[Traditional Acoustic Music playing]
The southern island of Santorini is world-famous for it's breathtaking volcanic landscape.
The small white houses and blue-domed churches
appear like gems studding the Island’s sheer black cliffs.
The ruins and the sunsets are legendary,
and they attract swarms of tourists,
but the food here is just as extraordinary and well worth the trip.
When Santorini’s volcano erupted around 1620 BC,
lava and ash covered the island, changing its landscape forever
and turning Santorini into Greece’s version of Pompei.
The soil here is composed of packed volcanic pumice to a depth of about 90 feet.
The porous pumice stones trap the winter rains,
allowing the island’s plants and vines to survive the blistering summer sun.
At the Sigalas Winery, vintner Paris Sigalas shows us how the volcanic soil
has influenced Santorini’s winemaking.
Here, the vines grow in coils, right on the ground, without any fear of mold or rot.
The absence of moisture, pests, and phylloxera
eliminates the need for trellises and stakes.
The vine coils act as a sort of nest,
sheltering the grapes from the unyielding sun and nearly constant wind.
Santorini’s wines are among the oldest in the world.
Amphora used for wine making, were found among the Minoan ruins at Akrotiri,
evidence that the islanders were making wine more than 3000 years ago.
In recent years, Santorini winemakers have begun to experiment with non-native grapes,
but most of Sigalas’s wines are made from two indigenous varietals:
Assyrtiko and Mavrotragano.
The Assyrtiko grape produces a dry, crisp white wine
that accounts for about 70 percent of the winery’s production.
The wines have a characteristic mineral flavor that come from the volcanic pumice.
Assyrtiko is now grown in other parts of Greece, but nowhere else does it have this signature taste.
Back at the winery, Sigalis’s winemaker Stella guides the visitors through a flight of wines.
First, the Assyrtiko, a crisp, highly acidic wine
with delicate citrus notes and Santorini’s trademark minerality.
It’s a great match for the meze that arrives at the table.
[Stella speaking] It's interesting. Its mineral taste that comes from the volcanic soil of Santorini.
And if the one that we can age it also six to seven years in the bottle after its production.
[Narrator speaking] Next she pours the Mavrotragano, a red wine aged in French oak barrels for 18 months.
The Mavrotragano is a complex, full-bodied red wine, with hints of cherry and licorice.
[Stella speaking] Tasting a red wine in Santorini is really different. But the grape Mavrotragano 100%.
Its name means in Greek "black crunchy."
And it's a rare grape variety of Greece.
Its origin is from Santorini.
Is quite complex in aromas. It's spicy. We found also red jam fruits....
And something fresh like licorice that comes in the end.
[Ambient noise]
Tasting this wine, we see in fact also the effect of oak,
as it was vinificated in French oak barrels
and then it was aged in those four 18 months.
[Narrator speaking] Mavrotragano is just beginning to enter the mainstream wine market.
Sigalis isn’t sure about its prospects, but he’s confident that those who taste the wine will become fans for life.
[Music playing]
Teetering on the edge of the island’s volcanic caldera,
Selene Restaurant in Fira has one of the most dramatic views on the island,
and one of its best kitchens.
Since Yorgos Hadjiyannakis opened its doors in 1986,
the restaurant has maintained a reputation for innovative cuisine
that’s rooted in the island’s ancestral cooking.
Some of Greece’s most celebrated chefs got their start here,
and from the beginning, the restaurant’s dishes have showcased Santorini’s local foods.
Santorini’s relative isolation forced its cooks to be self-sufficient.
The preserving techniques they developed — such as sun-drying and pickling vegetables,
curing meats and storing fruits in syrup, are still practiced today,
but out of tradition rather than necessity.
The island’s main agricultural products reflect its isolation,
its volcanic soil, and its extreme climate, says restaurant manager Georgia Tara.
Split yellow peas, locally called “fava,” have been cultivated here since the
Minoan era before the volcano erupted.
[Georgia Tara speaking] It is a kind of yellow split pea that is unique.
It is called lathurus clymenum, and it is found no where else in the world.
[Narrator] Santorini tomatoes, on the other hand, are relative newcomers,
brought to the island by a Franciscan monk just 180 years ago.
Santorini’s fava, the island’s main starch,
shouldn’t be confused with other split yellow peas, Italian fava, or broad beans.
Another favorite Santorini ingredient is the caper, which actually thrives in rocky, dry places.
Its bitter, salty tang makes it a good substitute for the olives that Santorini lacks.
The whole plant is edible: flowers, buds, leaves and seed pods, both brined and sundried.
Sun drying the caper bud preserves its bitterness,
while giving it a complex, concentrated flavor, much prized in sauces.
Santorini lacks the vegetation and water to support large livestock.
Instead, in the past, every family raised a pig
and the islanders developed a taste for wild game, including rabbits and migratory birds.
[Georgia Tara speaking] The typical cured pork loin from Santorini is this one. It is called Apochti.
We use the tenderloin and we spread it with the unique aromatics....
[....] That's a herb that belongs in the family of thyme but more aromatic.
Even more aromatic than thyme, cinnamon and black pepper.
[Narrator] Surprisingly, fish were not a mainstay of the Santorini diet in the past.
Lacking techniques and gear for deep water fishing,
the islanders caught what they could from the shore
using hand lines and simple nets.
When the nets were full of small fish like sardines,
they were dried in the sun.
Until modern times, wheat flour was a luxury, so fresh bread was a rarity, as well.
Santorini bakers used barley flour for bread,
baking the loaves twice to produce rock-hard rusks
that would keep for months -- if not years.
[Georgia Tara speaking] The traditional bread is this one. It is called Kritiko [....].
It is very rocky.... As you can hear. [she taps rock hard bread on table]
And in order to use it, you have to soak it into water,
to rehydrate it again,
so that it can become softer and you can use it.
It has a very nutty flavor and a very earthy flavor.
[Narrator] Georgia shows us a platter of island cheeses
but only one of them — a goat cheese called "chloro" — is local.
At the restaurant, chloro is soaked in the lees of vinsanto,
a sweet wine, to create a variation on the traditional cheese.