Boutari

Boutari’s Santorini vineyard manager Petros Vamvakousis sent us this amazing photo over the weekend. It shows Santorini’s surprisingly heavy early-morning, low-lying fog cover.

In the image, he writes, you see “the fog is moving from the Caldera to [the village of] Megalochori and covers the vineyards of the area.”

In the warm climate of the Aegean Sea, you wouldn’t expect to find fog on the island of Santorini. But the island’s famous Caldera — a basin of seawater that covers the mouth of Santorini’s active volcano — heats and causes the water to evaporate and condense into fog.

In this next photo, you can see drops of dew (however faint) on the leaves of the Assyrtiko grapes and you’ll note the presence of the snails who are attracted by the condensation.

This phenomenon is just one of the unique elements in the millennial tradition of viticulture there.

Boutari’s Santorini vineyard manager and agronomist Petros Vamvakousis recently sent in these photos illustrating experimental vine-training systems being studied on the island of Santorini for Assyrtiko grapes.

Traditionally, vineyards here are trained using baskets. The vines are trained to low-lying hand-woven baskets that allow the plant to create a canopy, protecting the fruit from the aggressive wind of the island and providing coverage that alleviates the heat of summer months. You can see the basket in this photo.

In essence, Boutari has created a form of hybrid training, with the basket on the bottom and the trellis on the top (as in the photo above).

Constant and continuous experimentation has been a hallmark of Boutari’s approach to winemaking since it began bottling Santorini with the Boutari label back in 1989.