Retsina

White retsina

Retsina ( Greek Ρετσίνα , Retsína , in Greek female) is a white, dry table wine from Greece that is mixed with resin . According to EU directives, despite the addition of resin, retsina is a wine and not a wine-containing drink.

Manufacturing

In ancient Greece, wine was stored in goat skin tubes or in amphorae sealed with resin. This not only influenced the aroma of the wine, but also made it more durable. Today resin is added to retsina in small pieces during fermentation in order to achieve a comparable taste result. While a resin content of around 5% (up to 7.5%) used to be common, since the 1960s retsina has been increasingly found with a lower resin content of 1 to 2%. The resin is not removed until the first tap . The resin of the native tree species Calabrian pine ( Pinus brutia ) or Aleppo pine ( Pinus halepensis ) is used to produce retsina , but also imported sandarac .

origin

The most important production areas are Attica , Evia and Boeotia , all in southern central Greece near Athens . The main grape variety of white retsina is Savatiano , often mixed with Assyrtiko or Roditis . Muscat retina is also produced on the island of Lemnos . Outside of Greece, retsina is only produced in Cyprus . Well-known brands of retsina are Kourtaki and Malamatina .

sorts

In addition to the most commonly produced and consumed white retsina, there are also rosé and red retsina wines. The resinated rosé wine is called Kokkineli and is made from the Savatiano and Mandilaria vines . The very rare red retsina is only obtained from the Mandilaria vines.

Others

The asteroid (2303) Retsina was named after the wine in 1983.

See also

• Viticulture in Greece

literature

• André Dominé (Ed.): Wine . Könemann, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8290-2765-6 .
• Konstantinos Lazarakis: The Wines of Greece . Mitchell Beazley, London 2005, ISBN 1-84000-897-0 .
• Jancis Robinson (Ed.): The Oxford Wine Lexicon . 3rd completely revised edition. Hallwag, Gräfe and Unzer, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-8338-0691-9 .

Web links

Commons : Retsina  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//TEXT+TA+P6-TA-2009-0071+0+DOC+XML+V0//DE&language= DE
2. ↑ Interesting facts about Retsina at the German-Greek Society
3. ^ Aljos Farjon: A Handbook of the World's Conifers . tape 2 . Brill, Leiden-Boston 2010, ISBN 90-04-17718-3 , pp. 642 .
4. ↑ Patrick E. McGovern: Ancient Wine: The Search for the Origins of Viniculture . Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-691-12784-2 , pp. 72 .
5. ^ Wines from Taverna Knossos ( Memento from June 18, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Minor Planet Circ. 8152