CYPRUS Dawn of a New Era

On a recent visit to Cyprus, Rosemary George MW is struck by the island's numerous indigenous grape varieties and high altitude vineyards

- Rosemary George MW

The wines of Cyprus are undergoing an extraordinary transformation. The enthusiasm and commitment amongst the younger generation of wine growers is palpable. But first some background.

I first visited Cyprus back in 1977 and took a photograph which turned out to be one of the very first things I ever had published. It was a road sign, with the caption, "Danger! Road slippery with grape juice." And indeed, a couple of days later, we followed a truck full of grapes heading for the local cooperative with a steady stream of grape juice oozing from it.

When I took the Master of Wine exams a couple of years later, we had a question in the fortified wine-tasting paper that comprised three Sherries. One was the real thing from Jerez; one was a potentially confusing example from South Africa and the third was an undistinguished example of the popular Cyprus Sherry brand, Emva. At that time, Cyprus was the third biggest importer of wine to Britain, after France and Italy.

Winemaking in Cyprus has had a chequered history. It is an island on a crossroads in the Eastern Mediterranean, so everyone has been there. Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Normans, Venetians and Genoese. And then the Ottomans invaded the island in 1571 and wine production stopped for 300 years. Grape growing continued for table grapes and raisins, but winemaking did not resume again until the British colonised the island in 1878.

The island of Cyprus is dominated by the Troodos mountains, with their fascinating geology. The mountains were formed when two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian, crashed 92 million years ago. And then the Troodos, which had been eight kilometres under the sea, were suddenly thrown 1000 metres up in the air; quite simply, low became high. This is where geologists come to study an ancient seabed but curiously there are no seashells.