Four Wineries of Macedonia and Eastern Macedonia/Thrace
Article in Hellenic News of America by Marc d’ Entremont
It’s easy to understand why fun loving Dionysius was a favorite deity among humans. Vineyards have existed in northern Greece since antiquity. The earliest archeological records for wine production are at least 7,000 years old. Wine was essential to the Greek psyche and in everyday life Macedonia and Thrace was its motherland.
The Kingdom of Thasos (1st millennium BC) within ancient Thrace established the first quality control system for grapes, wine and olive oil. It’s ironic that for seven millenniums, Thrace has been the mother terroir of wine grapes. Yet wine production virtually ended in the 15th century after the conquest of Greece by the Ottoman Empire. It was replaced, ironically, by phenomenal profits earned from the New World’s “King Tobacco.” The devastation of 20th century wars finished the process.
Restoration during the past half century has reestablished Macedonia and Eastern Macedonia/Thrace once again as premiere European wine regions.
Chateau Nico Lazaridi
Inspired by the allegorical 1924 Thomas Mann novel The Magic Mountain, Frederico Lazaridis takes seriously the primal interplay of mythic forces and human reality.
More to the point, Chateau Nico Lazaridi sits opposite Eastern Macedonia/Thrace’s own magic mountain – Mount Pangeon. Its magic was both mythic – a favorite party mountain for Dionysus – and tangible. Its vast gold deposits funded the empires of Philip II and Alexander the Great, paid for the construction of the nearby legendary city of Philippi and, sitting on the Via Egnatia, was at the crossroads between Eastern and Western cultures for centuries…
Link: https://hellenicnews.com/2019/05/24/four-wineries-of-macedonia-and-eastern-macedonia-thrace
