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Administrative area · Greece

Attica

The region around Athens, the historic home of Retsina, and now a source of serious dry Savatiano.

Locally: Αττική

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What to expect in the glass

Unresinated Savatiano that is medium-bodied, nutty and saline with moderate acidity. Retsina is dry, light and unmistakably pine-scented.

About Attica

Attica surrounds Athens and holds the largest concentration of vineyard on the Greek mainland, mostly Savatiano.

It is the historic home of Retsina — white wine flavoured with Aleppo pine resin. The practice descends from sealing amphorae with resin, and it survived as a taste long after the sealing method became obsolete.

Retsina’s reputation abroad rests on the industrial version. A small number of producers now make it carefully from good Savatiano with restrained resin, and it is a different and defensible wine.

Old-vine Savatiano without resin has emerged since the 2010s as a genuinely good dry white — textured, nutty and saline.

Attica is a administrative area, not an appellation

No authority delimits this name or attaches rules to it. A political unit — an Italian region, an English county, a US county — used as a wine area because that is how the industry and its readers talk about it, not because a wine authority delimited it. That does not make it less real or less useful — it means nothing legal follows from it, and you will not generally find it on a label as a controlled designation.

Grapes

Wines from here

white

Crisp dry white

High-acid, unoaked whites built for refreshment and for seafood — citrus and mineral rather than fruit-forward.

white

Retsina

Greek white flavoured with Aleppo pine resin during fermentation — a genuine traditional style, and a much better wine than its reputation.

What to eat, and how to serve it

Derived from this region’s signature styles. Each is listed separately, because a region does not have one serving temperature.

Retsina

Serve at 7–10°C (fridge cold).

Try with fillet steak, salmon or salmon in a cream sauce.

Crisp dry white

Serve at 7–10°C (fridge cold).

Try with fillet steak, salmon or white fish.

Where to go next

Places worth trying if you like this one — neighbours, rivals, and the obvious step across.

  • Peloponnese — The southern Greek peninsula, containing Nemea and Mantinia and most of the country’s vineyard.
  • Crete — Greece’s largest island, with a 4,000-year winemaking record and a set of indigenous varieties found nowhere else.
  • Santorini — A volcanic Aegean island where Assyrtiko is grown in low basket-trained vines, producing intensely mineral dry whites.

Sources

Sources consulted