It’s happening all around the Mediterranean basin. Local wines, enjoyed by travelers on a vacation to southern France, Italy or Greece, never used to reach American shores, but now they are turning up on restaurant wine lists and in shops.
Cynics say these inexpensive wines, once considered too frail to export, were allowed to travel only when prices increased to the point wine merchants could ship them at a profit.
There is another factor in the equation, though. Modern technology has allowed winemakers in these places to produce wines that are far more consistent and stable than they once were.
Take the 2000 Santorini, a beautifully balanced, aromatic wine from the Greek island of the same name. The innovative Boutari firm uses assyrtiko grapes from a vineyard built on volcanic soil, as winemakers have for centuries. But their modern Santorini wine undergoes two to three weeks of cold fermentation, emerging crisp and full-flavored with notes of grapefruit and pineapple. Drink it with herb-scented, broiled or baked chicken or fish. The price is $13, not cheap but fair.