Sommeliers International: Travel Journal by Stephane Derenoncourt – Clos Stegasta, T-OINOS

Stephane Derenoncourt’s Travel Journal in Sommeliers International magazine conveys us to the unique Clos Stegasta landscape… enjoy the read!

“The beauty of a wine-producing location is not, often, strange to the aesthetics of the wine produced. The place inspires. It leads you to understand, through the nature of the soils, the climatology or the surrounding vegetation, what the strong or weak points are so as to bring about, almost instinctively, the appropriate technical responses. But sometimes, you’re struck by the place. It’s a shock that bewilders, confuses and disorients you, a rare and strange feeling.

In the heart of the Aegean Sea, just a few nautical miles from crazy Mykonos, appears the monastic, spiritual island of Tinos, constantly swept by northerly winds. Climb to an altitude of almost 500 metres and you’ll find yourself in a lunar landscape, a world of granite boulders where a small vineyard stands in defiance of the laws of nature. The physical disturbance of a particular energy that floods over you requires some time to regain the ability to observe, outside codes and conventions, the message of the place.

Between the granite boulders, irregular low walls forming small clos remind us that winegrowing is ancestral here, although it has been abandoned in favor of the more profitable marble quarrying further down the island. A few old oaks bear witness to the austere microclimate of this windswept plateau. Some grow horizontally, condemned never to straighten. Finally, the vegetation, populated by succulents, green and creeping, and aromatic plants whose fragrances blend with the iodized taste that the wind carries from the sea. A few wild goats whose bleating bears witness to the animal’s presence, and the distant sound of bells hanging from Orthodox churches, the only trace of human presence.

It was one man’s folly, the stubbornness of civilization, that gave birth to this vineyard over 20 years ago. Alexandre Avatangelo co-managed an estate on the island of Santorini and could no longer stand the development of tourism or the increase in wine production. He dreamed of going elsewhere, where he could accomplish his work. The choice of endemic grape varieties remains unchanged. Asyrtico for the whites and mavrotragano for the reds. The daring and risky idea of planting them at 9,000 vines per hectare, in this poor granitic sand, to inflict such root competition that we have to imagine maintaining the soil structure with the help of ancillary plants, cereals or legumes, adds to the beauty of the site and makes the vineyard an oasis in a rocky desert.

I spent hours treading these vines from row to row, taming every nook and cranny and observing every detail, identifying the tiny veins of clay, so rare and so influential on the taste of the grapes. I wanted to extract myself and look at these grape varieties like a fuse to transmit the taste of the place, forgetting the knowledge and experience of elsewhere. Here, we don’t intervene, we interpret. Bottling the place and sharing it, like a human experience that has become rare. A refined wine aesthetic, a liquid energy. An emotion more than a pleasure.”

Read the original article in French here