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.

Nea Kameni – Santorini Volcano

For our first day in Santorini we took a day cruise out to Nea Kameni, the most active volcano on Santorini Island. It was created in the 18^th century, with its most recent explosion less than 100 years ago. The island itself has had a very active past—one of the largest volcanic explosions in the history of the planet created the beautiful cliffs (known as the caldera) around 1650 BC. Ash from the explosion was found in South America, and would have been heard on the Western coast of France. It is believed that this explosion is what wiped out the great Minoan culture on Crete. Since then, earthquakes and other volcanic explosions have created the beautiful views on the island.

We took a wooden sail boat which looked like a pirate ship out to the volcano, and then climbed up to the peak, which had ridiculous views of the island. Afterwards we took the boat out to Palia Kameni to swim in the hot springs that spew into the Aegean sea. Then we had lunch in Thirasia, which was separated from the main island in 236 BC. That evening we watched the sunset from Akrotiri, and then drove the rental car (a tiny red Peugot) to have dinner and drinks with our friends we met in Mykonos.

Justin at Nea Kameni Port with the Caldera in the background

View of Hotel Mathios from our balcony

The pirate ship we took to the volcano

Sunset from Akrotiri