Onissimos Taverna in Peza central Crete The food is the real deal Local ingredients cooked with discipline and patience Onissimos is a genial patron a twinkle in his eyes his fair beard would not be out of place in a medieval painting from the Venetian merchant clubs on this islands port cities Nursing a broken leg he sat close to our table taking in all the jargonfilled comment on the clutch of bottles loosely centred in front of us We were absorbed with this lateintheday harvest update climatechange issues anecdotes of stubborn farmers Quietly we were also celebrating the new 2014 vintage As our supper was coming to an end and the winedeconstruction endeavour was losing momentum with impeccable timing our host produced several glasses of a rubycoloured wine His killer comment 717 kg of Kotsifali and 520 kg of Mandilari Pindrop silence followed by a warm round of applause It was his house wine made from neighbouring vineyards Still closed on the aftertaste I had never tasted such a young wine from these specific grapes Yet one can one learn from such a hobbyist effort Obviously it had not spent so much time on its skins The Kotsifali aroma was scintillating floral Despite our fatigue it was a jolt of lightening The Mandilari tannins were not obtrusive no bell pepper unripe green streak It got me thinking in other directions Of all the incomer red grapes on Crete it is Syrah in which Kotsifali and Mandilari have found a soulmate To date the more successful of the two with a strong commercial demand in the export market is the KotsifaliSyrah blends The MandilariSyrah is more challenging as farming to obtain ripe Mandilari needs that extra effort In Yiorgos Lyrarakiss words As the 2014 harvest unfolded Mandilari had stressed and was almost laying down to take a nap The harvest rains helped it They were the right amount at the right moment for it to wake up and sprint to its full normal ripeness Their singlevineyard Plakoura Mandilari was easily the most toothsome of the intheraw cloudy samples on our table A persuasive argument for how good this undervalued grape really is The new generation is working on this challenge The focused ones will get there as the desire to turn the page is genuine Zacharias Diamantakis at Kato Assites was illuminating Mandilaris acidity is higher than Syrahs beyond vivacity it adds structure spine Winewise Crete is no longer terra incognita it is the most exciting region in this 21stcentury Greekwine renaissance