My coming of age in wine primarily occurred with Pinot Noir. As such, I’ve grown to appreciate how wine can evoke its place, its soil, rock, and surrounding trees, rivers, oceans. Ziros, a tiny village in the municipality of Sitia in the far East of Crete, is in a place all of its own. Perched on a plateau between the cave-worn coast of Xerokampos and the Zakros Mountains, this is fossil country: fossils of the elephant-like Deinotherium Giganteum, elephants themselves, hippos, deer and before them marine animals have been excavated here. The bedrock is limestone with some dolomite, along with clay sediments, below unrelenting winds from the mountains headed to the sea. The country here feels wild. Imagine Los Alamos County if there was blue sea within three miles. A country where, from the road, you can’t tell the exposed boulders from the hunkering goats. To the Southwest is Ierapetra, the town associated with recent wildfires.
Over the five hours I spend at Gianni Economou’s winery in Ziros, terroir is notably not a main subject of conversation. At one point, Gianni even says that he could make Syrah taste like his Liatiko, but this is likely just a provocation. In any case, my visit to Domaine Economou stretches my sense of what a terroir driven wine should be, forcing me to contend with the human capacity to mold and turn harvested grapes to a taste. I eventually settle on seeing Gianni as a wine sculptor, and tell him so. He seems comfortable with the analogy.
Gianni had responded to my request to visit his winery the day before I met him. The next day was to be my last during this trip to Crete. I had made other plans for the day. Furthermore, Ziros was a four hour drive from where I was based to the West of the island. I wasn’t relishing the prospect of spending eight hours in a car the day before an eleven hour flight back to the States. But I didn’t hesitate for long. This was an opportunity to meet with a singular winemaker in Crete, and one known to be reclusive. I had tried to purchase Domaine Economou wines at shops in Chania and had commented on how few were available. The wineseller had responded with a resigned shrug, saying that Economou makes wine available when the Domaine feels like doing so and that she happily takes what she can get. Athenian, US, and to a lesser extent non-domestic European, markets have more availability.
While Economou wines do have something of a cult status, especially in NYC restaurants, there is nothing ceremonious about the winery. It’s another whitewashed compound of buildings like many others in Ziros. No name at the entrance, quite inconspicuous. On entry, the courtyard I find myself in is typical for the region. Considerably less so, the four steel vats that stand exposed to the elements beside the plant beds, but I hold off on any comment. Is there wine aging in these vats? En plein air in Eastern Crete? A first indication that Economou is, true to his reputation, an idiosyncratic winemaker. There will be other indications.
I had first glimpse Gianni while walking up the street to the winery. He struck me as energetic, with a wry smile, swift thinking. Within minutes I was told that I remind him of a relative. It had been a good start to the day. The winery is certainly old. It’s been a family home for generations. It has a much used feel, and where there is untidiness from repetitive use it is not hard to see the underlying order. I find myself immersed in the tools of Economou’s winemaking craft. The first object I comment on is an old brass valve lying disused on a table. Gianni responds enthusiastically about the benefits of occasional brass fittings–by contrast to steel–for the material’s fining properties, something he had come to appreciate during his time at Chateau Margaux.
Gianni’s winemaking career began under Franz Keller in Baden. After this, he went to Alba to study oenology. Then there were positions with Ceretto and Scavino, a time when he furthered both his winemaking skills and his wine drinking palate. After a stint at Margaux, he returned to Crete in the early 1990s. While others had reestablished vineyards (at the time, mostly Syrah and other Rhone varietals) near Heraklion closer to the center of the island, Gianni cultivated existing native Liatiko, and Assyrtiko, grapes here in the calciferous rock of the island’s far East. These are mostly ungrafted vines often of unknown age, sometimes multiple hundreds of years old. In this arid climate, the vine leaves have learned to shield the fruit and stems from the sun and wind, and the vines themselves hunch low. The sun and the punishing winds mean that fungal infections are rare, and the lack of moisture is countered by the vines’ deep roots. Still, the yields are a tiny 50-150 cases per hectare, depending on the grape.
Grape viticulture at Economou has always been low intervention, but Gianni seems to have little patience for long conversations about soil care or no-till farming. What he has practiced for long is less of what interests him than what’s coming. At first, he is more interested in talking about how he makes wine from harvested grapes, and in demonstrating how this is not necessarily done with a soft touch.
I will soon learn that the outdoor steel vats that I find so disorienting contain a 2020 Thrapsathiri and a 2022 Assyrtiko. But first, we take a tour inside the main building off the courtyard. It was turned into a winery by Gianni’s grandfather but has been in the family for far longer. As we walk from the kitchen, we pass a living area littered with an assortment of old winemaking tools and books. One of them is a leather-bound Ottoman log regarding the region’s inhabitants. Gianni proudly points to entries about his ancestors, some of whom had to temporarily flee the village due to their participation in the resistance.
Once we pass this antique-filled room, I have my second moment of disorientation. We come to a small passageway with a low wattle-and-daub ceiling. I am told that the oldest parts of the building date to the 17th Century. But to my left looms a decidedly late 20th Century steel fermentation tank, taking up the entirety of the room it is in. Gianni tells me that the tank was dropped in by crane. It takes a little knowledge of the size of Greek village streets to appreciate the skill this venture must have entailed. The tank looms, a stainless steel gargantuan seemingly threatening to bust down the 400 year old walls that confine it.
To the right, there’s a corridor in which a series of old Aquitaine wood barrels lie neatly, carrying Liatiko wine. Economou is well known for holding wine in barrel for years. There’s an improvisational element to everything related to this Domaine, it seems. The timing of when elevage ends is no exception. It’s when Gianni thinks the wine’s ready, meaning that there is no reason to expect yearly vintages of Economou wines. Economou reds arrive with tannins integrated and often showing secondary characteristics. The most recent red wine we will taste is of a 2008 vintage.
While the winemaking philosophy that drives Economou wines is certainly informed by Gianni’s early years in Germany, Italy, and France, it is also a thing apart. Unlike carefully timed German Reisling harvests based on acidity, Gianni harvests when the grapes feel ripe. Unlike Margaux, Economou’s red wines often see three or more years of aging in barrel. And while Gianni does not seem to be afraid to impart wood notes to his red wines, unlike California producers he is fastidious about using French oak, stretching the time in barrel beyond what would be expected of a Barolo. Additionally, Economou plays with oxidative and reductive techniques as the wines mature. The wines that result are certainly of their place–and contrary to Gianni’s provocation about Syrah, clearly express the flavors of their indigenous grapes. Yet they are undeniably the result of prolonged and exacting vinicultural intervention. The wines produced feel sculpted. An Assyrtiko made to express herbal notes, subdued fruit and a prolonged acid-rich finish. Liatiko-Mondilari blends that express fruit, earth, and minerality, evoking both Burgundy and Rioja while remaining steadfastly from Crete, and in particular Sitian.
After touring the rooms that make up the winery, we settle at a table in the courtyard. It’s mid June and the weather is still cool enough for a comfortable stay. Gianni offers cheeses and bread. We taste seven wines, interspersed by lively conversation and a trip or two to see a particular spot in the winery, including a cellar area newly rebuilt by Gianni and his son. We talk about the play of oxidation and reduction. We talk about how blending is done from the gut, and how his son prefers different proportions to him. This could impact the consumer as his son takes on an increasingly large role in the winery. We talk about Gianni’s recent obsession with bitters and their production. The impression I get over the hours spent with Gianni is that he has an insatiable curiosity, that he’s a traditionalist with iconoclastic tendencies, that he’s an endless tinkerer with a sharp, unrelenting sensibility to tame and refine the fruit of wild, unruly vines to exacting standards.
The wines tasted:
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2020 Thrapsathiri-Vilana (from steel vat)
Golden hued, floral on the nose. Ripe fruit, lemon, an intense palate, with a juicy, long finish -
2022 Assyrtiko (from steel vat)
Lemon, saline, herbs, crushed rock. A long finish -
2017 Economou Assyrtiko Phi (bottled)
At eight years, this wine drinks at peak and shows its full, distinctive expression. Golden hued. Lemon, yellow apple, mineral, saline, great acidity, with a touch of nut oil. A complex, intense white. -
A Raki
Bronze colored. A raki (tsikoudia) like no other home in Crete. Intense, savory, with a slow finish. Raki is a distilled from grape pomace (likely Liatiko in this case). -
2008 Liatiko-Mondilari blend
From memory (no notes), cherry, herbs, leather, earth. Elegant, with a long finish. -
1999 Economou Antigone
This wine necessitated a moment of pause. Pale garnet. Cherry, plum. Fluid, shifting expressions of tea, earth, herbs, spice. Showing tertiary notes. Beautifully balanced. -
2006 Economou Late Harvest Sitia
Fig, spice, earth. A fun dessert wine.