Cyprus Commandaria: History’s Miracle or Modern Myth?

 

By Patrick Skinner

 

I have lived in Cyprus since 1991. During that time I have attended innumerable dinners and other catering functions. I have dined in the houses of Cypriots from the professions, from business and from simple village life. In all of that time and experience, including the twelve years I have been writing about wine and food for newspapers and magazines in this country, I cannot recollect ever being offered a glass of Commandaria. Zivania, yes. Beer, yes. Koniaki, yes. But Commandaria, never. 

In my own home I have always kept a bottle or two of what I consider to be one of the better Commandarias. Quite frequently I have offered a glass to visitors and in politeness some have accepted. My guests have included some of the greatest wine producers in the world, wine distributors, journalists, family and friends who simply love good food and wine. The comments range from, at best, “Very sweet but quite nice,” to “I’m sorry but I don’t like this.”

In the hundreds of restaurants I have been to in Cyprus I don’t recall every being offered a glass of Commandaria.

So why all the fuss about this wine? It is largely down to the Cyprus Tourist Organisation, which hasn’t really caught up with or understood the revolution that has taken place in the production of table wine in this country in the past fifteen years.  So, instead of promoting the new young wine-makers and their increasingly good wines, they have delved back into the past and come up with five thousand years of wine history, the Knights of St John, the days of King Richard, Mana and lots of other guff about the sweet wine consumed by the cognoscenti in the Middle Ages, when, I agree, Commandaria was justly famous (but time has moved on). 

Even the organisers of the recent “Tasting Competition for Cyprus Wines” couldn’t kick the habit. Two Commandaria wines were entered for the competition and both won Gold!

From my experience of wine-tasting, which extends back over many years and includes long periods of working with or for producers of dessert wines in Spain, Portugal, Madeira and Austria, I can say with confidence that Commandaria ranks very low in the world championship tables for sweet wines. Even good Commandaria is a thick, raisiny, treacly, ultra-sweet substance with little of the underlying dryness that is required of a great dessert wine. Such wines are out of fashion and therefore, in my view, virtually unpromotable.

If I were going to finish a meal with a Cypriot dessert wine I would order a glass or a bottle of the fortified liqueur wine from Domaine Nicolaides, an excellent drink based on Muscat grapes, which has all of two years history behind it but outscores Commandaria any day of the week.

It is bad enough that the indigenous Cyprus wine producers were sold down the river in the negotiations for EU entry when without doubt a grace period between joining and the abolition of subsidies and import duties could have been negotiated. If this wasn’t enough, nothing has ever existed in the Cyprus wine industry that resembles the Greek model.  In that country active government departments and agencies ensured that EU support for the wine industry was effectively used. Producers were got together and united promotions, assisting small producers and large, were undertaken in Greece and major export markets such as the USA and UK.

So, here we are left with the residue of the stifling domination of the wine industry by KEO, ETKO, SODAP and LOEL. The voice of the independent, thirty or so wine-makers, still is not heard. And yet, these are the men and women who are the future of the Cyprus wine industry. I think we should forget about Commandaria, consign it to history and concentrate on the ever-growing number of international medal-winning table wines now being made by the Young Lions (and one or two Old ones)!

 

— SIDEBAR

 

On the way to Gold – or out in the Cold?  Since 1996 SODAP has built its business successfully on home and overseas sales of its “Island Vines” and “Mountain Vines” table wines – its Commandaria sales alone would not have enabled the company to survive.