Wine tasting in Santorini

Today we went wine tasting in Santorini with our friends Rob and Hannah from DC. Our hotel manager recommended that we check out Santos winery and Antoniou. After a few wrong turns, we made it to the ridiculous views from Santo Wines (see below).

Rob, Hannah and Caitlin at Santo Wines

At Santos we tried 6 wines (starting from right)

1. Assyrtico—a very nice, dry white wine which wasn’t too bitter or too sweet. My personal favorite.
2. Nykteni—this wine was ok; Rob and Hannah liked it more than the first
3. Ageni rose—a semi-dry rose wine that was one of our favorites
4. Voudomato—we found that the red wines from Santorini were not very good—this was definitely the worst
5. Imiglinos—a very sweet white wine; Caitlin didn’t care much for it but I thought it was good
6. Vinsanto—Santorini is famous for its unfortified dessert wine. It tastes very similar to port, and is made by drying white grapes out in the sun for 2 week

After a 20 min tour of the winery facilities, we headed off to Antoniou, a cute little winery with three tastings (white, red, vinsanto) for 5 euro.

View from Antoniou patio

We finished the wine tour by driving to the Santorini Wine Museum. For 6 euro per person, we got a tape recorded tour of the museum as well as 3 tastings. The museum is extremely cheesy—it felt like a guided walk through a 1950s carnival ride (see video below). It was interesting to learn that the island used very old-fashioned wine making methods because there was no electricity until 1970.

For dinner that night we drove out to the last taverna before the lighthouse in Akrotiri—our hotel manager Kostas recommended it as a great place to get fresh, cheap fish. He was definitely right—we had two lobster and a cod-like fish for 28 euro. Our waitress took us to the back of the restaurant to choose our fish (see mine below). Her father catches the fish that day and prepares it himself. No question this was one of my favorite meals in Greece.