Are monovarietal wine cellars the future of hospitality?
One prominent Athens hotel has decided to stock its wine cellar exclusively with Assyrtiko. Sarah Neish discovers why the list, which includes bottles priced from €75 to €650, offers a “liquid history” of Greece and shows the variety’s evolution over the last 20 years.
Hotel Grande Bretagne, which has stood sentinel over Syntagma Square in Athens since it first opened its doors in 1874, has unveiled one of Greece’s “most ambitious” wine collections; a cellar dedicated entirely to Assyrtiko.
The intention behind the range, which brings together more than 120 expressions of Assyrtiko from Santorini, Tinos, Naxos, Paros, Crete, Central and Northern Greece, the Peloponnese and more, is to make the hotel “a true reference point” for the variety.
Speaking exclusively to the drinks business, Evangelos Psofidis, head sommelier and wine director for Hotel Grande Bretagne, said the collection was akin to “liquid history”, revealing that it includes vinous treasures such as “sweet versions of Assyrtiko called Vinsantos dating back to 1947.”
Biggest depth
The idea, Psofidis explained to db, was “not necessarily to be the biggest Assyrtiko collection in the world but the one offering the greatest depth in terms of different expressions of the grape variety.”
Two decades in the making, the extensive list is based on “the mutual respect that the hotel has built with Greek winemakers” over the last 20 years.
“Communicating our plan with winemakers from all over Greece who produce wines based on Assyrtiko was so pleasing in that all of them showed so much enthusiasm and were so willing to open their wine libraries and offer wines to our collection that are not widely available in the Greek market,” said Psofidis. “It made my life much easier to gather all the wines included in the list.”
Why Assyrtiko?
According to Psofidis, who has worked for the five-star Hotel Grande Bretagne since 2006, not only does Assyrtiko produce wines with great ageing capacity, the grape creates “the ideal conditions for a sommelier to compile a wine list that offers diversity in styles, producers, wine regions and vintage depth.”
Referring to Assyrtiko as “a grape of origin, identity and precision”, he emphasised its connection with Greek winemaking “from ancient times” and noted the “huge impact” it has had worldwide due to what Psofidis called “its multi-dynamic character”, depending on where it is cultivated and how it is vinified.
Winemakers are also becoming more specialised in Assyrtiko, with “the quality of the wines, now more than ever” making 2026 the perfect time for Hotel Grande Bretagne to embark on the endeavour.
Multi-vintage approach
One of the advantages of the Assyrtiko collection is being able to offer diners at the hotel “the ability to open two bottles of the same wine but from a different vintage, and see first-hand how the wine reacts through time, offering a unique and authentic gastronomic experience,” shared Psofidis.
While hotel guests will still be able to access wines made from other grape varieties from a broader list that includes “wines from both Greece and all the renowned regions of the world”, Assyrtiko will be the hero and Psofidis is looking forward to demonstrating its ageing potential.
“Assyrtiko has proved over the last two decades that it is capable of producing wines that change through time by creating different flavours and aromas,” he said.
International taste (and deep pockets) for Assyrtiko
Many of the hotel’s international guests were already specifically asking for Assyrtiko, the sommelier revealed, providing the inspiration for building a more extensive cellar dedicated to the grape.
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“Communicating daily with guests from all over the world showed me the way towards this project in terms that the majority of them were coming and asking me for Assyrtiko wines,” Psofidis told db. “For me that was the proof that Assyrtiko wines were already popular outside of Greece and gave me the certainty that creating a wine list based on that grape would give additional value to our offered services.”
The range may also go some way to dispelling preconceptions about Assyrtiko being an entry-level or high-volume wine, with bottle prices at Hotel Grande Bretagne starting from €70, with the most expensive reaching €650, and with many intermediate prices in between.
“Prices in wine, as with many other products in the world, are based on demand and offer,” Psofidis said. “Taking into consideration that the demand for Assyrtiko wines worldwide has become really high and that the availability of these wines is being spread across many more countries compared to previous years, [the circumstances] have definitely created an increase in their prices that fortunately so far reflect the quality of the wines.”
Earlier this year, UK specialist wine importer Maltby & Greek told db that Assyrtiko from the grape’s home turf, Santorini, had historically been under-priced at export.
“Companies were wholesaling Santorini Assyrtiko at under £10 and retailing it in the low teens,” said co-founder Stef Kokotos. “These are centuries-old vines, un-irrigated and basket pruned; wines with incredible verve, intensity and complexity, really powerful whites that leave an impression on people.”
Kokotos added: “But prices in Santorini have risen a lot,”, not only due to consumer demand but because of climate change.
“In recent years, harvests on Santorini have been catastrophically bad, at around 10% of the volumes experienced at the island’s winemaking peak,” said Kokotos, who believes that the trade now considers Assyrtiko to be a noble variety. All of this has contributed to prices creeping up.
Two other Greek white grape varieties, Kokotos believes, have the potential to win over consumers looking for more modest pricing in 2026: Vidiano from Crete, and Robola from Kefalonia. Read more about this here.
Integrating tech
Back at Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens and individual QR codes printed on the hotel’s wine list will allow diners to trace each bottle of Assyrtiko back to its producer and region, and yo discover more about its terroir.
“We live in a world where access to information is extremely important for all of us,” said Psfodis, who is regularly asked by hotel guests whether a wine they enjoyed is available in their home country.
“Sometimes I don’t know the answer,” he confessed. “So I thought that maybe it would be a great idea to give our guests the opportunity to interact directly with the winery itself. Additionally, I wanted to reward all these wineries for being so willing to contribute to the wine collection.”
With thousands of guests dining in the hotel’s restaurants each year, he thought he could “create a significant increase in the number of people visiting the wineries’ websites “offering them the opportunity to take advantage of this visibility for commercial reasons.”
Rather than treating wine as “a luxury accessory”, the hotel’s new cellar positions Assyrtiko as “a lens through which to understand contemporary Greece, its landscapes and regional identities”, concluded Psofidis.
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