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Seven years old Commandaria
What a coincidence! Last Sunday, I wrote about Commandaria and a visit I made seven years ago to the area where they produce this famous wine. The man, who showed me around and gave me a plastic glass to try the local sweet wine, offered me a demijohn of fresh Commandaria as a present. He gave also one to my friend Panteli, who had accompanied me to that visit.
Perhaps out of disappointment or my reaction to what I had seen in this beloved Commandaria zone, I did not keep that demijohn, but I gave it to a friend.
One Saturday morning my oenologist friend, Minas, called to invite me that same evening for some wine. Accepting his invitation, I found myself after a few hours at his house enjoying a Vino Nobile of 2006, after we had tried well-chilled champagne and an aged Petritis. The evening was reaching to an end, when Minas suggested a glass of a cool Commandaria. He wanted my opinion.
I never say no to a good glass of Commandaria, so I told him to pour one. He left the room and after a while, he reappeared with a small bottle of the afore-mentioned wine. I saw the Commandaria fall heavily and slowly in my glass, colouring brown the inner side of the glass. Its drops did not have the time to dry before I grasped the glass to smell the wine. It was a true Commandaria, rich, thick in aroma and flavour, sweet, complex and refined! It was a sweet wine that managed to excite me again. It was a well-respected wine that managed to irritate me again, as it reminded me of the desertion and the contempt to which it is subjected.
‘It must be an old Commandaria’, I immediately said to my dear friend Mina. ‘You gave it to me’, he said, ‘six-seven years ago’, he continued. I immediately remembered the demijohn I had brought with me from the Commandaria villages. I had forgotten that I gave it to him telling him to do whatever he wanted with it. This humble demijohn that I did not condescend to keep and contained a few liters of fresh Commandaria, had converted into something incredible! It had been transformed to a great sweet wine. It had matured and concentrated; it had rejected its simplicity and freshness and became an elaborated deeply matured wine.
At that very moment, I realized the worth of this sweet wine of my country. I realized with all my senses that someone would need a great effort to make a bad Commandaria. I bowed again to the splendour of this wine that we had so easily marginalized.
I end with what I stressed last Sunday. We should get ready to revalue this wine, check again the relevant legislation, urge everyone to invest in it, do our best to raise the only excellent wine we had left with to the position it deserves. Otherwise, we deserve what we get!
11/10/2009
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