Very few nations in the world have such a close relationship with viticulture and wine as Greece does.
Greek wine and Greek culture are in a perfect symbiosis that started thousands of years ago, in prehistoric times, and in mythology rumors have it that the god Dionysus, was the first to discover the virtues of the fermented grape juice.
To trace back who brought the grapevine to Greece is still an open debate, with some people claiming that the vine arrived via Egypt, while others argue that it came from Mesopotamia. Independently from where the first vines came, true fact is that the Greeks being a native maritime civilization, started trading their unique wine products with other cultures since antiquity until the medieval times in the era of the Byzantine Empire and the Venetian Republic.
During the Ottoman Period, although the Moslem religion forbade wine, the Turks didn't interfere with Greek viticulture, and wine production was encouraged for reasons related to tax collection. Nevertheless, this led to some abandoning and destruction of Greek vineyards, being the Greek monasteries the ones who were playing an important role in preserving the grape varieties and wine potential of Greek viticulture.
After many decades of some uncertainty related with Greek wine quality, a new breeze is being felt throughout the wine industry. For the first time, in 1971, Greek wines were categorized based on their designation of origin and Greek wine tourism started to grow. Together with this, small wineries started to flourish and took Greek wine to a complete new status quo.
Nowadays, Greece can count on specialized viticulturists, oenologists and state of the art technology to bring Greek Wine back to the top qualitative wines of the world.