Our Cyprus wine tour was a full-day trip including visits to five wineries and a traditional local lunch in a mountain village. Join us here to learn more about Cypriot wines!
Cypriot wineries trust in the original varieties: Maratheftiko, Mavro, Xynisteri…
The world’s oldest wine still in production, Nama, is also made here.
An austere, distant island was saved from the phylloxera, which destroyed almost all of Europe’s vines in the mid-1800s.
If you prefer to read in Finnish, continue here:
Kyproslainen saa maistaa omaa viiniään – onneksi myös turisti
It will hardly come as a big surprise to anyone that we couldn’t settle for a beach vacation even in the Cyprus beach resort of Agia Napa.
Our less than a week-long trip was supposed to be a completely relaxing vacation laying by the pool. Especially since it was our only vacation this year.
But a leopard cannot change its spots…
Ismo already wrote about our visit to Nicosia, the world’s only divided capital, but now we will talk a little about our Cyprus wine tour and food.
Little or little. – You know my way, so sit comfortably and take a glass of wine before you continue reading.
Cyprus wineries & how to get to them easily
Even before we booked the flights to Cyprus, the planned theme was wines and mountains. (Besides the pool time.)
It quickly became clear that there would not be time for a very extensive tour of the island. Renting a car gives you more time, but we try to test public transport everywhere, and you can’t really do a wine tour by driving yourself.
The wineries of Cyprus are located in the Troodos Mountains, where bus connections are poor. We thought that maybe things could sometimes be done the easy way… So I started googling by the pool and found a tour company called Love Aiya Napa.
I found out that it is the largest online tour agency in Cyprus.
Trips can be booked on the website and also be paid with a credit card at the time of booking. No need to walk around to look for an agent.
The booking confirmation was sent to my email, as well as instructions for the pick-up location.
A jeep safari or wine tour?
Love Aiya Napa’s tour selection includes boat trips to jeep safaris and other activities. There are also numerous tours related to food and drink.
The biggest problem was choosing which of the dozens of different excursions we would take, as we only had time for one.
With the exclusionary method, we were left with two favorites: a jeep adventure in the mountains or a winery tour.
Excursions must be booked at least two days in advance, which meant that by booking immediately we would have time for the excursion on our last day in the country.
There was no jeep safari available for that day, but a winery tour was available.
We had already thought that we could get to know the wines even by buying them from the supermarket, whereas we can’t get to go on a Jeep tour every day. Well, it wasn’t that day now either.
The choice was exceptionally clear, goodbye to the mountain adventure and yes, thank you for the wines. Not exactly the result that saddens us.
Cyprus wine tour, here we come!
5 wineries we visited
- Ayia Mavri Winery
Koilani Village (+357) 25 470225 - Antoniades Winery
Mandria Village (+357) 25 422638 - Gerolemo Winery
Omodos Village (+357) 25 422122 - Vassiliades Winery – Oenou Yi
Omodos Village (+357) 25 446000 - Zambartas Winery
Agios Amvrosios Village (+357) 25 942424
Cypriots have donkey and wine
Cyprus has two significant wine-growing regions, Troodos-Limassol and Troodos-Pafos. We will get to know the first one of these today.
Love Aiya Napa sells the tour services of several local entrepreneurs. Our trip was organized by Cyprus Taste Tours, which specializes in food and wine tours.
We paid 90 euros per head for our full-day excursion. It includes wine tasting, lunch in a mountain village, and transportation by minivan.
Our guide is waiting for us in front of our hotel early in the morning. In addition to us, and the guide/driver there were four Irish guys on board.
We head west from Agia Napa on the highway.
After about an hour we start winding up the small roads of the Troodos mountains and the first winery of the trip.
In Cyprus, wine has been cultivated for ages. However, commercial vineyards are young.
Wine used to be a staple food, and was produced in almost every farm for their own use and shared with friends.
Once upon a time, every Cypriot farm had both its own donkey and its own wine.
Today, there are a couple of thousand donkeys in the whole country, but the wines are doing a little better.
The agricultural support program has revived local wine production.
Cyprus once produced the wines for the whole Europe
Cyprus is apparently the only place in Europe where the native Vitis Vinifera, an original European vine, grows.
Everywhere else in Europe, vine aphids destroyed vine rhizomes in the 1860s. The current Vitis Vinifera is grafted onto a North American trunk.
The soil of Cyprus is apparently so unique that it was able to protect the vines. In barren and dry soil, vine grows its roots really deep, and this might be one of the reasons why the grape aphid did not succeed in killing the Cypriot vines.
On the other hand, Cyprus is also an island far from the mainland.
The reasons for the salvation of Cypriot wines are not known with complete certainty. In any case, the island nation’s wineries lived their golden age from the latter half of the 19th century to the first decades of the 20th century.
The demand for wine was strong as the small island produced wines for the needs of the whole Continental Europe.
Until then, Cypriots got to taste their own wines with their family and friends, and suddenly the whole of Europe enjoyd them.
If not the crowd, at least the upper class did. Today, luckily, a tourist also.
Aiya Mavri Winery
Aiya Mavri is the oldest commercial winery in Cyprus. But it was founded no earlier than 1983.
The owner of the winery, Mr. Giannis, has a reception for us in the entrance hall of the main building of his estate.
This doctor of several sciences introduces us to his production space.
After that, we return to the entrance hall, where the gentleman presents his small wine museum. There are old photographs on the walls, as well as traditional equipment related to winemaking. The mini museum is interesting.
Giannis looks at us from under his eyebrows and tests our knowledge of wine. Obviously, almost certain that we don’t know a damn thing about the sport. At least that’s how we feel.
We, the audience, stand quietly listening to the lecture.
I try to answer one of our host’s questions like a professional, but our lord doesn’t hear his little herd.
I feel like an elementary school pupil being questioned by the principal, and not a WSET 2 wine certificate holder I am.
Our guide tries to interrupt saying that there are also wine experts here, but she also falls silent in the middle of her sentence due to the strict gaze of the host.
We follow our lord down to the basement. Holding our breath, we listen to the continuing lecture of the doctor.
The first tasting – chocolate wine
Soon we will get to the point, the wine tasting. We dare to sit at the tasting table only when everyone has been assigned their own place.
We blink our eyes to our companions and they blink back to us with mixed looks of confusion, fear, and disbelief. It makes us all smile a little, even laugh a little, but we don’t dare to laugh out loud.
Typical excited chatting of wine tastings is missing. We taste the offered wines with a lot of nods, a total of eight different species, but we don’t make many memories of them.
Giannis says that his Muscat was voted the best in the world. We dare not to disagree. We hope to get out of the basement, eventually.
The winery likes to do experiments. They have both chocolate and chili wine. These I don’t forget. Wines are good, but personally, I’m quite puritan what comes to wines, and I don’t really understand the added value brought by flavoring.
On the other hand, EU legislation accompanies me. Any beverage including something that doesn’t naturally belong in it, can’t simply be called wine, no matter how delicious it does taste.
But of course, you should try these out of curiosity if you happen to come across them.
We’ve apparently been an A+ students. It seems that we’ve managed to make at least some degree of impact because when the other tasters move towards the sales counter, the host takes one more bottle from the cabinet. He looks at me and Ismo with a smile and pours the world’s oldest wine still in production, Nama, into our glasses.
Antoniades Winery
We circle the mountain roads again and drive astray a couple of times.
The guide says she hasn’t been to Antoniades’ vineyard for a long time, so she doesn’t remember its exact location.
Love Aiya Napa has told our guide about our professions in wine and food travel writing, so she has made a small change in the program. To our delight, she wants to introduce us to a vineyard whose wines are a little more special.
We get there and get out of the air-conditioned car. The August weather is boiling hot and we take the masks off our faces for a while. In the middle of the mountains, no one is watching their mandatory use. (We took this trip during the pandemic.)
We look forward to what lies ahead. We put the masks back on and enter the door feeling a little nervous.
Marios Antoniades arrives with a smile and casually chats with us about his wines and asks where the guests are from.
Luckily us Finns are known and liked on the island, – at least as peacekeepers, tourists are not mentioned. – But how on earth did Finns end up living in Serbia? He asks surprised. Antoniades is not the only one asking this.
Wine but not only wine
We take a quick look at the production facilities and walk through the cellar towards the tasting room. We stop on the way to marvel at a huge clay pot. It was made in 1780 and is known to be the oldest wine vessel in Cyprus!
Antoniades Winery was founded in 1994, but the winemaking has been in the family from one generation to the next.
They also believe in the traditional winemaking methods. Located between two mountains, the estate produces natural wines.
We will first taste five different wines, then we have a splash of Zivania, liquor distilled from wine mash. As with Aiya Mavri, at the end we get Nama. The ten-year-aged local delicacy is really tasty.
We would buy a bottle to take with us, but flying with a carry-on we have to settle for tasting on the spot only.
We’ve been enjoying our host’s company for so long that we’re running late for our scheduled lunch. Our guide would like us to taste one more wine, Antoniadas natural sparkling wine. They say it’s really special!
Marios regrets that it is not available in the cold and who would drink warm sparkling.
Our guide finds a solution. She buys a bottle to go and asks the waiter at our lunch bar to chill it while we eat.
Cyprus wine tour continues to the mountain village of Omodos
We leave the car by the Omodos village road and head through the pedestrian center towards the Makrinari tavern.
In this traditional restaurant you can taste many types of Cypriot meze. We have a pre-arranged set and as you can guess there will be no shortage of food. The table is full of keftedes, koupepia i.e. vine leaf rolls, various sausages, vegetables, tahini, tzatziki, meat skewers, and much more.
You can book a table at the tavern by calling (+357) 25 422151.
For the dessert, we taste now chilly Antoniades sparkling wine.
It turns out to be unfiltered natural wine, which, I am not a friend of, no matter how trendy it is. Neither is anyone else from our party.
We wonder if we are enjoying cider or even an unfiltered homemade beer.
It’s not about this specific wine, I haven’t yet found any unfiltered wine to suit my personal taste. I do appreciate traditional skills and products, but this simply isn’t my glass of wine.
I let my eyes wander around the objects hanging on the walls of the tavern. I stop to stare at the drinks rack. I see a wine bottle containing a turquoise liquid. What the hell is that?
Yes, it’s blue wine.
Mediterranean blue wine
Mediterranean Blu from Linos Winery in Omodos is a wine made from the native Cypriot white variety Xynister. It is the first Cypriot blue wine.
The color is so intense that it raises suspicions about dyes. But no, this wine doesn’t contain anything added, it’s 100% real stuff.
Blue wine naturally gets its color from anthocyanin (E163) contained in the skin of red grapes.
The same coloring agent is also found naturally in, for example, blueberries and cherries.
Basically, it is colored white wine.
The blue wine trend started in Spain in 2015. The bottles quickly disappeared from store shelves to consumers’ tables. In France, which respects winemaking traditions, blue wine quickly disappeared not only from the stores but from production as well.
Manufacturing continues in Spain, for example, at Giki’s winery. Giki’s blue wine is blended from red and white grapes, and it gets its blue color not only from anthocyanins but also from indigotin obtained from plants. The wine is also artificially sweetened.
Therefore, according to EU legislation, it is not real wine, but a so-called wine drink.
The wine from the Linos winery came on the market in 2020.
It is said to be genuine wine, containing only anthocyanin from the skins of grapes as a coloring agent.
Blue wines are most of the time just a marketing trick, less investing in quality.
I’m being a bit harsh here now. I had a wow effect seeing the blue wine and would like to taste it, preferably a natural one though.
What I say here has nothing to do with this specific wine tour. I can’t say anything about the taste and quality of the Linos product.
We leave the wine untasted this time.
Bread, wine, and Jesus’ rope
We’ll go to see the village. Omodos is the first agrotourism destination in Cyprus.
The state’s rural development project revitalizes villages by financing the construction of tourism infrastructure.
With the help of funding, buildings have been renovated, and cafes, artisan workshops, and museums have been established.
In the middle of the village stands the monastery and church of Timios Stavros.
Our guide encourages us to linger inside.
On the altar, there is a small locker with a dirty piece of string behind the glass. It is said to be a piece of rope stained with Jesus’ blood, a piece of the one with Christ was crucified.
We stare at the string amazed and I take a picture of it, but some churchman rushes in to tell us that it is forbidden to photograph the holy object.
We ran out the back door.
Omodos is famous for its sourdough bread. We take a walk to the local bakery to get a smell it. In addition to bread, we taste local sweets.
There are more tourists in front of the bakery than we have seen on the whole island until then. Along the streets, there are farmers selling pickles, capers, jams, and honey.
The small mountain village is charming, but for my taste, the feeling of authenticity has long ago escaped to the winds of the Mediterranean Sea.
Even so, this is an interesting place to visit, especially if you want to easily get to know the wines of several different estates.
We proceed towards the wineries’ tasting rooms. There are plenty of them in Omodos. We will taste wines in two showrooms, Gerolemo and Vassiliades.
On the way, we take a look into a glass artist’s boutique and photograph a cat sleeping in a glass vase.
Gerolemo Winery
Gerolemo is already interesting as a destination, so it’s worth popping in, even if you don’t want to taste the wines.
Established in 1986, the facility is one of the oldest in Cyprus.
The showroom also functions as a small museum with old winemaking tools.
Gerolemo Winery used to be called Prophet Ilias Winery, but after the founder of the farm passed away, his sons took over the farm and renamed it after their father.
Here you can taste Morokanella, a wine made of the grape variety carrying the same name. Morokanella is a native variety to Cyprus but is currently cultivated in only a few vineyards.
Vassiliades Winery – Oenou Yi
Vassiliades is one of those vineyards that does not take visitors to their production facilities, but you can get to know their wines in the showroom in Omodos.
And we still have one more estate visit.
Zambartas Winery
We are still behind our schedule and arrive in the village of Agios Amvrosios at a time when the Zambartas estate should already be closing its doors to visitors.
But no worries, they have promised to wait for us.
A smiling Fiona opens the door of a beautiful detached house on a sloped plot next to the road.
Smiling indeed: in Cypriot fashion, a woman takes down her mandatory mask when greeting.
But are we even in the right place?
This looks like someone’s home.
And so it is.
We enter directly into the living room.
The vineyard’s founder, Akis Zambartas, has built the house as his own home.
Today, his son Marcos runs the place with his wife Marleen, and the late father’s home serves as a wine showroom.
At Zambartas, the medium-sized estate focuses on quality and organic production.
They also organize parties on their premises – anyone interested in wine can participate.
The production itself seems to be the most professional of all the facilities we visited.
Products are of high quality and there is an emphasis on tasting.
When we return from the production room to the living room and sit on the veranda next to the living room to taste the wines, we get paper tablets in front of us, on which you can write down your own scores for the wines.
Wine glasses are properly rinsed with water between drinks.
At Zambartas, history repeats itself
While writing this article, I was also doing background research and reading the Zambartas website.
I found out that Akis Zambartas was the first academically trained oenologist in Cyprus.
As a young man, he went to Lyon, France to study chemistry and ended up continuing his studies in enology in Montepellier. Akis was a respected person in Cyprus wine circles and made his career in wine. In 2006, he realized his dream and founded his own winery.
History repeated itself. When his father retired, Marcos left his business career and went to Australia to study viticulture. There, in addition to a new professional skill, he found his Dutch wife Marleen.
Fiona, who showed us the premises, is also Australian. Her story is the usual one. The woman came to the island after a local man.
A husband who was forced to harvest grapes as a teenager cannot understand how his wife wants to work in the vineyard of her own free will.
We carry-on travelers sigh and leave empty-handed. We are flying home to Belgrade the same evening, so we can’t even buy the excellent Maratheftiko to enjoy at the hotel. The airport tax-free shop is also open at night. We find Zambartas wine on the shelf, of course at a much more expensive price than at the winery. So what, at least we get a bottle to take home with us.
But, before leaving Cyprus, let’s study a bit more about Cypriot wines.
Wine as a merchandise
Local wines can of course also be bought in grocery stores. But the price-quality ratio is unfortunately quite bad.
The cheaper wines we tried, in the price range of around 10-15 euros, were generally of poor quality. Not to mention the ones sold for a few euros.
You can find high-quality ones in the price range of a few tens, but rarely does anyone want to buy the pig in a sack.
A winery tour right from the start of the trip is a smart bet. After that, you can also shop in stores as you already know what you like. Though I encourage you to buy directly from the wineries.
In supermarkets, almost any beverage, from water to wine, seems to be produced by KEO.
It’s no surprise as KEO is a Cypriot giant that represents almost a hundred beverage brands and owns four large wineries.
On the other hand, Cyprus also has cooperatives jointly owned by private wine producers, which make it easier for their products to enter the market and improve their competitive position against multinational giants.
16 original Cypriot grapes
Grapes known “everywhere” are grown in Cyprus, but so are their autochthonous varieties. If you want to get familiar with wines not grown elsewhere, examine the grapes on the side of the bottle and choose one of these, for example.
6 white grape varieties
- Xynisteri (Ξυνιστέρι)
- Kanella (Κανέλλα)
- Morokanella (Μωροκανέλλα)
- Promara (Πρωμάρα) 05. Spourtiko (Σπούρτικο)
- Flouriko (Φλούρικο)
10 red grape varieties
- Mavro (Μαύρο)
- Maratheftiko (Μαραθεύτικο) / Vamvakada (βαμβακάδα)
- Yiannoudi (Γιαννούδι)
- Lefkada (Λευκάδα)
- Vasilissa (Βασίλισσα)
- Ofthalmo (Όφθαλμο)
- Omoio (Ομοιο)
- Marouchos (Μαρούχος)
- Michalias (Μιχαλιάς)
- Katomilitiko (Κατωμυλίτικο)
Some of the original varieties of Cyprus, such as Lefkada, were originally imported from Greece, but were later adapted into Cyprus’ own varieties.
Nama what?
But what is Nama, the world’s oldest wine in production? Nama is a fortified dessert wine, more commonly known as Commandaria.
The sweet dessert wine Commandaria enjoys name protection – just like cognac, for example – which means there are strict rules for using the name.
Fortified wine made from Xynisteri (Xinisteri) and Mavro varieties may be produced under the name of Commandaria only in the area of fourteen villages.
When made in other areas of Cyprus, the drink goes by the name Nama. But no need to judge by the name. The fact that the name of fortified wine is Nama does not automatically make it inferior to Commander.
For example, the Nama we tasted at Antoniades farm was excellent, more precisely the best we have tasted in Cyprus so far. But this drink can’t be called Commandaria either, because the space is slightly outside the defined area boundary.
However, Nama is the original name of the drink. This thousands of years old wine started to be called Commandaria only about 800 years ago.
According to a legend, Richard Lionheart himself presented the wine at his own wedding, calling it the wine of kings and the king of wines. The sales speech is entertaining but repeated so often that I won’t repeat it here.
I actually checked: Googling “Commandaria” brings up 248,000 hits.
However, for the sake of simplicity, here is a pretty valid article from Forbes, including a presentation of a few products.
Tips for wine tasting
- Do not eat strongly flavored or spicy foods before tasting
- In orthodox tasting, you don’t eat at the same time
- Eat something before tasting so you don’t accidentally get drunk
- Drink water while tasting and also rinse the glass if you don’t get a new glass
- Wines are not swallowed in a professional tasting, but in informal tours, it is completely allowed and even expected
Jamas!
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As always, we have paid our expenses and links are only to help you to find information.