Slow Food Zante convivium members wine makers’ Solomos produced traditional wines after 150 years of neglect by saving almost extinct grape varieties and using traditional vinification methods.  First bottling offered at a harvest celebration event in the Island of Zakynthos.

On the occasion of the celebration of the grape harvest on Zakynthos, the winery of Solomos Brothers, members of Slow Food Zante convivium introduced Lianoroggi, a sweet wine that was renowned in the days the island belonged to Venice and had not been made for 150 years.  As they note in their announcement that follows there is considerable documentation on this wine. 

In the intervening years, the wine was forgotten and was virtually extinct until the Solomos brothers decided to recover the techniques and salvage the varietals required for its production.  The first bottling was tasted at a harvest festival last week – it was wonderful. Beginning next year, small quantities of the wine will be available in commercial channels, but best of all, come to our island and taste it at the winery! See http://www.zante-feast.org for programs of agro-tourism on Zakynthos.

Solomos Wines – Zakynthos, August 2006
Lianoroggi

After ten years of research and hard work that began with the encouragement of wine writer Miles Lambert-Gocs, and our common friend Sotiris Kitrilakis, head of the Slow Food convivium in Zakynthos, we present today Lianoroggi, a well know Zakynthos wine that was produced during the Venetian years and up to the middle of the 19th century.  This presentation is our way of honoring Zakynthos and its wine making tradition within the framework of Platyforos celebration ‘Zakynthos, the island of abundance’, and to reaffirm a part of our living tradition.

We based our effort in reviving Lianoroggi on the writings of Leonidas Zois, S. Debiazy and Th. Vourloumis and Lambert’s book ‘The Wines of Greece’ (Faber books on wine, 1990) and on the recorded testimony of foreign travelers.  These sources helped us define the character and varietal composition of this most interesting wine.

Lambert, in his book gives the following account of Lianorrogi (Lambert’s spelling) -

‘Of most special note among the wines did not survive the impact currant was the one that was most likely to have earned Zakynthos an enviable reputation: Lianorrogi.  It was a sweet white wine, produced as its name indicates, from ‘small berries’.  The grape varieties used to make it were, alternatively, the native goustoulidi, a semi-aromatic sort whose qualities were highly praised by the French ampelographer Guillon, and the robola, which was brought by the Venetians in the 13th century.  Availability determined whether the one variety or the other was used.  The Italian visitor Saverio Scrofani, writing in 1801, likened jenorrodi (sic) to both Italian Piccolit and Hungarian Toqay and further lauded it as ‘preferable to all other liqueurs of the Levante’. Around that time, however, currant wine, or at least that of the very best quality – for currant wine generally was not deemed a first-rank wine - also became associated with the Lianorrogi name, in all likelihood because the currant too, on account of its small berries, was known colloquially as Lianorrogi. 

And later on he notes
’ a wine made of grapes first dried in the sun a little…not subjected to the pressure of feet or of the press; the must is obtained merely by the pressure of grapes on each other heaped together’ . 

With the help of the sun we also produced a free run wine in special stainless steel vessels to begin with and then in oak barriques for ageing.  We believe that we have achieved the same result.

Tasis and Dionisis Solomos