It’s back! The new vintage of this idiosyncratic and distinctive blend of a red and a white grape variety – Xinomavro and Roditis – hence the name.

The result is a red wine with surprising colour intensity and aromatic uplift. Expect a flavour explosion – cassis, blackcurrant, black pepper, black olive and a herbal undertone, something like wild oregano. A juicy wine, with a little tannic grip.

Thomas Ligas was a forerunner in Greek natural winemaking. With 8 hectares in Pella, northern Greece, his vineyard management was inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s ‘One Straw Revolution’, a low intervention approach to land management, which emphasised a no-till approach to soil health.

In the winery, Thomas and his daughter Meli, who is incrementally inheriting the estate, bring the same low intervention approach to the harvest grapes. Only free-run juice is used in the gravity fed winery; a maximum of oxygenation encourages a wild fermentation, and then nothing is added to the juice, not even sulphites. The wine remains in situ in tank and is only moved once – when it is bottled.

Wine doesn’t get much more natural than this.

2020; cork; 13% abv

No added sulphites