Most wine lovers enjoy buying extraordinary wines and cellaring them for long periods of time. The pleasure to try the wines during different stages of maturity is not only very educational, but also extremely rewarding for pure pleasure. In Greece, this is not the common thing to do; most wines are consumed shortly after their [...]
The social networking tools used by the wine industry become more important by the day. Dirk Wuertz, a German vintner from the small village of Gau-Odernheim, sells more than 80% of his production to the US – you can find more information in English here. Dirk is one of the key players when it comes [...]
Two days ago I wrote about our experience in obtaining a Greek passport for our daughter. The Greek authorities use the Greek spelling from the birth certificate and then translate this phonetically into Latin characters. In our case this led to a “new” Latin name – STOLZ became STOLTS. You can read about it here. [...]
Greek authorities can be quite stiff about their regulations. They can also be quite irrational up to the point that it’s simply beyond any logical argument to refute them. In 1998 my eldest daughter Sophia was born in London. We got her British birth certificate in the ever so efficient British way – it [...]
This last weekend was marked by two memorable occasions: The renowned wine exhibition “Hamburger Wein Salon” celebrated its 25th anniversary, and I showed a portfolio of selected Greek wines for the first time ever at such a professional event. The Hamburger Wein Salon is organised by Mario Scheuermann, one of the most influential wine critics [...]
I have noted years ago that every conversation between Greeks will at some point turn to politics. I do not know of another nation where politics plays such a dominant role in everyday life. When I saw that the Prime Minister of Greece, Georgios Papandreou, is using twitter, I followed him. He is not an [...]
I was pointed to an article published in Greek by Ta Nea online that caught my attention. In it, an account is given how some well known Greek wineries have started to establish new operations abroad. The well-known Kir Yianni Estate entered into a joint venture with Mogao in China in the fourth quarter of [...]
I started the undertaking of promoting Greek wines abroad about a year ago in a rather unexciting mainstream way, by knocking on doors of German and British wine merchants, trying to convince them on a one to one basis, of these wines’ uniqueness and quality. During these days in early 2009 I happened to read [...]
