Monastiri

Monastery; several Greek wine estates are located in former monasteries, and several Greek monasteries still produce wine. The word monastiri sometimes appears on the labels of TOPIKOS OENOS wines.

What was the first wine made from botrytized (rotten) grapes?

A. Sweet Vouvray from the Loire Valley of France

B. French Sauternes

C. Hungarian Tokaji Aszú

D. German Trockenbeerenauslese

Today, the Sauternes region of France is best known for these honeyed wines, but the practice of using botrytized grapes (those infected with the fungus Botrytis cinerea) to make unctuously sweet dessert wines actually began in Hungary’s Tokaj region around 1650. (By comparison, the first Sauternes is thought to be an 1847 Château d’Yquem.)

Puckery

Used to describe a wine that is so high in tannin that it causes your mouth to pucker with dryness. Most often, the wine will have been made from insufficiently ripe grapes.

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