Assyrtiko

Assyrtiko was born on Santorini's volcanic ash, a soil in which phylloxera never took hold: the island's vines grow on their own roots, and some root systems are centuries old, renewed cane by cane. Against the meltemi wind and the glare, growers coil each vine into a kouloura, a low woven basket sheltering the grapes at its centre.

Its gift is unreasonable: piercing acidity held through scorching, nearly rainless summers, with lemon, flint and sea spray in the glass and a saline finish that has become shorthand for the island. Once a local grape behind Vinsanto, it is now planted across mainland Greece and imitated worldwide — the model of a great warm-climate white.