It's all Greek to Me

Please forgive me, all you Greek speaking individuals out there. I am so weak at even recognizing the Greek alphabet, as I never really even did the sorority thing well in school.

We went to a few locations in Greece this summer with our friends, Charlie and Kay, aka, our eye doctors. At least our vision was safe! We had heard about some Greek wines, and none of the reviews were raves. So we sampled some ourselves at a little cafe in Santorini and found it sort of ok. Especially with a Greek salad. Kathryn asked me, "What do they call a Greek salad in Greece?" And, of course, they call it Greek salad. It was on my list of "must eats" while travelling in Greece. It is basically some greens, black olives, sliced green pepper, tomatoes, and a thick slice of fresh feta cheese, covered by some herbed vinaigrette. I did enjoy that. And the house white wine was sort of unremarkably nice, although much better than the weather at the time.

We found a local supermarket and checked out the wines. Sean picked out two bottles, and we drank one last night. Pleasant surprise! It was really delightful. And, after much symbol selection in Microsoft Word, its title is Boutari Μοσχοφηίλερο Μηουτάρη, 2006. Oh there is lots of other stuff on the label, and I cannot read a letter of it, but I can make out the 11.5% alcohol level. That made it even better on a hot night. We had it with really simple herbed pasta. And hummus. (Here's an easy wine/food pairing: hummus goes fantastic with white wine... any white wine. And even red. It goes fantastic with wine. Period.) I'm just so proud of my symbol selection that I'm going to do it again.... Μοσχοφηίλερο Μηουτάρη! The wine title is sort of mock-handwritten on the label and therefore super-hard to make out, so it took me about 10 minutes to find the approximate blob in the Greek symbols. And then I turn the bottle around. Yep, its in regular type. All that for nothing!

We also have a wine from Santorini that is supposed to be good with seafood. And after this Μοσχοφηίλερο Μηουτάρη wine's success, I'm getting sort of excited about the Santorini one.

We actually passed a real wine store in Santorini before leaving the town and saw these two bottles that we picked up in the supermarket. Sean checked out the prices as the vendor came up to him. When he saw our bag of wine bottles, he asked "Supermarket?" As we said yes, he just shook his head and muttered in Greek and walked off. I think we got a really good deal at the supermarket.
So, to sum up: Greek wine can be really ok. Especially Μοσχοφηίλερο Μηουτάρη. (Had to get it in there one more time!)