Cyprus Wineries – Wine Info

Cyprus, needless to say, has a very rich history of wine making. Better known wine regions of the world, such as Napa, Sonoma, and Australia have wine era’s that pale in comparison to cyprus. Imagine arriving in Cyprus as a Greek in 1200 BC and finding wine already there. In case you aren’t a math wiz, that’s over 3000 years of wine history. Can you imagine what type of wine making technology there was back then? Even the simplest of things that we take for granted today, such as a bottle, required tons of work and precision to produce back in those times, if at all. Your idea of a wine bottle back then would be any container that could produce any type of a seal. Keeping wine fresh and properly fermented must have been extremely difficult.

The God of wine himself, Dionysus, was thought to have taught the Cypriot Ikarios how to first make wine. It’s purely awesome to think of the mix between Greek mythology and wine, two of our all time favorite topics. To get into the history of Cyprus allows us joys often unavailable in other studies. Archaeologists have found hints of vineyards being cultivated as old as 4000 years ago, long before the time of Christ. It’s no wonder that the blood of Christ was wine- People all over the world no doubt already had an obsession with the culture of wine that still persists today.

Wine in Cyprus thousands of years ago was thought to be very sweet in nature. It’s almost certain that, as the process was new, the actual act of creating wine was relatively unpolished. Grapes were picked when they could be, not necessarily when they should be. Going from grape to wine was more of an art than a science, with much experimentation involved. The tools that were available for making wine were far from perfect. Because of poor tools the fermentation period needed to be shorter. This meant that more sugar would persist in the wine instead of turning into alcohol. Early wines were more than likely low in alcoholic content compared to todays wines.

The environmental conditions in Cyprus still remain perfect for wine growing even today. Cool temperatures, mild seasonal changes, and light breezes keep grapes perfectly protected from the harsh conditions that could damage them. Long summers let grapes ripen longer than the average growing season and produce much sweeter grapes. As a grape grows it starts as highly acidic and slowly loses acidity to turn to sugar- Hence the high sweetness from long grape seasons. Cyprus is known for bold, sweet wines and has been praised by Kings for thousands of years. Although because of its geographical size limitations, Cyprus does not have nearly the production capacity of other areas of the world. Their total production is estimated at roughly one million cases per year, barely more than 1/100th of the production of some single wineries found in other countries. Cyprus wine is both delicious and rare.