Vangelis Gerovassiliou stands in his wine museum in ‘ktima Gerovasiliou’ estate some 25km southeast of Thessaloniki, on December 3, 2019. — AFP pic
Growers in northern Greece, one of the country’s top wine-producing areas, have been among the first nationally to be interested in the consequences of rising temperatures. For over four decades, this oenologist and wine producer has worked with Malagousia, a long-forgotten Greek grape variety that he strives to bring up to date.“Local grape varieties, like Xinomavro or Limnio, which have existed for 3,000 years, resist very well,”, argues Gerovassiliou.
It is a “closed ecosystem” of about 20 hectares with four weather stations, affording daily climate monitoring. But this awareness and the implementation of concrete measures remain isolated across Greece, and few winegrowers adapt their work to climate change. “They thought we were talking gobbledegook,” he recalls.