To New Beginnings

Marcos Zambartas Leading the Way

My first visit to Zambartas Wineries happened maybe eight years ago. We were met by the late Akis Zambartas, who had made the winery's top floor his home. After a quick tour of the winery's small facilities two floors down, Akis, garrulous as ever, sat us in his outdoor dining room and shared a wealth of information and stories over multiple glasses of his red wines. It was a welcoming, cheerful, generous visit, the type you experience when someone happily opens the doors to his home and you stumble out a while later, tipsy and with a big grin stamped across your face. 

Following a summer press trip organized by Vassos Eliades Ltd., Zambartas Wineries' new distributor on The Rock, I can say that this heartfelt hospitality remains as strong as ever. 

The New Tasting Room

Yes, things have changed. The main reason for our visit was to experience Zambartas Wineries' extensive renovation of its top floor, which has now become a classy and modern tasting room with a fully stocked kitchen that can cater to parties and larger groups of visitors. Clean lines, some dark wood, beautiful iron racks for the bottles on sale, and a predominantly black-and-white collage of photos rendering tribute to Akis and the family tradition have transformed the space. Additionally, the mezzanine, which served as the main tasting room, will become the center stage for aging the winery's yet-to-be-released Commandaria.

Part of the trip also included a tour of some of the winery's nearby vineyards. We drove past KEO's Ktima Mallia, Oinou Yi's lavish mountaintop winery in Omodos and Ktima Gerolemo towards Agios Nikolaos and into a higher terroir populated by rows and rows of vineyards. Unfortunately, it rained donkeys and moufflons that day, so we couldn't walk the fields and get a chance to experience wine-making straight from its source.

Fancy Anything?

My favorite part of the visit was Marcos Zambartas telling us about Margelina, a vineyard that harks back to 1921 and which he proudly purchased on Bazaraki.com (the Cypriot equivalent of eBay). Marcos believes Margelina will offer not the best but the truest representation of Cypriot wine. Christodoulos, the winery's vigneron, called this plot a living museum of Cypriot wine as it offers a glimpse into the history of Cypriot wine. You can see how vineyards were planted in the past, one atop each other, crowded, nary a row. Different varieties—Mavro, Xynisteri, Maratheftiko and more—stand side by side, some of them unrecognizable to the trained eye. So much so that Marcos had to ship some of Margelina's grapes abroad for further review.

Of course, we tasted a few wines too as part of the visit. And here's always where I start to blabber like a hyper infant. Besides the usual suspects, we sampled a few surprises.

The 2017 Single Vineyard Xynisteri (now in screw cap!) is a limited production bottle made with small-bunch grapes and 40 percent of it going through wild yeast fermentation. The vineyard is located at 950 meters above sea level in Mandria and is 29 years old. I have no doubt in my mind that Zambartas' Single Vineyard Xynisteri is the benchmark for Cypriot (indigenous) white wines. Quite mineral with notes of citrus, orange peel, stone fruits and white flowers and hints of mountain herbs and sweet vanilla spice. It's smooth, lean, clean and fresh with great length and good acidity. Plus, it will definitely improve after a couple years.

Boom Goes the Dynamite!

The 2016 Single Vineyard Shiraz, a new addition to the wine roster and also in screw cap, has a limited production of about 600 bottles and spends 15 months in oak barrels with about 80 percent of it in new ones. If you enjoy meaty wines, this one's for you. It's lountza-y, spicy, smoky and loaded with notes of black fruit and berries—it screams steak in the same way I scream for a dalliance with a bottle of DRC. [Editor's note: This will happen one day; never stop believing.]

Finally, we tasted the 2011 Zambartas Commandaria, a 65-35 percent Mavro-Xynisteri blend that should be out in the markets in 2021. This was utterly delicious. A clean nose with touches of dried apricots, figs, dates, some butterscotch, brown sugar and just a hint of smoke or meatiness. On the palate, great acidity, weighty tannins and some remarkable notes of white chocolate, raisins and brioche.

Towards the end of the visit, Marleen, the winery's marketing guru and Marcos' wife, tells me one of their hopes is that Akis is proud of how they've transformed the space he once called home. From all of my visits to Zambartas Wineries, there's no other answer but yes.

For a post on my second or third visit to Zambartas Wineries, click HERE.