https://www.saveur.com/culture/modern-wines-of-crete/
Viticulture has thrived on Crete for thousands of years, but for most of the 20th century, mass production dominated the wine industry on Greece’s largest island. Phylloxera didn’t hit there until the late 1970s—almost a century after it ravaged continental European vineyards—and the blight served as a much-needed reset. In the 1980s and ’90s, high-yielding grapes like vilana were planted. Then, in the late ’90s, a new generation of Cretan winemakers who had studied abroad started to return home, armed with deeper winemaking and farming know-how and a curiosity about the indigenous varieties in their own backyards. Now, those producers’ efforts are bearing fruit as they see their bottles grow both in age and in international popularity.
The new guard has resuscitated Crete’s native grapes, replanting surviving and abandoned vines on hardy American rootstock, and focusing on 11 of the most successful varieties that are now at the core of Crete’s wine scene. Vidiano, a high-acid grape with notes of white pepper and a refreshing salinity, is rapidly becoming the island’s signature white. Liatiko, a high-tannin, light-bodied wine, is Crete’s answer to nebbiolo. And winemakers in Chania, on the western end of the island, turn red romeiko grapes—a type not common elsewhere—into still, sparkling, and sweet bottlings..."