First hand practical experience in order to learn more about a subject is almost always something to strive for. Whenever I get the chance to become involved with the work that takes place in a vineyard or at a winery, I jump at it. The story of Christos Kokkalis is well known – he is [...]
On Thursday, I had a leisure day in Hamburg. I met with Christos Kokkalis at lunch time and we strolled around the city, had coffee, and as always talked a lot about Greek wines. Late afternoon I received a call from Mario Scheuermann, who asked if I could provide him with some more Greek [...]
On Wednesday morning I woke up at 5:00 am and drove 5 hours to Hamburg. I arrived at the Hotel Baseler Hof around 11:30 am. A Twitter meeting was planned for the afternoon. This was organised by Mario Scheuermann alas weinreporter, who is a very well known wine critic and journalist. The agenda was for [...]
On the 26th of May I had the great pleasure of presenting some Greek wines to Joanna Locke, Master of Wine, at the Wine Society in Stevenage, UK. I woke up at 04:30 am and made my way to the Athens airport. I arrived in London Stansted at 09:30 am local time, boarded the Stansted [...]
On the 15th May I made my way to Skafidia to pay another visit to Christos Kokkalis. It is always such a pleasure to spend some time with him! The car journey was very pleasant. May is such a nice month, as everything is in full bloom, the landscapes are beautiful to look at. [...]
On the 1st May I met Christos Kokkalis for a late afternoon lunch at the Codice Blu Restaurant in the trendy Kolonaki area in Athens. Christos was still in town, and we decided to get together for some more discussions about Greek wines. One of his two lucky agents who distribute tiny quantities of his [...]
Yesterday I had the great pleasure of welcoming a number of Greek winemakers at my home. Apostolos Thimiopoulos flew in from Thessaloniki, Christos Kokkalis and Thanassis Parparoussis shared a taxi from Pyrgos/Patras, Antonis Papantonis came from Nemea and Dimitris Gouravas from Athens. The first person arrived at 09:30 am, the last left at 08:00 [...]
I just came back from a 5-day trip to London, where I took my three eldest children for a Easter treat. We stayed with different friends and I took my kids to all the tourist attractions – a double-decker bus tour, Tower of London, Natural History Museum, London Aquarium, London Eye, Science Museum, Musical (Joseph [...]
On Saturday, 28th March, I drove to Christos Kokkalis on a mission: He wants to plant new vines at two new plots at his vineyard. I arrived in the evening and we went out for a good meal, we brought along a bottle of his 2006 Syrah. We had a nice medium rare fillet – [...]
On the 6th March I met Christos Kokkalis first for a coffee, then for a 5 hour lunch at the Grada Nuevo restaurant in Thessaloniki. The restaurant has its own wine cellar and the wine list has a great selection. The owner brought us small plates of different food, everything was extremly delicious. We did [...]
