Retsina wine in Santorini

Retsina wine in Santorini

Our hotel in Santorini in Greece had the exclusive terrace, so one night we decided to spend a quiet evening with a bottle of wine.

Generally Santorini is expensive, but there are ordinary supermarkets with ordinary prices, too.

As they produce wine in Santorini, many kinds of wine were sold, but because I was not sure if we had an opener in the room, I chose the one with a screw plug.

And this wine tasted very strange.

It was like some sort of medicine.

On the label, it said Retsina Wine.

After the holiday, I looked up the internet and found that it is a kind of wine which has been made for more than 2000 years.

Apparently long long time ago, pine resin was used to seal the wine vessels and the resin got into the wine and made this taste.

Even after the resin was stopped being used for sealing, as people liked this wine, they kept making wine with resin in it.

Maybe if I drank a bit more, I might have got hooked by this taste…

By the way, I realised after coming back that the Greek restaurant we sometimes go in London is called “Retsina & Moussaka”.

[ Aug.2013 ]