Anatolikos, Avdira, Thrace

Brothers Sakis and Marios Nikolaidi first fell in love with wine after opening a fine dining restaurant just outside the town of Xanthi, in the far north-east of Greece. The fine dining didn’t survive the financial crisis of 2009, so the restaurant was repurposed into a winery — continuing the winemaking they had already been experimenting with since 2005. Today, the former dining room serves as a temperature-controlled cellar, complete with chandelier and fireplace, while the old kitchen houses the bottling line.

Their vineyards of 7ha lie in the historic Avdira region of Thrace, close to the Aegean Sea and cooled by a constant easterly breeze from the Black Sea — hence the name Anatolikos, meaning ‘eastern.’ The region was renowned during the Byzantine era, but viticulture largely disappeared after the phylloxera outbreak. All cultivation is organic and low-intervention, and the wines are certified vegan. The brothers’ approach is as distinctive and idiosyncratic as their wines: they planted vines on dry, marginal land that other growers avoided, and trained them high off the ground — simply because, being tall, it made working the vines easier. They use a 1960s vintage press for the tactile control it offers, while bottling is handled by a state-of-the-art machine to preserve quality. They also spent years researching Ancient Greek winemaking and commissioning amphoras to try and get as close as possible to a classical wine — the Amphora Orange Malagouzia.

The result is a range of organic, natural wines with incredible finesse and complexity, and utterly unique. The focus is on indigenous varieties — Malagouzia, Assyrtiko, Mavroudi, Limnio — where the terroir and varietal character shine through, while always remaining grounded and balanced. Sakis and Marios have very successfully turned fine dining into fine wine.