have a lot of guests and they say, you only have men as a guest. Well, I’m not.
Evmorfia [39:44] mineral.
Jeroen [40:05] picking only men. I want to be as diverse as possible. But there aren’t a lot of women in wine. But if you look for it, you can find it. And if you don’t look for it, you don’t find it.
Evmorfia [40:35] Thank you so much.
Jeroen [40:40] looking forward to that. Do you want to share something else about what you do?
Evmorfia [40:47] Actually, this wine we didn’t sell on the island. A very limited production and our distributor in Greece got it all.
Jeroen [41:02] Yeah, and because when people want to buy these wines, they aren’t available yet in the Netherlands. I spoke to some importers and they told me, well, yeah, but they’re a bit new. Let’s see for it. Well, I think go for it because it’s very, very nice. But where can people buy a wine?
Evmorfia [41:15] So eventually, like this year, we created some more sparkling base next to me here. the tank gives me this very nice lighting. And yeah, so we will make some more of this. But I think under a normal label, we will add this on our range.
Jeroen [41:37] I’ll put some links in the show notes also from your Instagram account and other social media.
Jeroen [41:46] Well, thank you very much for your time. I will enjoy these wines and also the other three wines. I will make tasting videos and they will come on my social media. Thank you very much for your time. Hope to see more of your wines in the future because the Vintage 2025 almost ends. Can we have a sneak peek? What do you think? Is it a good vintage?
Evmorfia [42:13] Which from last year. So you have it’s very trippy because you have that has dried flavors, but it tastes very dry. And we see so stay tuned for the next prototypes whenever they get released. Dry. I keep things simple and I want to help the people who help me. Like if you’re a sommelier in a restaurant, I don’t want you to remember a random name. Another random name that someone made up. Like I want you to know like is a dry wine and yeah, every wine represents the names, represent the styles.
Jeroen [43:12] Yeah, looking forward to meeting these kinds of wines from 2025. Evmorfia, thank you very much for your time. This was a new episode of Sparks by VinoVonk. Don’t forget to subscribe in your favorite app, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcast, whatever. And see you next time.
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