A New Lease on Life

Vlassides Winery's New Facade

I first visited Vlassides Winery eight years ago. My gringo buddies Just Like Staples and Policarpa were in tow and I had promised them a flashy visit to one of The Rock's up-and-coming wineries. We made our way up to picturesque Kilani where we found US-trained Sophocles Vlassides' rudimentary operation sheltered in his parents' home and the village's former market. There wasn't much of a tour—one of the rooms packed in the steel fermentation tanks, the other the barrels that served as temporary vessels for his award-winning Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz. The closest thing to a tasting area was his parents' patio where under an old tree we were treated to homemade cheese pies, glasses of Cabernet and plenty of stories from Sophocles' garrulous, charismatic father. I fondly recall the hour or so we spent at the winery; it was a distinct throwback to a not-so-distant era in which random visitors arrived unannounced and were treated with that same warmth afforded to family.

Let me be honest: Vlassides is probably my favourite Cypriot winery. The memories I've made in which his wines have played a prominent role—both in Cyprus and abroad—have piled up and earned multiple stars in my own personal walk of fame. For one, his Shiraz made it all the way across the Atlantic the first time The Wife, Ph.D., visited me during my self-imposed exile from employment in Ecuador. It was also the red wine of choice (Aes Ambelis Xynisteri was the white) during our drunken, table-dancing nuptials in Cyprus not long thereafter. Plus, I admire Sophocles for the work he's done both as an oenologist and consultant to other wineries, helping raise the industry's standards and paving the way for Cypriot wine's bright future.

View from Vlassides Winery

In the spirit of this moment, Vlassides Winery has been the latest to go through a metamorphosis, introducing a new, modern and more sophisticated range of labels, logos and titles for its already excellent wines. This makes perfect sense given all the work that was put into building Vlassides' new home, a futuristic wonder just south of Kilani, chock-full of vertices, protruding boxes and smooth planes that stands alongside Argyrides Winery in Vasa Kilaniou as my favourites design-wise. Given both of these wineries' obvious architectural dissimilarities, that says plenty about my fickle persona.

Designed by architects Eraclis Papachristou and Yiannos Tsiolis and brought to life in 2014, the winery features two distinct areas—one where all the arduous grape-related work happens, another dedicated to hosting visitors, throwing parties and lecturing amateurs on the wonderful world of wine. Albeit, what's worth noting is that guests don't need to leave this second area to see all that's going on at the winery; an elevated corridor that extends from the tasting area, as described in Arch Daily, "create[s] panoramic views...to the winemaking and storage rooms equally, benefiting the visitor with a general experience of the winemaking process."

New Labels Revealed

While the latest labels and logo do not take a patriotic stand and represent all that is great about The Rock, they establish a new direction and identity for Vlassides' eighteen-year-old operation. These abstract and modern labels—developed with thought, art and geometry in mind—harmonize with the winery's architecture; squares and rectangles, straight lines, sharp angles and 3-D optical illusions combine with the same sense of fluidity offered by walking through Vlassides' premises to give the winery's image a new lease on life.

This new life was on full display at an event hosted several weeks back in Kilani to announce and celebrate the launch of the winery's renewed face and offer revelers a taste of several current and older vintages. The 2016 Sauvignon Blanc, easily one of the best on the island year in and year out, shone with its lovely tropical, citrus aromas, while the 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon, an older and rarer vintage, drank remarkably fresh for a seven-year-old Cypriot red. Personally, I found Sophocles' current experiments to be the evening's highlights; he offered guests a 2015 Yiannoudi that, despite its vines' youth, showed plenty of fruit and promise, and a 2015 dessert wine made of Sauvignon Blanc that had decent balance and matched nicely with the variety of cheeses on offer. I believe both would be nice additions to what's already an excellent wine portfolio anchored by his Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Private Label—the Shiraz, Cabernet and Merlot blend that has been re-baptized as Opus Artis.

For a closer look at the launch, here's a snazzy promotional video released by Vlassides. PS: Keep an eye out for The Wife, Ph.D., who makes a sneakily sexy two-second cameo appearance mingling with The Rock's wine celebrities.

Hips Don't Lie

I love my labels. 

I don't mean those multisyllabic Italian names that dress wafer-thin models in clunky, mismatched fabrics, ghoulish make-up and heels that could be used to maim a disgruntled lover. Me trying designer clothing is akin to forcing a Fiat 500's chassis onto a naked Hummer; hips don't lie, people. Plus, those labels are for the cool kids, and cool kids don't cry watching Massimo Bottura talk about his wife and Parmesan cheese.

I love my wine labels. Whether we like it or not, plenty of consumers out there partially base their wine purchases on the label; it catches a corner of their eye with its modern design, its comedic undertones, its bravado, its refinement, you name it. I've been guilty of this plenty of times, specially when my phone's roaming and I'm looking at a region of the world that's as obscure to me as deep-fried pork belly is to a supermodel.

Since moving to Cyprus ten-plus years ago, the evolution of the Cypriot wine label has been interesting to follow. It's only during the past three-to-five years that some of the wineries on The Rock have embraced labels that have become something to write home about. Still, many remain stuck in the past with old fashioned, unimaginative and dull labels that fail to capture the consumer's imagination.

Rocky Ledge Above Vouni Panayia Winery

For me, it all starts with Vouni Panayia, whose labels experienced a massive transformation, and are the coolest on the island. After spending a sunset with the Kyriakides family on a steep rocky ledge one-thousand-plus meters above sea level—sharing stories and laughs, sampling their Promara and Spourtiko, taking in the myriad of colours scattering into black—these labels make perfect sense: a mouflon, Cyprus' national animal, leaning over a large V that mimics said cliff.

Tsiakkas winery has also done a good job, adopting a series of drawn Cypriot motifs to embellish their bottles, and Zambartas, from the get-go, designed a sophisticated label that stands out for its finesse. However, as has come up in discussions with the team behind Evoinos, another Cypriot wine blog, it's not enough to just modernise one's labels without having a coherent, interesting and informative story behind the effort. Maybe this is a marketing or branding issue that has failed to take hold of the Cypriot wine industry, but it is one where there's tons of potential.

The Unveiling

The latest to adopt a new image was Kyperounda Winery, and I was honoured to have been invited to the launch for the rebranding of its entry level wines—Petritis, Andessitis and Rosé—which was held at Nicosia's Municipal Gardens.

The sophisticated affair perfectly complemented Kyperounda Winery's new labels, which consist of a series of pine cones coloured in gold, blue and fuchsia, one for each bottle. The design's lines are simple yet classy and are in touch with the winery's history and its geographic location in the Pitsilia region of the Troodos mountains.

According to the winery, "The new labels in the main series of wines by Kyperounta Winery exude refinement, highlighting the dynamic character and quality of the wines. The symbol is the pine cone, characteristic of the Pitsilia area. It is worth noting that Pitsilia took its name from the ancient 'Pitis,' which means pine."

Kyperounda's New Label Art

From my brief conversation with the Kyperounda Winery crew hosting the event, the winery is also looking into revamping the labels for their mid-range wines, which include the Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and always enjoyable Chardonnay. It will be interesting to see whether they will stick to the pine cone theme or come up with something altogether new.

In any case, it's about time Cypriot wine labels do justice to the vastly improved libation that's now found in the bottle and adds kilos around our waists. 

By the way, if any local winery is up for it, we can organise a label design competition and see what comes of it. Plenty of talented artists on The Rock and I'm sure plenty of them would be thrilled to design something for a case of your finest Maratheftiko, bragging rights and a shoutout/nickname on my third-rate wine blog.

Who's got next?