Hellenic Viticulture Heritage and Eco-Sustainability

When a mild-mannered mid-western Ivy-League good boy brings a potty-mouthed New Yorker firecracker to a wine tasting in southern Crete. It’s the Odd-Couple—what happens when you put a dreamy Pisces woman and grounded Capricorn male together—tasting the exquisite wines of Iliana Mahilin and some of her vineyards in Crete.

Participating in the wines of the well-reviewed Iliana Mahilin is not just about good taste in wine; it’s about engagement with a woman who is invested in heritage and eco-sustainability, whether it be the vines that the grapes grow from or the Greek communities they emerge from with love. It’s the narrative that we came for, as we ourselves re-root our foundations.

Cyrus has learned, with astonishment, that if he gives me a wine to taste, I can give him a story of its undertones and flavors. Not because I read up on everything like he does. I simply feel or inhabit a story from its aroma and initial taste. I tell him it’s like remote viewing wine, not too far different from reading coffee grinds. In this passive manner I went along for the wine tasting in Crete, but came out with a deeper understanding of how extraordinary Iliana’s own story is.

Back in NYC, I had a glass of one of Iliana’s wines. In that first taste, I was struck by a swirl of thick intensity and complexity. “This,” I told Cyrus, “This is gold. An orchestra of complexities. This is the crown.” It was the 2021 vintage Amygdalos Vidiano. It’s hard to describe the universes contained in this wine, but that initial sip you remember fondly days later over a cigarette, like a lover who knocked your socks off, you left pondering their magic, and their depths.

Thank you Sommelier Raphaël Mulligan of Great Wine Wisdom for the tasting journey.

And you can see my note about the fires that struck not too long after this, and our solidarity with Iliana and the Rethymno community.