15/12/2025
๐๐ง๐ญ๐ซ๐จ๐๐ฎ๐๐ข๐ง๐ ๐๐ ๐๐จ๐ฎ๐ซ ๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌโ
The Greek First Growthโ
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La Tour Melas was founded on a bet between a Greek stockbroker and his Swiss banker. The start to this story may not immediately endear you to them, but what began quite frivolously has grown into a serious winery producing some very serious wines.โ
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The (now former) stockbroker is Kyros Melas and his wager was that he could produce a better wine than Chateau La Fleur, which they were drinking over dinner in Zurich. He founded La Tour Melas in 2000 and vowed to do everything properly โ from the planting of the vines to the gravity-flow winery. Remarkably, it paid off, with not just one stunning wine, but with multiple successes over the past 25 years.โ
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The original wine, the La Tour Melas Cabernet Franc-Merlot Bordeaux-style Grand Vin, achieves just that. Easily one of the greatest wines produced in Greece that, when tasted blind alongside Lafleur by 20 somms and wine critics, came out top.โ
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As not every barrel makes the cut, they needed to make a second wine, as all Bordeaux chรขteaux do. Kyros casually introduces the name โ Cyrus One โbecause Iโm the bestโ โ which his unforced charm allows him to get away with. Blended with Agiorgitiko, it is a lovely, smooth red wine that dances between red and black fruit and a gravelly undertone.โ
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In 2012, they added a Provenรงal-style rosรฉ โ the Idylle DโAchinos now perhaps their best-known wine and something of a national drink on Mykonos. Elegant, crisp, and far better than most Provence rosรฉ.โ
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And finally, Palies Rizes, from an ungrafted Agiorgitiko vineyard over 120-years-old. Just 1,800 bottles made each year of this remarkable wine, showing such delicate and detailed complexity and quite arresting beauty.โ
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The one thing left is for the Swiss banker to settle the bet, but heโs still holding out, on a technicality.โ
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maltbyandgreek.com/producer/la-tour-melas