Sclavos, Vino di Sasso Robola de Cephalonie (2024)

Robola. Sustainable, Organic, Biodynamic, Natural.

The Sclavos family has roots on the island of Cephalonia going back centuries, with one extraordinary detour: a branch of the family emigrated to Odessa in 1700, built a substantial winery there, and returned to Greece only after the Russian Revolution, replanting on Cephalonia in 1919.
Two generations later, Evriviadis Sclavos became one of Greece's earliest advocates for natural and biodynamic viticulture; the estate has been Demeter-certified for years. The name Vino di Sasso ("wine of stone") was borrowed from Napier, the 19th-century English commissioner who used it to describe the wines grown on Cephalonia's dramatic limestone hills, where the soils are so rocky that farming them borders on the irrational. Robola grows here at altitude, in poor fractured limestone, with extremely low yields. 
Bright lemon-gold in the glass, crushed stone, grapefruit, apricot, and white pepper on the nose. The palate is taut and precise, with mouthwatering acidity and a long, saline finish. Cephalonia's answer to great Chablis, and a white that couldn't come from anywhere else.