The Mhire Family: Wine Tasting in Santorini

September 2014

I will admit that my expectations were high for our day in Santorini, When I imagined a Greek island vacation, it was always Santorini that came to mind. The bright white and blue buildings, sparkling blue ocean and sunset - could it possibly be as beautiful in person as it was in the photos I'd seen? The answer? A resounding yes!

We arrived in Santorini at 8am. The island of Santorini is the result of a volcanic eruption around 1640 B.C. that caused the middle of the island to sink, leaving only the high cliffs of the caldera. We anchored in the middle of the caldera and could see the villages of Fira and Oia high on the cliffs above the water - much higher than I'd imagined (pictures to come later). We took the tender to the shore and hopped in a tour bus from there. Our tender dropped us off on the south side of the caldera, obviously at sea level. Our first stop was Oia Village, all the way at the North End of the caldera, high on the cliffs. Our bus ride brought us past vineyards and scenic views as we climbed to the village.

It was probably around 10am when we arrived at Oia - very early in the morning by village standards. The stores were just starting to open and the streets were fairly empty, not bustling with other tour groups, which was great. I think we had about an hour and a half to wander on our own around Oia. I could definitely stayed there longer, but we made the most of our time there.

We started out by this pretty little church and made our way out towards the cliffs and the views.

Most of these pictures were taken the first time we turned off the main street. Yes, there are a lot of pictures, but I couldn't narrow it down to just a few favorites!

Amongst all of the blue and white, the few red doors really stood out:

From there, we hiked down to the tip of the island to a scenic overlook where some of the most famous pictures of Santorini have been taken. Many of those pictures were taken at sunset or at night, but it was beautiful in the daytime, too:

From Oia, it was time to being our wine tasting. By that time, it was almost noon, so a wine tasting is acceptable, right? :) So this is what a vineyard looks like in Santorini. To protect the vines from the high winds that blow around the cliffs, the vines grow close to the ground, wound around an almost a basket shape. Like nothing I'd ever seen before!

We stopped first at the Santo Winery. This was the biggest, most commercial of the wineries we saw, with the most striking views, for sure:

This was our tasting table:

Santorini is most famous for its very sweet, white wine called Vin Santo. We tried each wineries version - some more successful than others. Here, Tommy samples one of the red wines from Santo:

We headed to our favorite winery next. To get to this one, we wandered down winding streets in what seemed like a much more residential area of the island. I was unaware that Santorini was hit by a major earthquake in 1956. Much of the island has been rebuilt, but as we wandered down these streets, you could still see evidence from the quake:

We saw some of the most beautiful doors as we walked down this path. The pink bougainvillea were an especially beautiful contrast to the blue and white:

If you blinked, you would have missed this tiny sign directing us to the little winery:

They stored all of the wine in their wine cellar in wooden barrels:

Our tasting was out on this cute little patio. Not sure whether it was the ambiance, or the wine, but they had our favorite wines of the day here. We bought a bottle to bring back to my Dad.

The last winery we visited was the Koutsoyannopoulos Wine Museum. This was an interesting place. Upon entering the museum, you head down stairs into a sort of underground cave, where you learn about the history of wine making in Santorini told through an audio guide, demonstrated by still life and semi-mobile figurines. We got a picture of the outside of the museum, but none down in the caves - they were dark, and honestly, the figures were a little creepy!

The wine was good, though!

From there, our tour ended and the bus dropped us off in Fira, the other main village on Santorini. It was a cute village too, but much busier than Oia, and lined with restaurants and souvenir stores. We stopped at a restaurant to put a little food in our stomachs after all the wine. We had a beautiful view while we ate, and we must have seen 25 couples stop at one certain location. Usually, the woman would stop and pose, while the man took her picture. It got to be rather humorous, so of course, we had to do the same when we finished our lunch. I must admit, it is a pretty picture:

From there, there were two ways back to our boat, by cable car or by foot/donkey. Given that we'd had a few glasses of wine, we chose the cable car ;)

We took a little nap when we got back to the boat, so we were nice and refreshed for the on-deck barbecue dinner. Our waiter at Candles the night before had recommended arriving a little early and choosing one of the tables on the edge of the deck, closest to the island, so that's exactly what we did!

This is the group of chefs on the boat - the Head Chef, Budhi is the one on the far right:

As always, the food was delicious. I had to take a picture of the largest plate of paella I'd ever seen. The size of the man standing behind the pan gives you some perspective on just how big it was:

Some of the other yummies:

Our Candles waiter was right, we had the best seat in the house. The sun was shining bright when we sat down, and we got to watch as the sun set over the villages on the cliffs high above that we'd visited early in the day. It was really cool to watch the colors change as the light dimmed: