[Sept. 2023] The next day, Maria and Gilles, the couple who owned the Airbnb in Nafplio, Greece, where we were staying, took us to a winery.
We had made a verbal agreement with them when we went to their restaurant a few days before, and I thought they might have forgotten, but they called us and came to pick us up.
It was an open day for the winery, and they need to purchase bottles for the restaurant.
The location is near the ancient city of Argos, about 10 kilometres northwest of Nafplio, and the winery’s name is Ktima Skouras, established in 1986.
The Airbnb owner couple have been running the restaurant since the 1980s and have been customers of the winery since the beginning.
They said they have watched the winery grow.
It seems to be a popular winery, and on this day it was open to the public, there were a lot of people gathered.
An information session was being held in the basement where the barrels were lined up, but there were so many people that we couldn’t listen to anything, so we gave it up and headed to the tasting room.
By the way, each barrel costs €600 and needs to be replaced every two years.
There are no restrictions on tasting here, so you can try as much as you want for free.
How generous of them!
According to the tasting staff, this area is called Nemea, and the local grape is called Agiorgitiko.
It was said that as the altitude increases, wine with strong tannins and high alcohol content is produced, and the price also increases accordingly.
We sampled various flavours while nibbling on cheese and tomato.
All of them were delicious, but I couldn’t find anything that stood out to me, so in the end we only bought a bottle of Fleva, a Syrah red wine recommended by Maria.
I was told that this Fleva is in low production volume.
Maria and Gills apparently close their restaurant in the winter, and during that time they show around Airbnb customers.
Maria is a studious person, she is studying refugee education at university, and she wants to do volunteer work in the future.
She was also good at languages.
Her hip size is shocking, but she is a really bright and positive person.
When it came to Airbnb, which we felt comfortable living in, she said she knew exactly what she needed because they were users themselves.
Apparently 60% of her customers are Americans.
